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“What Is The Smallest Amount Of Power You’ve Seen Go To Someone’s Head?” (30 Answers)
It’s super funny when a person gets a tiny bit of power and loses it. It’s like a little kid being entrusted to handle the kiddy scissors in kindergarten and then feeling as if he is The Lord Of The Rings, Sauron itself, possessing infinite power over his meager subjects.
It’s also pretty sad. But more funny.
Today, we’re here to laugh at and vote on the times when people got a teensy weensy grain of power and then took it on an absolute trip.
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Any Homeowners Association board member in America
HOAs: Recreating 'The Lord of the Flies' with condominiums.
When the teacher put the stapler on Jerry's desk. She could have put it on any desk, but she chose his. He proceeded to spend the next 30 minutes as the Stapler King, giving the stapler to people he felt were worthy. I needed the stapler but I had to wait 5 minutes while he debated with himself over whether I was worthy or not. F**k you ,Jerry.
Missed a parcel by the postman and got the slip through my door to go to the depot. Card says wait 24 hours before collecting. Figured I'd try my luck and went there anyway. Guy takes f*****g ages to get to me as he clearly doesn't give a f**k (as always, anybody who lives in Britain will tell you Post Office staff in depots are hopeless) and then finally takes my slip off. I see him go to my parcel, PICK IT UP, then notice the slip says wait 24 hours. He genuinely refuses to give me the parcel as I haven't waited. F*****g d**k- give me my parcel!
Turn up an hour later, a different person is on the desk. Get my parcel no problem.
The reason for the 24-hour wait is so that the parcel can be returned from the mail carrier's possession to the post office. If it was already there, the carrier never intended to deliver it, but planned on giving everyone a slip that day. My carrier does this habitually, because he's too lazy to drive down my 100m driveway and get out of his truck.
Once I volunteered to be a vest for a parade. Basically, I got a brightly colored vest and a bicycle to help keep people behind the parade route lines, help floats if they got into trouble, misc stuff like that. I got beer tokens as payment.
After the parade was over, I turned in my vest, got my beer tokens and went to the party at the end of the route. I got to the long a*s line for cheap beer and opened my mouth and took a deep breath.
Okay so... I'd just spent 4 hours using my loud-a*s voice to shout at people. Now that it was over, shouting at people and watching them do what I said had become some surreal form of normal.
I exhaled, closed my f*****g mouth, and waited in line like a human being.
Basically, being a parade volunteer made me think I had the power to cut in line for beer, but my meat-brain kicked into gear just before I made an a*s of myself.
Most surreal moment of my life.
This (the vest thing) reminded me of that brat that refused to grant me entrance to the stadium for a soccer game because the ticket wouldn't scan at the first time. She accused me of getting a fake ticket. After that it was because I only payed a ticket for a child instead of for an adult. Then she said it was impossible for someone like me to afford these kind of tickets. She refused to try and scan it for a second time, but tried to kick me out. It was an important game that day and we had premium seats. It was busy and took forever for me to wave someone else down to solve that issue. In fact she was about to get physical because apparently I held up the line. Hope she got a good kick out of it, before she got in trouble that racist b. Missed a whole quarter of the game. It's been years but still makes me angry.
I used to be an admin on a Minecraft server where after you played for 10 hours you would get the rank "Member", which gave you access to a couple new commands. Some really annoying 10 year old thought that it was a huge achievement when he got that and he started acting superior to all the moderators and threatening them. I talked to him over skype about it and he started screeching at me and saying that he f****d my mom. I banned him permanently. Make sure your kids know how to act semi-maturely before you let them play online in any game.
I couldn't help but laugh at this one but it's pretty much the same behavior I've seen from some other 10 year olds with access to technology and zero supervision. They can be pretty hard-core bullies over text if they have phones when they're that young too. My 9 year old tries to convince me that everyone he knows has a phone, and plays games with friends online and I'm like well I guess you'll just have to be uncool until middle school at least.
Teacher here - making a student in charge of the glue sticks. Acted like I'd given them a veto in the UN.
