We all know those moments when someone arrogantly assumes they have all the answers, only to be confronted by someone with undeniable expertise they never saw coming. It’s like witnessing a clash of titans, a battle of wits where the outcome is anything but predictable. Whether it’s a heated debate about a niche subject, an astonishing display of talent, or an unexpected reveal of extensive knowledge, these encounters are as electrifying as they are enlightening.
A neighbor on my block in Brooklyn challenged me to a pizza bake-off. I recently catered pizza for my daughter’s school and word got around the neighborhood my pizza was pretty darn good. My first thought was, “This guy is a Brooklyn native, my pizza will be sh*t compared to his!” But there was something about him bragging that I couldn’t resist the challenge. He talked up how pizza was in his blood, how his dad ran the pizza place around the corner years ago. I remained silent and let my skills answer for themselves.
I got a buddy to let us use one of Baker’s Pride ovens at his restaurant. We even had total strangers try our pizzas. Every last person chose my pizza over his. I never mentioned to him that I’ve worked in pizza places almost every day for the last thirty years. I never mentioned that when I’m not working at a pizza place I’m making pizzas at home at least once every two days. I never mentioned that at nine years old I knew that I wanted to be a pizza man. Here I am 45 and getting ready to start my own pizza business.
Had a customer with a question. I answered the question and it wasn’t the answer they wanted.
They suggested something impossible for the machine/ process. I explained why it wouldn’t work and again explained the proper way to do it.
They then replied, “What makes you the expert?”
To which I replied “Take a look at Patent Number#xxxxxxxx. It lists me as the inventor.”
That felt good. That felt really good.
One day after work I was walking through the mall around Christmas time, I had a long wool coat on and had only left work like 20 minutes earlier. I needed to get some last-minute shopping done, so to the mall, I went on the way home.
Well, I came across a man who had fallen and was seizing, he was bleeding from the back of his head and actively seizing a man had grabbed him and was trying to jam a pen into the seizing man’s mouth, ostensibly under the old delusion of sticking something in seizing peoples mouths to keep them from biting their tongue off.
I jumped in and pulled the man’s hand away, cleared and opened the man’s airway being careful NOT to get my fingers near his mouth.
The man shouted “Who the heck do you think you are, my ( some family member I don’t remember which now) had seizures and this I what we always did.
I told him, “I know what I’m doing sir, please step back.”
The guy was obviously pissed, and started mumbling not so much under his breath things like “The guy tells me off if he dies it’s his fault”
The man was in no danger the laceration on his head wasn’t bad, but a person at the kiosk there handed me a towel and I held it against the man’s wound while keeping his airway open, he wasn’t having any trouble breathing and waited for the appropriate personnel to arrive.
A cop comes over along with two medics, Mr. Know-it-all jumps in front of the cop to complain about me and my ” behavior” The cop is pretty much ignoring the guy, I stand up while the man is coming around, and we move the man to the stretcher and put some gauze pads on his head wound, he is going to be okay and transported to the ER where he will be evaluated and get a few stitches it looked like. The man finding no purchase with the cop starts in on one of the medics. ” I tried to get something in his mouth but this guy wouldn’t let me, he thinks he is special or something”
To which the medic calmly says, “Well he should, he is my supervisor”
The cop is hiding his laughter well, the man just storms off, and I get to go scrub blood off my hands, lol
It was a very satisfying wash, however.
I’m really good at archery. My friend and I rented him a bow at the local range and he wanted to bet me beers for every round. I told him repeatedly no, you will not win. He could probably get lucky if we did one arrow shoot offs but he wanted to do proper three arrow rounds.
He insisted. I drank for free all night.
Wasn’t me, but there’s a story about an old geotechnical engineer who used to work for the company I work for.
Several senior staff had to attend a meeting with the client, and some government regulatory staff who were being awkward and not approving the design.
This geotech guy is pretty much quiet the whole meeting. Throughout the discussion, the government guy keeps referencing this research document and shooting down anything anybody suggests.
Near the end of the meeting geotech asks the government guy if he has the research paper with him. He responds yes and places it on the table.
Geotech asks the government guy who is the author of the paper? Then slides over a business card. Turns out it’s Geotech’s own paper that the government guy has been referencing to defend his argument.
The government guy went bright red and apparently approved the design the same day.
Long ago I worked as the cheese guy at Whole Foods, where we were trained that NO MATTER WHAT the customer is always right.
