18 Satisfying Stories Of Overconfident People Getting Put In Their Place

People, in fact, do not learn anything. Not a single thing. It appears that no matter how many centuries have passed since the time of David and Goliath, there will always be people with a massive ego, in a variety of life situations.
And, of course, hubris almost always gets what it deserves, according to the principles of karma. A individual professing to be exceptionally erudite finishes last in a trivia contest, a man who believes he is a superb driver fails his driving test, and the Atlanta Falcons lose the Superbowl despite leading 28:3 in the third quarter.

#1 Armwrestling competition

There was an arm wrestling trend going on at my high school during my junior year, and there was an all star athlete on my basketball team we called Pat who was very cocky. He wasn’t the best on the team at basketball, but he started in every single sport and he was absolutely jacked for a 17 yr old. One day he challenges this semi mentally handicapped kid at our school to an arm wrestling match over who gets to use this particular tool in shop. This kid is pretty big, but he’s a bit slow so he got teased a lot. Anyways they get set up, everyone’s watching, and the match starts. 15 seconds go by and Pat couldn’t move this kid’s arm at all. He just sat there smiling at Pat and watched the smug and cocky attitude disappear. Then he easily pinned his arm and let Pat use the tool anyways. He walked away humming to himself like usual. What a boss.

#2 "Swine management"

Long ago? In college one semester for fun I took “Swine Management”. I’m a total city girl, about 5 ft nothing, and at the time I was like 105 lbs soaking wet. I did learn how to restrain a hog in that class, and I got to know all the barn men really well.
Next fall semester, I start my Veterinary College courses. In Large Animal Medicine, we had a block of, you guessed it, swine disease prevention. The professor was known to enjoy taking his students down a peg or two. Great, he covers basic swine restraint really fast, like no way you’d be able to do this…unless you already know how. He looks around…barn men are watching this show from the back. I didn’t want to disappoint them, so I make eye contact with the prof and of course he picks me “to demo”.
I calmly walk up to the sow, take the rope, loop around the belly, twist, half hitch into her mouth and tie her up. Barn men are like proud papas, prof is like wtf just happened. He asked me where I grew up, he’s clearly thinking Iowa or something, I answer the big city to the west.
Best day ever.

#3 Ripping apart a drunk, beligerent and volatile abuser

The day I got my restraining Order against my then spouse...Everyone says the abusers rarely show up, and he had no reason to show up at ours...He was drunk, belligerent, and volatile.
The judge let him ramble and make an absolute A*S out himself, for about ten minutes before she asked him when he had had his last alcoholic beverage, since she could smell him from the bench...He started in on her and she...just ripped him apart.
For the first time in his life, he was forced to silently listen to a woman call him out, tell him he is an abuser, a user, an addict, and a terrible person in general. In front of his teenage kids he brought along.
She counted down each previous RO and eviction from all his previous women, and (correctly) said he is the kind of man who chooses vulnerable women to live off of and she sees this as his "job" and that he wasn't going to be getting a "paycheck" from me anymore.
It's been years and he still hates me with a passion for that experience.

#4 The very best daddy in the world

Son was born the day before, my wife was in bed recovering. I’m all cocky because I was able to put him to sleep and did a perfect swaddle. I was able to calm him down in seconds and I’m just getting more arrogant by the minute. I volunteer to change his pooped diaper because I’ve been a father for an entire day and clearly an expert at this point. So apparently my beautiful newborn wasn’t finished pooping and not only peed all over my face and chest but he pooped all over my hands. After that happened I was a little more humble.

#5 Fixing the unplugged monitor

While in college, I worked as an IT support person for my school. One of my coworkers was certain that he was the sharpest person in the room. He arrived in one day and discovered that his monitors were not working. After 10 minutes of watching him struggle, I tried to intervene and assist, but was met with a long rambling rant about how he's spent his entire life dealing with computers and doesn't need any help, and that if he can't figure it out, neither can I.
"That's cool man, I just assumed displays had to be plugged in to work, my bad," I simply said.

#6 David Copperfield and the jam-packed restaurant

Ex-girlfriend worked as a hostess at a posh Seattle restaurant. When some individuals approached the dais, she was staring down at her book when one of them said, "I need a table for eight." "It'll probably be at least a 90 minute wait," she remarked without looking up. "But I'm David Copperfield," says the voice. "Then maybe you can make a table appear," Ex suggests. She completes her task. He raises his eyes. David Copperfield, to be precise. There was no table to be found.

#7 Stealing one's gf after a 10-minute phone call (actually not)

I knew a guy that always felt the need to one up everything I said. I was on the phone with my girlfriend at the time and he happened to overhear us talking. He came up to me and started to brag about himself, loud enough for my girlfriend to hear, and how he could steal my girl just by talking to her on the phone for 10 minutes. I offered him my phone and my girlfriend reamed him out for 5 minutes straight before he handed me back the phone and walked off. I was so proud of her haha.

#8 Wife gives herself away

BIL always preening and bragging about how he's the best. At everything. At a family dinner with people he hadn't met before, someone asked him if his last name was Italian. He said yes. Another person said,"Ah, I've heard about those hot Italian lovers." Before he could get a word out , his wife looked at him and very clearly said, "Yeah, I've HEARD about them too."

