Zero said:
My mainstay was to lock onto their eyes with mine and just hold it for 15 seconds. But I got off a good response just once.
I had a co-equal team leader named Jeff who loved to make the ultimate putdown. He would choose the exact moment and evidently he practised his delivery. One day he came by a meeting room where I was getting status update from about 4 of my folks. He said "Tom, I heard the boss really ripped into you..." and I cut him off with "Jeff, sorry to cut you short but is their some point you wanted to make about that, if so we can chat about that in the bosses office later, I need to finish the meeting."
His face could have seared a ribeye.
I had a former co-worker who was always shooting his mouth off and making snide remarks to myself and others. One day he stepped over the line when he came into my office and started his trash. I was extremely busy crunchy numbers and filing reports with a state regulatory agency, and I asked him to leave. He continued on, and I told him to leave. He still persisted, I stopped what I was doing, I got up, clasped my hands behind me (to keep his face from beating up my fist), and proceeded to read him the riot act not letting him get a word in edgewise.
He was infuriated, and said he was going to complain to the boss about how I launched on him! He turned around and started stomping down the hallway. When he reached the end, instead of turning right to go to the boss's office, he turner left toward the break room. I followed along, and explained in no uncertain terms that the boss's office was the other direction! So he turned around and went in the boss's office and slammed the door behind him.
He explained (from his twisted viewpoint) what had transpired, and demanded that the boss take action against me. Unbeknownst to him, the boss had heard every word of what had actually happened, and said he'd 'handle the matter'. Then he reprimanded the guy for slamming his door....he hates door slammers!
The boss 'handled the matter' by coming back to my office, closing the door, slapping me on the back, and saying "Damn! You were great!!". We sat and chewed the fat for about 5 minutes....about everything EXCEPT what happened. All the while the idiot that started it all figured I was getting a good butt chewing. As the boss got up to leave, he opened the door and said, as straight-faced as he could, "Now remember what I said! Got it?" The idiot never figured out that the boss actually never did a thing about "the matter". However, he also never started any more trash with me!
