Ok story time:

I was friends with this guy when we both interned at a major airline together. He was nice enough but he kind of thought he knew more about said airline than the people who actually worked there (often leading to some spectacular discussions).

Anyway he, like all of us, jumpseated every chance we got and this one weekend he got stranded and had to take a super early flight back before work. He got bumped from the one and only flight back that Sunday.

An FO for another company was trying to get home or go to work or something but my buddy was trying to pull rank. Since, of course, employees of the company operating the flight gets priority. That includes him, at least that's how he saw it.

So after a discussion with the captain and much citing of company policy the captain thought about this for a moment and decided that my friend was technically correct. As payback for this "favor" the captain handed my buddy a $10 and had him run up to get lattes for himself and his FO at the starbucks in the terminal. Eager to please my friend ran up the jetway.

Coming back with a few minutes until departure my friend looks out in horror as the plane is about to be pushed back. You see, another bit of regulation that he didn't consider was that, with the captain's discretion, they could depart 10 mins early if everyone was onboard. So while the lattes were brewing everyone boarded quickly, the other jumpseat guy hoped on, and away they went leaving the smarmy intern behind.

To this day he's a little resentful about the whole thing but after working the line for a bit he came to realize how much of a dork he was for bumping the FO. I, however, laugh my ars off every time I think of the clever captain's ploy to a sticky situation.