I had a friend in another city who was living in a s****y room and board situation and I wanted to move there so we decided to get a place together. I gave him my share of the damage deposit and first months rent. He lived there so he found the place.
He put his name on the tenancy agreement so he figured he was my landlord and he was in charge of every little thing in the house. I needed work, so I helped the landlord in some renovations (we had a leak and a minor flood) for the equivalent value in free rent which really pissed him off because I was going over his head and interfering with his future legal case against the landlord (which never happened). He horded the mail key so I needed permission to get my mail. Eventually I lost it on him and demanded to get my name on the place on paper or I would leave so he "evicted" me. The next month he had to move out because he couldn't afford the place.
We promoted a call center employee to shift manager. She was a nice, dependable, hardworking and pleasant girl. Within days she was hiding behind potted plants trying to catch people looking at their cellphones (against policy to have them on the floor) and reported one person because her phone vibrated in her purse. She would time breaks (bathroom and scheduled) just itching for someone to return late. This chick suddenly got semi-orgasmic at the thought of getting others in trouble. We moved her to an 'administrative' position and eventually fired her.
My former university's IT admin. I studied computer science and my laptop was pretty weak. I used to work all night, weekends and preferred working out of the IT labs computers. This A*hole of an IT admin, the typical reddit neckbeard, fat, slobby, know it all dips**t had weird rules. In the bitter cold of US northeast he had a rule that stated nobody could eat inside the computer labs. Since I worked there all day and night, I would usually keep my sandwich with me and eat it after 11pm. One night this mongrel was taking a stroll in the corridor, saw me eating my sandwich. Told me either I throw it out or he was going to lock my account to the department network. I tried reasoning with him and said 'I will close it and put it in my backpack', he insisted I throw it because otherwise I might come back and eat it when he's not around. It was the moment I felt the most helpless in my life. I couldn't afford to get locked out the department lab, since I had some huge program running whose results were due soon. I couldn't afford to throw away a $7 sandwich as I was a foreign student here on scholarship. It was a snowy midnight in december when I did not have any option to go buy myself anything else. I succumbed to his threat, went and trashed my sandwich in front of his eyes. He gave me a dirty grin and left. I felt helpless, alone and lost. I had nobody to go and talk my heart out. I was almost in tears at my own miserable situation. I hated my life back then.
I had to interview a guy who is president of the cha-cha dancing club at my university, ChaChaLoco. When I asked for his full name, he scoffed. "You don't know who I am?" I said no, I was just a reporter for the school newspaper. He then said, "I am Firstname Middlename SecondSpanishMiddlename Lastname, President and Financial Executive of ChaChaLoco. If you haven't heard of me yet, you must live under a rock."
Rank
I'm in the military and some people think their rank is like Thor's hammer.... We had this one guy get promoted to first lieutenant from second lieutenant in my first assignment (basically a 100% promotion rate for that rank) and THAT DAY started to order all the other LTs around and telling them to call him sir, etc. Our DO put him in his place pretty quickly, but it's amazing what a bar on your shoulder or stripe on your arm can add to an ego
Did you expect people who had the idea of rank pounded into their heads during basic to act any other way?
A moderator of /r/Food banned me for providing links to the source and recipe of food pictures I posted. Apparently that's spam.
Some s****y admin on a freelancing website.
He used to be the lowest of the low, always helping me out.
He then got promoted to 'head customer support agent' within weeks he had removed my top rated seller status (because I complained that he wasn't doing his job properly). I asked for the reasons, he said he does not have time to give me the reasons.
Income plummeted by £1000 a month, costing me my house.
Cheers man.
Glad you got fired a few months later for incompetence.
I worked for a small used game store and the one girl that worked there was made assistant manager and instantly felt that meant that she didn't have to do any work and could just tell me what to do. When the owner came in and saw that I was doing 90% of the work he gave me the title of "weekend manager" and told me that I didn't have to listen to anything she said.