A lady came up to me, critical that I didn’t have the ostrich cheese prominently displayed.
Ostriches are birds. Cheese comes from milk… milk comes from… nothing like getting called an idiot and societal scum who probably can’t read by a woman who thinks ostrich cheese exists.
I had just graduated from a top university and was working at Whole Foods briefly after some crazy sh*t went down in Katrina.
What a wild ride
Had a cashier get snotty with me when I told him he needed to hit f5 to get back from the credit card screen. He went into a several minutes tirade about how he had been using the software for years and that’s not how it worked then explained something about computers then on a tangent about how they log his key presses then something about the servers upstairs and how they connected to the cloud. I finally had to interrupt him with “Dude I helped write this software, nothing you said it’s right” he then stormed off from the register and I just stood there awkwardly till a manager showed up, and pressed f5.
I’ve been in martial arts (tae kwon do, specifically) for 14 years, and I’m a 4th-degree black belt. I don’t claim to know everything, not even close, but I do know what I’m talking about.
At my University, I decided to try out the tae kwon do club on campus. It was the first day I was trying it, and I didn’t know if we were supposed to wear uniforms or not, so I went in with workout clothes but brought my full gear just in case.
Before the class started, one of the leaders (who was wearing a 2nd-degree black belt, nothing to sniff at, but still a difference of 5 years of training) came up to me and started explaining the general protocol of class and offered to stand next to me during the class to show me how to do the different steps. Throughout all of this, he seemed annoyed that he was having to explain everything, and generally like he didn’t want new, inexperienced students.
I politely agreed and asked if we should wear our uniforms for the class. He explained that if we had them we should, but it wasn’t a problem if I didn’t have one. I explained that I did have one, and said I’d be right back, then proceeded to go change into my uniform.
His eyes nearly popped out of his head when he saw me walk out with my instructor’s uniform and 4th-degree belt.
When I was pregnant I was drinking a decaf iced latte. I had some woman in line at the pharmacy tell me the caffeine was going to rearrange the genes in my baby’s brain. I’m a geneticist. I actually couldn’t even come up with a response. I just stood there somewhat dumbfounded at the absurdity of it all.
A flat earther tried to pull the, “So you think it was easier to get to the moon than fake the footage?”
As a professional VFX artist that knows very much about visual manipulation technology of the past and present.
“In my professional opinion, YES!”
Every once in a while tech support will escalate an issue to me, and I’ll have to listen to a customer try to explain to me how my own program works.
I don’t care how many times you tell me that “It won’t sync to the cloud”. An application that doesn’t even connect to the internet, has never, and will never do that.
I had laid out a paint schedule and the product used for my Brother-in-laws’s home.
I showed up on the job site and found that they were not following my instructions I told them to stop.
That’s when I had a grizzly old painter get in my face demanding who the heck I think I was.
I reached down and picked up a gallon of paint and said “Do you see this gallon of paint?”
And when he replied yes, I flipped the gallon around and asked him if he could see the directions on the back of the can?
When he replied yes, I said, “I wrote them! That’s who the heck I am.”
The painter looked at my brother-in-law, who nodded agreement, and said Oh, and went back up his ladder.
I was the technical writer for the paint company at the time.
I was getting a drink at an airport bar next to some guys talking about the recent strikes in Syria. The guy said they launched Tomahawks off the aircraft carrier. I spoke up kind of friendly that it was from a carrier strike group, not the carrier itself. He said no they launch Tomahawks from the aircraft carrier. I said no they launch tomcats the aircraft off carriers but Tomahawk missiles only launch from destroyers cruisers and subs. Cue about 5min of him explaining how he knew a guy who was in the Navy and he was pretty sure he knew what he was talking about. Mind you this was a friendly conversation so I got to smile and drop the bomb on him in an all-around good way. I was a Tomahawk Fire Controlman in the Navy and helped Launch Area coordinate in the Red Sea during the gas attack crisis.
I was picked up by an old taxi driver on my way to a skatepark with my skateboard. He rudely demanded to know where I had been skateboarding (nowhere yet, I was on my way to the park). He informed me that if I collided with someone his age on the sidewalk they had an 80% chance of dying from a brain haemorrhage.
I politely informed him that this was unlikely and that I hadn’t been skating on the sidewalk. He then told me to ‘ask anyone in the medical profession’ and they will confirm it.
