I hiked a portion of the Appalachian Trail right after I got out of the Army years ago. Half the people were like me: early 20's, either taking time off from college or just out of the military and looking for a thing to do before joining the rat race. The other half were 65 and older, retired people who finally had time to indulge their pass times.
And then there was one dude, mid-40's, who just shrugged and said, "I was on the highway, about to take the exit ramp to my job and I ended up here instead."
"Mr. Lumbergh told me to talk to payroll and then payroll told me to talk to Mr. Lumbergh and I still haven't received my paycheck and he took my stapler and he never brought it back and then they moved my desk to storage room B and there was garbage on it..." https://youtu.be/Gk7Jjl3qX5o?si=qGaXYNmKHM3vjyrI
Two jobs after that, I got in a big argument with the CTO on a conference call in front of everybody my first month on the job, and they later tried to make me team lead when I was like 22 years old because I was the only one who could produce any useful (i.e. honest) information for them about what was actually going on with the project. I declined and quit instead to work at a startup with friends of mine. I was Peter Gibbons before Peter Gibbons was cool.
I think I have only ever had good stuff happen from arguing with management
It helps to be right, of course, but it gets you credibility with the other workers, and makes you known as someone who can say what they mean regardless of power dynamic
Maybe I'm just lucky that those above me on those occasions have liked those attributes
100% agreed. In my experience the two possible outcomes are:
Everyone respects you more and you get to say your piece; whether or not anything you were saying gets taken on or acted on, is uncertain, but sometimes yes
The person you're talking to gets all huffy about one of the underlings talking to them like that, but nothing really happens
... and #1 is honestly more common than the other one in my experience. IDK, I also got fired from some jobs when I was young because of it, so maybe don't take my advice too wholeheartedly, but I found the result to be way better and the risks to be overblown compared to what they seem like they would be.