Surprised People Share Times They've Seen A Small Amount Of Power Go To Someone's Head

They say power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It turns out, for some people even the tiniest bit of power can corrupt. There was always that one kid who took his job as the hall monitor a little bit too seriously. Not everyone grows out of that as an adult. One reddit user asked:

What's the smallest amount of power you've seen go to someone's head?

The answers gave us several migraines from the amount of times we rolled our eyes. .

My 5 year old won the kindergarten olympics.

He was a complete a**hat for about a week.

A girl I worked with was promoted to assistant manager at pizza shop because she was the only one there that was 18. She went from an okay worker to not doing anything and making my time there a living hell. I eventually quit and was asked to come back after she was fired.

5 years later, I got a random Facebook message from her apologizing for being such an a**hole during that time.

Probably to my own head. When I was about 8 years old I was asked by my teacher (because I was being well-behaved I assume) to stand by the whiteboard whilst she was talking about something and write the names of people who were talking/acting out on the board. I went mad with power and wrote people's names down who just looked at me funny.

First Night I made one of our Bar-backs into a Bartender he started bossing around other Bar-backs.

Not like asking for help, but like yelling orders at them.

Dude really showed his colors, he didn't last.

When I played Halo 2, I joined a fairly large clan that had some pretty cool people in it. We did a lot together and every once in awhile, they would elect a new forum moderator/officer to run the ranks. One day, they elect this kid who sounded like he was 11 to be new officer. He seemed pretty down to Earth but the very next day, he gets home from school and starts kicking every single person from the clan who just even slightly brushed him the wrong way. It was so bad that the leader, who was on vacation in Hawaii, had to log on a library computer in order to strip all powers from this kid.

The kid's reasoning was that he didn't get picked for a baseball game at school and was angry the rest of the day.

There is this lady at the post office who insists I show multiple forms of ID and looks at me like I'm a criminal everytime I try to mail something... as if the first thing I'd do with a stolen credit card is try to mail a $6 package...

I was real young and got a job detailing cars at a Chevy dealership. The only other dude was like 29 and was telling me, very proudly, how "over qualified" he was for the job we did. Which was washing/cleaning the cars and putting them back on the lot..

Alright so I was a PA (Production Assistant, the lowest of the low on a film set) for a Kelsey Grammer submarine comedy called "Down Periscope". One guy was given the meaningless title of "key PA" and decided he was going to help wrangle background extras for this big exterior shot were working on.

Now everyone, including the extras, KNEW that the camera was probably framed in a medium closeup on the principal actors, who were doing a scene wayyyy down at the end of a dock. Nonetheless Key PA Guy took it upon himself to start blocking out whole entire scenes of these background extras. I'm talking CROWDS of people. YOU GUYS OVER THERE! You're families of the sailors who haven't seen your husbands in 6 months and you RUN from the bus to the fence. BUT YOU GUYS are cadets who get in the way and YOU GUYS are arguing about which car has the right of way. Then ALL YOU KIDS start clapping because you see a BIG DOGGY pulling his owner so fast he TRIPS OVER THE LEASH.

Like second unit on a Michael Bay movie. He had these people doing his made up little scene over and over and over. He'd yell at them, tell them they did it wrong and reset them "Back to One!" to start over. Madness.

I walked by the guy and noticed this was going on and said "You know the camera is pointed the other direction right?" He just laughed and said:

"I know."

Honestly...Reddit mods. There is no oversight and they can ban without review...but....you know...within the limits of their subs...and bans only sort of work. Had a picture post taken down once because I "altered" the picture.

I'd rotated it so it would be upright.

Guy in our JROTC program thought since he had a higher "rank" than everyone else, he was essentially a hardened combat veteran. Yelled at people for talking in class, looking at their phones, stupid shit like that.

Lost his position and got suspended because he threw his "ex girlfriend" into a wall at mach speed.

This girl was Special Education, had some kind of disorder with her legs so she couldn't walk without a walker. Everyone (even the teachers) hated him after that.

I once worked part-time doing inventory - we would go to stores like the Bay, Wholefoods, and literally count everything on the shelves with our fancy dancy machines. This one man was given "leadership" of the home section. Now he wasn't actually given any management power, made the same amount as everyone else, all that. Just literally he was told "ok you and these people are going to the home section, divvy it up however".