I then politely informed him that I’m an ER doctor and he changed his manner with me completely and became very respectful and interested once he realised I wasn’t ‘just’ some skater punk.
When the rotted P-trap under my sink broke, my boyfriend said, “Remind me to take a look at that”. I asked, “Why?” He said, “So I can tell you what parts to buy”. I thanked him and reminded him that I’d installed all the plumbing at my mother’s house. He knew that, but I guess he’d forgotten.
One of my ex’s parties where most people had a boring IT job including me. People at those parties had this tendency to showcase how insanely cool their life was. This guy ( long hair, beard, tattoo ) in particular decided to have an argument with me and started telling me that my taste in music sucks and that I should start listening to some of the non-mainstream stuff. When I asked him to name a few artists he mentioned a few names. I told him to look up the guitar player for one of those bands he mentioned which was me. It felt good.
I’m by no means an expert or doctor, but I’ve got a trauma care qualification through the fire service. Came across a male in the street, after a night shift, who had had a seizure and come off his bike. I grabbed a blanket from my car and ran to help. I was assessing him, there was a LOT of blood and he wasn’t responsive so I was starting to work through my assessment whilst telling a passerby to call 999 and another to run 100 yards up the road to the nearby station and tell them to come down. Suddenly some woman with an ‘I want to speak to your manager haircut appears, declaring she is a carer and everyone needs to move. I was thankful for some help if I’m honest as he had begun to fit again. She starts pinning the dude to the floor and telling someone to stick his wallet in his mouth. I started to freak out and tell people not to do what she was telling them to do and try to get her off him. She told me to get off him and let someone who knew what they were doing deal with it. I didn’t bother arguing. I took over the 999 calls as the member of the public was struggling to give the right info. I explained the situation and gave them my casualty assessment then the fire crew arrived. To say I was Thankful when they jumped out and told her to get off the dude and spoke to me on a first-name basis is an understatement. Her face dropped. Casualty handed over effectively. Turned on his side, o2 administered, warmed up in a blanket and loaded onto the ambulance when it arrived.
Not exactly an expert, but I overheard my Italian-American coworker telling another coworker that Tiramisu is Japanese. His explanation was pretty in-depth. According to him, the Japanese invented it, which is why it has the phonetic structure that it does (he even pronounced it with a Japanese accent Ti-Ra-Mi-Su), but the French had perfected it, creating the modern version most people are familiar with. I’m also Italian-American. Tiramisu is Italian for “pick me up”. I didn’t have the heart to destroy him in front of our other coworkers, but I laugh quietly to myself now whenever someone mentions Tiramisu.
I’ve been playing tennis for over twenty years and I took it very seriously for about seven or eight. Simply put, if I really wanted to I could embarrass an amateur on the court. But I don’t, because I’m not that kind of person.
I was having lunch with a guy who I considered to be “potential boyfriend material”. I considered him that for maybe a split second, but after a short time, I just saw him as an acquaintance. At some point in our conversation, the subject of tennis came up, and I didn’t go into too many details but said that I’d been playing for a long time, played varsity in high school, etc.
He must’ve gone deaf when I mentioned my background and proceeded to explain a few simple concepts as if I was brand new to the game. After that, I suggested that we play a few rounds at a local court sometime, and he agreed.
The day came and we made it to the courts. I was a little rusty at first since I hadn’t played in a while—I recall him saying something like “Don’t worry, you’ll improve.” Long story short, it didn’t take long until I was in full form and he realized that he greatly underestimated my abilities. It was pretty clear that he was pissed off, but he didn’t say anything about it.
I think we only played one more time after that but with a few more people.
I am a doctor in the UK. I went for my compulsory basic training day to learn to ride a motorbike and I was in a group of 6 others, it was a very hot day and none of us were used to being in full leathers. One of the groups overheated and felt faint and sick so took some time out and went to sit down, I went to get him some water and to see if he was ok but the instructor freaked out and told me to stay away and call for help (the guy was alert and sat up he just needed to cool off) I again tried to just go over and see if the overheated guy was ok but the instructor kept yelling at me to keep back and that he will handle this, he was completely panicking and yelling at someone to call 999 as the guy was quite sweaty and faint.
