Kate Hackett
Sometimes puncturing someone’s ego is one of the most satisfying things in the world. They’re overinflated and being, usually, pretty rude, so watching them return to earth can put a real nice taste in your mouth.
That’s precisely what went on in these answers to u/bendigonono‘s AskReddit question:
“When did you witness someone’s large ego get absolutely flattened?”
We combed through and found some of the most satisfying responses and compiled them here. It’s a nice way to start the day!
1. Photography
I used to work at a photography studio. I’m not a photographer but I know some basics.
Photographer guy, probably in his 50s, tells me the equipment he rented isn’t working and he is ranting on about how he has wasted 25 minutes of his rental time because his camera wasn’t syncing to the lighting equipment. All in front of his poor clients.
Best moment of my life — as he was cursing me out I walked over and wordlessly plugged it in. Never seen a grown man turn so red.
2. Nice try, prof.
Long ago? In college one semester for fun I took “Swine Management”. I’m a total city girl, about 5 ft nothing, and at the time I was like 105 lbs soaking wet. I did learn how to restrain a hog in that class, and I got to know all the barn men really well.
Next fall semester, I start my Veterinary College courses. In Large Animal Medicine, we had a block of, you guessed it, swine disease prevention. The professor was known to enjoy taking his students down a peg or two. Great, he covers basic swine restraint really fast, like no way you’d be able to do this…unless you already know how. He looks around…barn men are watching this show from the back. I didn’t want to disappoint them, so I make eye contact with the prof and of course he picks me “to demo”.
I calmly walk up to the sow, take the rope, loop around the belly, twist, half hitch into her mouth and tie her up. Barn men are like proud papas, prof is like wtf just happened. He asked me where I grew up, he’s clearly thinking Iowa or something, I answer the big city to the west.
Best day ever.
3. Lost an election
A guy in our union was running for some executive board position and he was telling everyone what an easy win it was gonna be for him because nobody like the other 2 people running for the job. Come election day he got a very humbled awakening. Out of 1300 people he got less than 10 votes. He didn’t speak to many people for awhile after that. Nobody likes a braggart.
4. To be fair, bar quizzes are pretty dumb
Some dude came into the pub I work at for the pub quiz. Kept going on about how he was smarter than all these bumpkins (I live in a university city) and that he was gonna get first prize. He was adamant and he sat at the bar across from me the whole time. I played on my phone and named myself Bumpkin. He didn’t even place in the top 10 and was furious that he got beaten by a bumpkin and a “gang of old retired fuckups that have nothing better to do”
5. Semi Pro?
A high school friend told a group of us he couldn’t get-together with us over a college break because he started playing “semi-pro” football and scouts were coming to see him. He never played in high school, but was on track and cross-country so while it seemed unlikely we thought we’d surprise him by showing up at his game in support. Got the game info from his mom… and it was a bar-league flag football team. He was crushed when we showed up.
6. That’s cool, man
I worked IT support for my school while I was in college. One of my coworkers was the type who thinks they’re the smartest guy in the room. One day he came in and couldn’t get his monitors to work. After 10 minutes of watching him struggle I tried to interject and help but got a long winded rant about how he’s been working with computers his whole life and doesn’t need any help, if he can’t figure it out I certainly wouldn’t be able to.
I just responded with “that’s cool man, I just thought monitors had to be plugged in to work, my bad.” His entire face turned red and he looked like he wanted to die as he realized both monitors were unplugged.
7. Nope, no sir.
I knew a guy that always felt the need to one up everything I said. I was on the phone with my girlfriend at the time and he happened to overhear us talking. He came up to me and started to brag about himself, loud enough for my girlfriend to hear, and how he could steal my girl just by talking to her on the phone for 10 minutes. I offered him my phone and my girlfriend reamed him out for 5 minutes straight before he handed me back the phone and walked off. I was so proud of her haha.
