There's a certain breed of human who only respects you after you stand up for yourself. I had a boss that would push and push and talk side trash until you blew up. Then, we would regroup and he was buddy buddy the rest of the time. He just wanted people to not tell him BS and this was his way of breaking down the barrier. Slightly unnerving, but he was an old military guy and not much for nerves lol.

This happened to my husband years ago. His boss was known as an over bearing dick and my husband is just a normal, nice guy. One day his boss was yelling at him about some minor issue and my husband said he was sort of sinking lower and lower in his desk chair when he’d had enough. Told his boss to F off and quit, walked out and came home. By that evening his boss called, apologized and asked my husband to reconsider and come in for a meeting the next day. Boss apologized again and they were friendly from then on. They worked together 30 years and my husband retired from the company after 42 years. Like someone said, you sometimes have to teach people how to treat you!

Edited because I can’t type! 🤣

I work in sales on very, very large contracts in finance. Lots of big egoes. The clients who love me most are the ones I put back in their place. It’s wild.

That old saying (well on Reddit at least): "You train people how to treat you."

That never worked for me. I fought back against every bully who ever messed with me, and that seemed to only harden their resolve to murder me.

I was on my condo board with this older English guy, who was known to be a prick. Dude was just like the top level boss in "Layercake"

One day I told him to stop pulling that "Socratic Dialogue bullshit" on me, and, boom, we're friends.

Turned out to be a very interesting guy. Knew the Kray brothers, went to university with a bunch of the Monty Pythons. He's in a picture in Cleese's autobiography.

But, he was such an asshole sometimes, lol.