After multiple attempts of telling the instructor that I’m a doctor and if I could just go and see if the guy was ok we may not need to call an ambulance, he then eventually listened. After 10 mins of cooling down and some water, the guy was fine and got picked up. We carried on with our training but not after the instructor asked me how long I’d been a nurse for and why I went into nursing (I’m female and this happens a lot).
Not me, but a professor told this story to us.
He was at a chain store looking for some fertilizer. A younger employee asked if he needed help finding something and he said he was looking for insert npk ratio
The employee then went on to thoroughly teach him about how those numbers are really percentages of how much elemental nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium are in the mix. And the rest of the percentage missing is just filler stuff.
My professor has a PhD in soil science. The employee was not correct, but he decided to just let it slide since he was so enthusiastic.
So I was at a bar with a friend of mine and we got to talking with this girl who was there on her twenty-first birthday. We congratulate her and buy her a round.
Shortly thereafter we get into a conversation about the peopling PEOPLING of South America. She then, incredibly arrogantly, explains that there were people there and that I’m white washing history. I explain, again, that I’m not, and that there were no human beings there until they migrated there at a time we’re still trying to figure out.
No, she insists, these invaders wiped out the indigenous populations.
No, I say, that happened thousands of years later.
She accuses me of mansplaining. I’m like, at a loss, and am like “ok well I’m sorry.” She yells at my friend (female) and is like “How are you friends with him?” And is like “God what do you even do, like, sell f*cking stocks?”
I’m a geographer.
I’ve been working in kitchens for over 20 years. Had an owner recently (who wasn’t the person that hired me, his executive chef did) take one look at me, and since I have a lot of tattoos and had a beard at the time, decided because of my looks that I obviously know nothing about cooking and whatnot. It made work h*ll for me.
This owner had never once worked a day in a restaurant or kitchen and thought he knew everything because he watched the food network. His restaurant lost over a million dollars that he put into it because of his idiot mismanagement. All of us in the kitchen had more years of accumulated experience than he had been alive, yet he didn’t want anything to do with any of our suggestions.
Had a friend of a friend explain the causes and effects of the American Civil War to me at a backyard party. I kept trying to take part in the conversation and he kept interrupting me.
Finally, our mutual friend, overhearing our conversation / this guy’s lecture, leans in and says, “You know she got her grad degree in this, right?”
I’d love to say that learning about my credentials, so to speak, changed the tone or course of our conversation, but it didn’t. Somehow it intensified his need to explain sh*t I can literally teach a class on to me. Classic.
I used to work in an air traffic control tower- we would fairly often have new pilots visit and see the airport and what happens from the air traffic control side of things.
I was on a break when a particular pilot was visiting; and was the only female air traffic controller in that workplace. The visiting pilot finishes his cup of coffee, hands me a mug and says “Wash that would you love”.
By the time he’d returned to his aircraft, my break was over. He, unfortunately, found himself at the back of a rather long departure queue. I wanted him to have some time listening to the frequency and absorbing the fact that if a woman is in a professional environment she’s probably not the f*cking tea lady.
I was working with a scaffolding company right after I finished my degree while looking for a job in mining engineering.
We came across some pyrite and one of the guys thought it was gold. I basically explained it’s not because it’s hard to which he replied with “What are you some kind of rock specialist?”
My answer was a polite but firm “Yes.”
My landlord tried blaming me for damage to the kitchen cabinets but didn’t know that I’m in construction and am very familiar with home building codes.
They placed the cabinets too close to the stove and the glue that held the laminate had melted.
A local mall had a portable climbing wall with a “make it to the top and win $100” side. The route was actually pretty challenging. As I walked by the guy asked me if I’d like to try “Nobody has made it to the top, you think you can do it, buddy”
At the time I was ranked top 12 climber in my age group and kind of laughed to myself.
After taking my $100 I then proceeded to call the rest of my climbing team and one by one they went to the mall and claimed their $100
After the 4th person, the guy got suspicious and took the sign down. We later told him we were all Nationally ranked competition climbers and he got a good laugh. The company that owned the rentals was the one who lost the money, he just worked the booth and wasn’t the one who lost the prize money.
I was invited to dinner at someone’s home and there was a grand piano there. Guests were trying to play (badly) to the point the host closed the piano and said, “If you can play Chopin’s Military March, then you’re allowed to play.” I’m a piano teacher and this song is not difficult. I sat at the bench and this lady stopped me before I lifted the lid.