8. Deserved.
Me when I was a kid. Made fun of a girl in my neighborhood in front of people, then proceeded to try and do a bike trick and break my wrist as they all watched.
9. No dice, Pat
There was an arm wrestling trend going on at my high school during my junior year, and there was an all star athlete on my basketball team we called Pat who was very cocky. He wasn’t the best on the team at basketball, but he started in every single sport and he was absolutely jacked for a 17 yr old. One day he challenges this semi mentally handicapped kid at our school to an arm wrestling match over who gets to use this particular tool in shop. This kid is pretty big, but he’s a bit slow so he got teased a lot. Anyways they get set up, everyone’s watching, and the match starts. 15 seconds go by and Pat couldn’t move this kid’s arm at all. He just sat there smiling at Pat and watched the smug and cocky attitude disappear. Then he easily pinned his arm and let Pat use the tool anyways. He walked away humming to himself like usual. What a boss.
10. School bully
One of the bullies in my school constantly made fun of the new kid for having a small dick. The new guys family had come in from Spain or something and the kid was really nice. Since he was so different from all of the other kids at school the girls were kind of into him. I mean he probably could have picked any of them. So the asshole decides he is going to start the rumor that the kids got a tiny dick and is gay. Says he saw his dick in gym when the guy made a move on him. This goes on for a week or so and finally the bully decides to knock him over and pants him, but not just pants down to ankles, he stole his shorts off of his body and started to run away.
This kid from Spain stands up revealing some tight ass red (I want to say satin but not sure) underwear. Some people snicker, but its business as usual to this kid. No big deal, kind of like a speedo. And this kid is packing. I mean its outlined there for everyone to see in all of its glory. I swear this guy winks at the hottest girl in school, grabs is back pack and heads to class in his underwear. Doesn’t even go after his shorts. That dude became a legend. His family moved again like a year later. The bully? Well he became known as the guy that couldn’t handle Sergio’s amazing penis.
11. Two kids clocked him
Once I saw two young kids probably like thirteen years old, try to cross the street. A guy in a pick up truck yelled at them to get out of the way. The kids had the right of way, and said something back to the guy. The guy loses his shit, and jumps out of the truck acting like a hard ass and got up in the one kids face screaming and yelling, when he took his eyes off of the kid he was yelling at to yell at the other kid. Bam! Right hook to the face from the first kid. He got dropped with one punch. The two kids took off like the road runner. By the time the guy got up they were gone. That guy was probably twenty years older than them, and got wrecked. I imagine he had to go to work the next day with a big shiner. And had to lie about what happened. It was so awesome. He totally deserved it.
12. Nice try, kid
A girl in my English class said that she would score a 100 on our End of Course test. She made everyone feel bad about themselves and thought that she was the best in the class. In the end, she scored a 64.
13. Ruined car
I worked for a Mercedes Benz dealer. Lots of a-hole customers, but one in particular was just a dick. He’d throw a tantrum if he couldn’t get in for a service appointment with zero notice and pulled a lot of “do you KNOW who I AM” crap to try to get his way. He came in one day and made a huge production of buying a $100,000 car – made sure everyone in the dealership knew he was buying it and exactly how much it cost, drove it into the service bay to smugly show it off to the techs, rolled the top down and blasted his lame 80’s music as loud as he could on the way out…super cringy. About three hours after he left with his new car, he walked back into the service bay absolutely losing his $hit and demanding his money back because “the car was ruined”. Sure enough, here comes the tow truck with his pretty little convertible in tow. Turns out genius had decided to show off his car to his work buddies and parked it on the street with the top down, then popped inside to “conduct some business”. Welp, a downpour came out of nowhere and drenched the interior of the car. Totally ruined the electronics, soaked into the upholstery, and he couldn’t even turn it on. The thing was essentially totaled and he’d had it for three hours. It was amazing.