#9 Letting everyone know he's a lawyer

Oh SO many times. I live in the DC area. The number of times I have seen men patronize a little gray-haired woman and then learn she is a power player... it's glorious.
My favorite was a backyard barbecue with some friends who sail. You've got everyone from the guy who scrapes barnacles off the bottom of the boats to old Navy dudes to the people who own racing yachts. And you CANNOT tell by looking. These yacht racers dress like they went shopping at the Salvation Army in 1989.
So there we are, watching the kids spray each other with the hose and waiting for burgers, and my friend's new brother-in-law is a Lawyer. He wants everyone to know he is a Lawyer. He's swaggering around like, "Well, as an ATTORNEY...." oh god. He is SUPER patronizing to a nice older lady and a teen girl, then heads over for yet another beer. He's pulling his I'm A LaWYeR routine on a guy and the guy says, "Oh, hey, I have a great person for you to meet!" Drags the jackass back over to the older lady and the teen girl and introduces the jackass to the two. Jackass realizes he bragged about being a lawyer to the dean of a major law school and Justice Scalia's granddaughter.
I thought the jackass was going to s**t himself.

#10 Just turn on the equipment

I used to work at a photography studio. I'm not a photographer but I know some basics.
Photographer guy, probably in his 50s, tells me the equipment he rented isn't working and he is ranting on about how he has wasted 25 minutes of his rental time because his camera wasn't syncing to the lighting equipment. All in front of his poor clients.
Best moment of my life -- as he was cursing me out I walked over and wordlessly plugged it in. Never seen a grown man turn so red.

#11 Call me doctor!

When I was a kid a new guy showed up at church. He was inordinately proud of the fact that he had a PHD in communications and insisted everyone call him "Doctor" (and he was old enough that it's not like he *just* got his doctorate). He basically treated everyone else like uneducated rubes because *he* was a Doctor.
Whelp, the neurosurgeon, the anesthesiologist, the radiologist (chief of radiology at the biggest regional hospital!), the 3 dentists, the 2 orthodontists, and a handful of other people that I have no idea what they did all started calling each other "Doctor" as well.
Weirdly, mr. communications stopped insisting everyone call him doctor.

#12 Losing to one's mom at the shooting range

My army friend when he lost to his mom at the shooting range at the carnival.

#13 Martial arts guru

In highschool a martial arts group performed for us during an assembly in the gym. The lead guy with a microphone was arrogant and full of himself. He was demonstrating how you could lock your arms behind your neck in a hold that can't be separated. He asked for someone from the audience to try and break his arms apart. Down from the bleachers came our top male gymnast. The student got behind the "expert" and in a matter of seconds the student not only broke the hold but dislocated the pro's shoulder in the process.
Best assembly ever.

#14 Punishing an abusive girl

I knew this girl who was a part of my friend group back in high school. She started really harshly bullying one of the girls in our group and wouldn’t own up to it or apologize in any way so we all cut ties with her. Shortly afterwards she moved away. Let me tell you I have never seen such sudden and strong entitlement come from a person.
She reached out to the girl she was bullying almost a year later and told her she was coming back and was going to “ruin her life.” Said she was going to re-join the youth group at our church and spread horrible rumors about her so that nobody would like her anymore and she’d be able to steal all of her friends back. Also said she was going to play the victim card and tell everyone that she was the one being harassed. We shared those messages with our minister and she was promptly banned from that group and never got to show her face there again. She also started posting things about all of us on tiktok, which we reported and ended up getting her temporarily banned from the platform. She wasn’t able to get a job in this town because everywhere she applied there was someone there who knew what she did and told their boss not to hire her. And now her grandma is kicking her out and sending her back home.

#15 Mommy is the best dad

Me: who's the best Dad in the world?!?!
My daughter: Mommy!!!!
Me: little sh*t

#16 Pretending to be a professional dog's trainer

There’s this guy who always shows up to the public dog park and let’s everyone know he is a professional dog trainer.

One day he targets this good looking woman with a big ol German Shepard. He goes up to her, gives her the usual schpeel “hey I train dogs professionally and just wanted to let you know that your dog is a killer. It’s a good thing you have him out here getting his energy out. I can tell he is young and I’m sure you’re coming home to tons of accidents and objects chewed up? I’ll happily give you a free lesson.”

The woman looks at him and says “my dog is 5 years old and has never had an accident in my house and never chewed up anything.”
Dog trainer guy just sort of laughed and walked away, onto the next person he can bother.

#17 Pretending to be Queen's greatest fan

There was this annoying woman in my department at work back in the early 80s. She was one of those who had already seen it/done it better during any topic of conversation. It bugged me because it seemed to me that the bulk of her claims were products of her imagination, but many of our co-workers thought that "Lynn" was sooo cool, she knows so many famous people and has visited all these exotic places!" Well, she crossed the line with me in 1980 when I was fortunate enough to get front row tickets to a Queen concert in Detroit via a scalper. I paid $45 each, but it was worth it - that was back in the day when the front row folks were squished against the stage so that we rested our forearms on it. Both Freddie and Brian shook my hand during the show. Of course, since I was willing to spend that kind of cash to see them it only makes sense that I was a huge fan and knew a LOT about the band and its history.

Come Monday morning I go to work and talk enthusiastically about seeing Queen so closely and Lynn interjects off-handedly, "Oh, I remember partying with them back in the day when they played small clubs. I remember seeing them at [some small downtown Detroit bar] and playing cards with them backstage later." I looked her in the eye and replied, "The first time Queen ever played in Detroit was at the Ford Auditorium in February 1975. They've never played club dates in Detroit." She just gave me a frozen smile, patted my arm and walked away. After that she never interacted with me unless absolutely necessary.