I looked at her and said, “Chopin’s Military March, opus 40, number 1, in A major, right?!” She gave me a “humph!” And said let’s see you play it. I played the whole piece… WITH all the repeats. Didn’t miss a note.
I was a competitive swimmer for 14 years, including 4 years of NCAA, but I’m on the shorter side so people don’t assume I was any good.
Was at a friend’s house on a lake one summer, and a macho guy challenged me to race to a buoy in the middle of the lake, to prove… something, I guess. The lake is deceptively large, about a half mile across, so I warned him that if he isn’t a strong swimmer it could be dangerous.
He was running out of gas after about 2 minutes, so I offered to let him off the hook, but he insisted he would finish. I went to the buoy and was swimming back when I found him floundering, so I lifeguard swam him back to the house. His ego took a deserved hit that day.
Don’t get cocky around water, even if you think you’re a strong swimmer.
I’m an optician. I had a patient who told us he was a doctor and allowed us to assume he was an eye doctor because he was writing his own glasses RXs.
We remade them over and over again because he couldn’t see out of his no-line bifocals. I asked him a few questions, he was having trouble reading and had to tilt his head back. I told him I wanted to adjust his glasses so they sat higher up on his face so he could more naturally look at the reading card and see if the glasses RXs was good or not.
He yells, “YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND! I’VE HAD SURGERY FOR AN EYE DISEASE YOU HAVE NEVER HEARD OF BEFORE!” And went on about how it shouldn’t matter how they sit, the RXs are good so it should be good no matter where he looks!
That’s the opposite of reality. Any eye doctor would know this. A no-line bifocal has your distance RX at the top of the lens and slowly changes into a reading RX as you go towards the bottom. Many times if someone can’t read clearly it’s because they’re looking too high up in their lens, moving the frame up allows them better access to the bottom of the lens.
So I told him if he didn’t want me to adjust them then he can take them home to try to get used to it. He came back the next day, and an older coworker gently chewed him out and told him I was right and was trying to help him. The next time I saw him he apologized.
Turns out he’s a lung doctor.
Chess. I’m a Chess master. I think when people hear that they’re like ‘Oh he’s really good at chess’, but what it means is that I’ve played in international tournaments and beaten other masters and some governing body has given me a title.
Anyway, I get challenged a lot by friends who think they’re pretty good. What they don’t realize is that your average ‘pretty good’ player is getting destroyed by your average tournament player. And your average tournament player is getting destroyed by a master.
Back over the Summer, my wife and I had a cookout and (as we do sometimes) we invited some of the neighbors, including a family who had just moved in a few weeks before. As we were all hanging out, my wife noticed the wife of the new family was constantly on the phone so she asked if everything was OK.
The woman explained that her father had suffered a heart attack a few nights before and that her mother was just keeping her “in the loop”. She then said they were also looking into legal action of some kind because her father had several broken ribs after the heart attack and that someone must have been “too rough” on him.
At that point, my wife said, “I don’t think it’s that they were too rough on him. If they had to perform C.P.R., it’s highly likely that is when his ribs got broken. It’s unfortunate but, statistically, broken or cracked ribs happen about 30-40% of the time.” The woman looked at my wife and said, “I don’t need your opinion or some factoid you picked up while surfing the internet.”
My wife kinda shrugged and said, “Actually, I didn’t read that on the internet. It’s a fact that I learned when I was doing my training to become a paramedic and they told us it would happen. It still scared the heck out of me the first time it happened though. And I still whisper ‘I’m sorry’ when it happens to this day 15+ years later.”
After confirming with several other people there that my wife is, indeed, a 15+ year paramedic and knew what she was talking about…she apologized for her “snippy” answer and said she was “just stressed out”.
I work 1 day a week at a gas station for extra spending money. One day I had clocked out and decided to grab a few things. I’m in line and notice that the cashier is outside smoking and there’s a line of 9 people. (She was known for taking breaks whenever the heck she wanted, not caring that there are people in the store. She didn’t work there long.)
Everyone in line is angry and I act like an unruly customer, basically loudly complaining about how terrible the service is, but in a good-humored way to make the customers laugh. Then I step out of line and throw up my hands and say, “Welp, if she ain’t gonna do her job, someone’s gotta do it!” And I proceed to walk behind the counter, log into her register, and started scanning the first customer’s items.