14. No promotion
I got promoted (at a fucking McDonald’s… Wow…) over some other girl. I didn’t even know I was being considered until a day or two before the managers voted. I was told to come in the next day in my new uniform and the other girl came in, saw my uniform, and quit on the spot. She accused me of stealing “her” promotion.
I found out from an assistant manager that they were openly considering her and tried to push her towards things she would need to know/do and she would never take the initiative to learn more, do more. I actively tried to learn more (mainly to get out of service and into the kitchen… Fuuuuck the public) and was well liked by most of the crew/management and someone randomly tossed my name in the conversation
15. Just a liar
There was this annoying woman in my department at work back in the early 80s. She was one of those who had already seen it/done it better during any topic of conversation. It bugged me because it seemed to me that the bulk of her claims were products of her imagination, but many of our co-workers thought that “Lynn” was sooo cool, she knows so many famous people and has visited all these exotic places!” Well, she crossed the line with me in 1980 when I was fortunate enough to get front row tickets to a Queen concert in Detroit via a scalper. I paid $45 each, but it was worth it – that was back in the day when the front row folks were squished against the stage so that we rested our forearms on it. Both Freddie and Brian shook my hand during the show. Of course, since I was willing to spend that kind of cash to see them it only makes sense that I was a huge fan and knew a LOT about the band and its history.
Come Monday morning I go to work and talk enthusiastically about seeing Queen so closely and Lynn interjects off-handedly, “Oh, I remember partying with them back in the day when they played small clubs. I remember seeing them at [some small downtown Detroit bar] and playing cards with them backstage later.” I looked her in the eye and replied, “The first time Queen ever played in Detroit was at the Ford Auditorium in February 1975. They’ve never played club dates in Detroit.” She just gave me a frozen smile, patted my arm and walked away. After that she never interacted with me unless absolutely necessary.
16. Didn’t work out for him
I beat out a guy for a promotion. He was super loud about everything and always talked about basically how awesome/smart he is. After I became his boss, he stopped taking lunch with the other guys, and sulked around the shop until he transferred to another shift in a very dramatic way. It was like when people post they are quitting Facebook but in real life. Found out later he got fired for being a giant turd to his coworkers. I try not to be petty but I admit I got a chuckle out of it.
17. Zingers!
Ex girlfriend was hostess at a swanky restaurant in Seattle. She was looking down at her book when some people approached the dais and a guy said “I need a table for 8.” She said without looking up “it’s probably going to be at least a 90 minute wait.” Voice says “But I’m David Copperfield.” Ex says “Then maybe you can make a table appear.” Finishes what she’s doing. Looks up. It’s actually David Copperfield. No table appeared.
18. Tim fell asleep
One of my co-workers, Tim, was featured in a large publication’s article on the overscheduled American child. It followed him and his family about their day as they rushed their children from music lessons to sports teams to a whole bunch of other activities. The parents wouldn’t even let the kids fool around in the car – they were told “Is that a good use of your time?”
The parents were proud. They said it would instill a necessary work ethic for their kids to get ahead in the USA.
That same week, we were on a team conference call, voice only. Snoring sounds started interrupting the meeting. It finally got so bad that the manager did a roll call.
“Tim?” No answer. Snoring continues. “Tim? Tim? TIMMMMM!!!”
Everyone starts laughing as Tim startles awake. He never lived it down.
19. Not so expert
In highschool a martial arts group performed for us during an assembly in the gym. The lead guy with a microphone was arrogant and full of himself. He was demonstrating how you could lock your arms behind your neck in a hold that can’t be separated. He asked for someone from the audience to try and break his arms apart. Down from the bleachers came our top male gymnast. The student got behind the “expert” and in a matter of seconds the student not only broke the hold but dislocated the pro’s shoulder in the process.
20. Humbled
Me. I got into an argument with some guy. Tried to talk tough. I thought it would be 2 guys taking shit and it would be over. But he wasn’t bluffing. He wanted to fight. I backed down and apologized. Learned a humbling lesson that day. This is not high school. Don’t write checks you can’t cash.