Not exactly the smallest, but when Theodore Roosevelt became the acting Secretary for the US Navy for 4 hours, he cabled the Navy worldwide to prepare for war, ordered ammunition and supplies, brought in experts and went to Congress asking for the authority to recruit as many sailors as he wanted.
He held the job for 4 hours and did that during the timeframe.
On his lunch break, he carved his face into Mt. Rushmore.
Our tiny community has an email list to join for buying & selling locally. I overheard the woman who sends out the emails saying that deciding what made the email was like playing god every morning.
God's 'Buying and Selling Locally' email: For Sale. Small blue planet. Fixer Upper. No reasonable offer refused.
In seventh grade one of our teachers would ask a student to keep an eye on the room if he needed to step out for a moment. Mostly the kids were happy to stand in front of the room and watch everyone read or work on a quiz for a few minutes and felt great about their responsibility.
One time the teacher stepped out and gave the responsibility to "Brian" while we started a test. I asked out loud if anyone knew the date. "Brian" yelled at me not to talk during a test, that talking was cheating, grabbed the test off my desk and ripped it in half.
I'm not joking. He actually tore it in half.
When the teacher came back "Brian" told the teacher he had stopped me from cheating and gave him my ripped up test that only had my name written on it. The other students spoke up in my defense. Teacher told "Brian" he had done well in making sure no one talked, but he was going to let me do the test anyway.
Reddit Mods
oh snap
the meme of posting something inappropriate while mods are asleep will never get old.
I put someone "in charge" as team leader of a small crew that was digging a foundation. He tried to fire 3 of the five guys.
I like how the picture on this one is so random and has nothing to do with the actual text.
The one who became the admin of a facebook page, with 23 likes. I made it with another guy, and we were posting cool images for our friends. Anyway, one of our other friends wanted in, so we added him. A bunch more of my friends liked the page, taking us to just over 50 likes. The new admin went insane. He banned people, tried to bar the other admin, then tried to initiate a coup, by telling our viewers that I and the other admin had gone insane and that he was he only one who they should trust.
I just deleted the page, and told him to make his own. He was none too happy.
Anyone who has been in a fraternity will know that when a newly initiated brother is given the slightest amount of power it's an instant power trip. Perfect example being our new "parliamentarian" basically the person responsible for handing out fines. He threatened to send my $1 fine to collections if I didn't pay it for cursing in a chapter meeting. I told him to f**k himself with a cactus.
I paid the fine though.
Fraternities and sororities need to be abolished. Only smug jerks would even consider belonging to one.
Landlord of government-subsidized housing in a s****y part of town.
* Immediately used any conceivable lease violation to get 75%+ tenants to "2nd strike" (3rd is "automatic" eviction)
* Encouraged 2nd-strike tenants to anonymously report their neighbors in return for leniency
* Lied to tenants, their lawyers, and their family members about violations
* Had individual visitors banned over rumors of illegal activity (from the 2nd-strike crew)
* Has written up people for "loitering" outside their own apartments after 10pm. Not loud gathering-type loitering. Stepping out to smoke, even.
* Drives her in-crowd to appointments, etc.
* Completely unequal enforcement of all rules.
One caretaker I had ( a couple) thought they ruled the building and everyone's lives. Wouldn't give proper entry notices, nor clear instructions about pest control procedures for tenants, harassed tenants about non-existent issues or things that were out of the tenant's control, meddled in their lives. One day the lady told me she "loved putting the fear in tenants". This was when she was somewhat cool with me shortly after I moved in. She became a total b***h soon after. She accused my daughter of running down the stairs and shouting when she had a busted foot and wore a walking cast. She had to be slow going down the stairs. She also likes to sing. It was during the day and she was just going to her friend's who lived in the same building. The caretaker was trying to gaslight me, saying I did hear her shouting. I didn't. When I called mgmt they said it was a "she said, she said" issue with no proof of evidence. I told them my kid's in a cast. Still didn't budge.