He went full power-trip mode. Micro-managing how I counted towels. Patrolling the aisles watching us all. Yelling unnecessarily. From that day on, he was known as King Tut.

Being a pawn in a pyramid scheme. You literally just paid for the opportunity to sell crap products and all of a sudden you're a "business owner?"

#bossbabe #workingfromhome #momlife #livingthedream

I used to hang around on a forum for erotica writers, and my God, you'd think the mods were minor deities the way they acted. It was a constant bashing of newbies for daring to ask questions, and being super condescending to anyone who wasn't in their little clique. One of the girls actually managed to get a publishing deal -- a small imprint, but still; it's a big deal when you're a writer -- and the mod banned her for some trumped-up reason which everyone knew was basically _horrific_jealousy.

Newsflash, buddy: we're all self-publishing stories. Let's try and keep some perspective, aight?

I don't hang out in writers' forums anymore.

I used to work front desk at a salon. There was a slightly more experienced position directly above mine, basically the only difference being that they could count the drawer and knew how to get into the safe.

She once "banned" me from taking my purse with me to the bathroom with no reason backing it (when in reality I did that because I'm not a super huge fan of leaving my purse unattended, and, ya know, tampons.).

Well, now I'm a stylist there.

My 6th grade self got chosen for the prestigious roll of classroom clipboard holder. As soon as I was chosen I go to the front of the room with the teacher..pen and clipboard ready to mark down whoever speaks. With my eyes gazing left to right searching for a chatterbox I hear the smallest noise come from Emily in the back. I think "SCREW emily" and announce to the class:

**"That's one!" **

I wrote her name down even though the poor girl probably just had a cough. As soon as this happens, Mr. Weiss takes the clipboard away and tells me to be quiet. My power was gone...I was quiet for the rest of the class.

This is so stupid and it still pisses me off to this day.

So my company ran a contest where the winner got $100. I won. No strings attached - use the $100 bucks to get whatever you want.

The thing I wanted most was new office supplies. A new pair of scissors, a new tape dispenser. Stuff like that. I made a list of items and approached my coworker. She was in charge of our company POs, and if I went through her I could get $120 bucks worth of office supplies for $100. $100 even. Down to the penny. Including shipping. I just needed her to put in the order and I would give her my $100. Done deal.

"No, I don't like the colors." she said simply.

I thought she was joking. Her office supplies were covered in Minion stickers. I think we can comfortably rule out aesthetic appeal as a reasonable denial. Also, it's not her money. It's not for her desk. The rules of the contest said I could buy anything (even alcohol or a VISA gift card) There were no stipulations as to what color stapler I was "allowed" to get. I assumed she told a joke and it just fell flat.

A week goes by. I ask her what the status of my order was.

"No. I'm not going to run that through. I think it's tacky. And I think it's stupid that you won."

...

She was serious?!

...

I bet if I ordered fucking Minion s*** she would have approved it in a heartbeat.

Wish I could have a nice revenge story, but I just ended up using my money for groceries instead.

I lived in a village for a few months and one of the richer farmer's wives got the job of running the community centre. She put out a big placard with a picture of herself and titled herself CEO as well as on business cards, started wearing business suits and banning people she didn't like the look of. The building was the size of a small apartment and hosted a knitting and bible club for senior citizens.

Years ago, while working at a pizza place, our manager had to leave on a family emergency and left a girl in charge until one of the other shift runners could get there...and he lived about 45 minutes away.

In that 45 minutes, this girl who was left in charge actually called one of her friends and hired her saying she was "the manager" now, wrote me up for "putting too much cheese on a pizza", and actually told one of the drivers he was fired because "she didn't like his attitude". When the shift runner got there to take over, this girl also told him not to worry about it and she "had things under control".

End result...her friend was not hired, my "write up" for using too much cheese was torn up, the "fired" driver (who never left the parking lot) kept his job...and she quit a few days later because we were "unprofessional" and the manager "played favorites".

Used to work with a group of other interns in an office.

For some reason I still don't understand, they decided to promote one of us over the others. Their job was basically just to schedule who was doing what and when. That's it.

Only took two weeks before we found out she was keeping detailed notes on all of our mistakes and taking them to upper management. They promptly told her to calm down and decided to do away with position.

She made a lot of enemies that day. She had ambitions of working at the company and was trying to make us all look bad. I think that one may have backfired on her.

H/T: Reddit