Everyone is losing their minds. “Aren’t you gonna get into trouble?” “What are they gonna do, fire me?” That got a huge laugh. Even after the customers paid for their stuff they stuck around at the absurdity of it all.
Finally, my coworker comes in, gets to her register, says “Thanks.” and proceeds to do her job.
The look on everyone’s face was priceless. We all had a good laugh once I finally explained that I actually worked there.
My older brother died when I was 17 and he was 21. Our family is pretty well known in our area because my parents are really active in their big church and there are 4 of us kids with only 4 years separating the youngest and the oldest, so a lot of friends very close in age makes for a big network of people and lastly, my brother who died was an awesome athlete and had awards and sh*t named after him. He was a f*ckin popular guy.
So, since he was so popular and his death was so sudden and unexpected, rumors got started. Someone misunderstood and thought that an unrelated event was the cause of his death and then retold their misinformation to others and it got exaggerated and retold and morphed dramatically.
A few years ago I was out at the bar with my brother’s best friend. He “adopted” me as his little sister after my brother passed and we get together every now and again. We were talking with a few of his old friends and of course, the conversation turned to my brother’s death.
One dude in the crew didn’t recognize me at all and he started spouting b*llsh*t that he thought was true regardless of other people trying to correct him. I listened for a bit and shook my head at anyone who tried to interrupt him to point out who I was.
I let him run his mouth and then I started to correct the details and timelines and this dude was trying to argue with me and “prove” that his friend “was at the party it all happened at…”
And then I stopped him, introduced myself and said “Dude, you gotta stop telling people that my brother drank himself to death at a party. He was sick and collapsed at home and died while my parents performed CPR on him. I’ve heard them talk about it so much that I can tell you the story of their night that night word for word. I was the one who cleaned up the stuff off the floor that was left behind by the EMTs trying to revive my brother so that my parents wouldn’t have to see it and relive the worst moment of their lives… So shut the f*ck up.”
It was the most awkward and uncomfortable that I’ve ever seen another person look and act ever. He froze. He had absolutely no idea how to respond or change the topic. I usually really enjoy making people extremely uncomfortable (I have a f*cked up sense of humor) but it was way too emotional of a topic for me to fully enjoy the end result.
Mine’s kind of dumb, but I think it still counts. At work I’m kind of the Google Sheets “expert” and I make lots of tools for different departments to use. Enter “new guy” who needed to collect, aggregate and display a bunch of data. My boss was like, “Send Wishyouamerry a calendar invite so you can tell her what you want and she’ll set it up for you.” New Guy was having none of that and insisted he was going to do it himself.
Well, a week later, he finally has this sh*tty sheet that doesn’t have half the information we need, and we have to have the numbers for the State by tomorrow. So my boss asks me to fix it and the new guy is like, “Yeah, okay, that’s not really possible. This is as good as it’s going to get!”
Two hours later, I send them both a fully functional and automated sheet that does everything we need, and we’ll be able to use it indefinitely, which means the next time (and every time) the stupid state report is due, it will already be done.
New Guy was like, “I would have added that in if I’d had more time.”
This happens quite frequently working as a hairstylist. I’ll have new clients come in showing me a 30-second hair video from Instagram with a makeover of someone with black hair color and their hair being transformed into white blonde. Many people will tell me that it’s 1. “Proof” that their at home black box dyed hair will be able to do that and 2. Possible to do it in a two-hour appointment that doesn’t exceed $200. When in reality what that video doesn’t show is the 8+ hours the client was in the salon for, the numerous bleach-outs performed, how fragile the hair is afterwards and the hundreds of dollars spent. The worst part is, even after explaining why it isn’t possible, many will still argue that it is and I can just keep bleaching it during the appointment. Hair isn’t one size fits all. Chemicals aren’t something to play around with.
I was coaching a girl’s basketball team in an entirely unimportant high-school tournament that solely existed for the kids to have fun playing basketball. Before the game, the ref made a huge fuss about what kind of hair ties and scrunchies the girls could and couldn’t wear, asking several of my players to remove their hair ties “because the official rules don’t allow that kind of material”. Two of my players were close to tears.
I told the ref to please change his socks. He looked at me all dumbfounded and said “What?!”. I said “You’re wearing white socks. The official rules require the ref to wear black socks.” He didn’t believe me, so I whipped out the rule book and pointed him to the relevant rule, he turned bright red and we started the game with everybody wearing their original hair ties and socks.