The guy who was the manager at the Burger King I worked at when I was a teenager. We had to get prior approval from him if we wanted to get a hair cut or dye our hair or pierce our ears. Tattoos were forbidden, even if they were hidden. If he found out you had one, he'd find an excuse to fire you. Same if you weren't Christian. He would also drive by our houses to make sure the pit crews weren't fraternizing with the managers or assistant managers on our off hours.
I heard he's a cop now. He'll probably show up on the news some day for shooting a black man for jaywalking or something.
Our local landfill built a plywood booth near the front gate and installed their longtime bulldozer operator, an older lady who was morbidly obese and a heavy smoker, as the full-time attendant. "If you EVER show up here again with a No-Tarp you'll be banned for life," she said, taking a long pull on her smoke. "Banned from the landfill for LIFE?" I asked, suddenly thinking that this might be a badge of distinction. "For LIFE!" she replied, adding sternly, "This is a WASTE-FA-CILITY, not a f****n' dump."
It's been my experience that people who are newly promoted often become a hard a*s. I always felt they did these crack downs so upper management would think they were correct in who they promoted. I've seen it again and again.
Most of the cops in my area act like they own the entire county.
Once I was given the honorary title of drill sergeant in middle school. I started yelling at kids and made up my own drill songs. This girl I liked told me later that I was being lame. I told her to give me 20.
Our high school had 4 custodians. One retired and the next-in-line was promoted to **Head Custodian**.
Both the student body and staff knew it had gone to his head when he posted an announcement regarding locker inspections for *interior cleanliness* - replete with a schedule of days/times to show up for his *mandatory* inspections.
Apparently, he took it upon himself without the administration's authorization, because we heard about it only through him, not from official notification by the principal.
There is a button in my car that makes the headrests in the back fall down. I use it to smack people in the head if they try to be cute.
My third grade teacher was in charge of the "red dot" which was a red circular piece of construction paper she would hang outside her classroom. It indicated it was too muddy to play on the baseball field at recess. So many stories and anecdotes involving the red dot. Even 3rd grade me saw she was drunk with the power.
Well I guess she didn't want the kids to muddy up the classroom, much less go home from school in that condition! The parents would be furious!
Note: this post originally had 42 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
I’ve seen many of my classmates back in 2nd and 3rd grade get very egotistical after being assigned the class monitor. I used to take bribes from my friends when I was a class monitor (by bribes I mean their tiffin food) until I started to realise how f****d up with was and also when it stopped being “cool” to be a class monitor
Here in the US, two baking show winners, both pleasant guys, became judges on different baking shows along with much more experienced judges. Both men have become the most petty, nitpicking and patronizing of judges. They're both unwatchable. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Even when it's about cream puffs.
Every single claims examiner at the US Department of Labor it has been my displeasure to have assigned to my claim (which is 25 years old now). They violate the Federal Employees' Compensation Act with regularity, forcing me to appeal multiple times, all of which I've won. They just enjoy making disabled people miserable. No punitive measures are taken against them for having violated federal law, and the Act prevents claimants from seeking redress in court. It's frustrating as hell, especially since the appeals process takes about a year, during which I have no income.
I’ve seen many of my classmates back in 2nd and 3rd grade get very egotistical after being assigned the class monitor. I used to take bribes from my friends when I was a class monitor (by bribes I mean their tiffin food) until I started to realise how f****d up with was and also when it stopped being “cool” to be a class monitor
Here in the US, two baking show winners, both pleasant guys, became judges on different baking shows along with much more experienced judges. Both men have become the most petty, nitpicking and patronizing of judges. They're both unwatchable. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Even when it's about cream puffs.
Every single claims examiner at the US Department of Labor it has been my displeasure to have assigned to my claim (which is 25 years old now). They violate the Federal Employees' Compensation Act with regularity, forcing me to appeal multiple times, all of which I've won. They just enjoy making disabled people miserable. No punitive measures are taken against them for having violated federal law, and the Act prevents claimants from seeking redress in court. It's frustrating as hell, especially since the appeals process takes about a year, during which I have no income.
