>Here is an amusing story which I heard a while back, from a colleague who died recently.
>
>Many years ago, he was working with one of those big computer systems of old. One of the bosses told him to run a certain process - or was it a report? - and to assign it "priority 1".
>
>So he very obediently applied priority 1. He didn't bother to explain that on this particular system, the priorities went from 0 to 9, 9 being the highest priority. As a result, the process took a few hours longer.
>
>(Perhaps he thought the people in charge ought to know how the system worked.)

To rephrase the last sentence, "he thought the people in charge knew how the system worked, and thought they knew he didn't know it".

Having been lucky with bosses, I didn't have to resort to this tactic of doing literally what I'm told despite knowing what would happen... but sometimes doing so helps in the long run.