He wanted to be fired
I really liked this professor a lot, but he was pretty crazy. He taught me social psychology in university, and he didn't want to be there. I later found out he had a law firm that made a massive fortune in the US suing companies that willingly release faulty products (think Cosco car seats). He even appeared on Oprah Winfrey once as the world's leading expert on shopping cart safety.

Anyway, he wanted to get fired bad, and he was an asshole to our entire class. He even tried to flunk us all, but they put him on medical leave and balanced our grades.

One time, according to him, he was chosen to ask the faculty for pay raises for the sociology department professors. Being an expert on persuasion techniques, he was an obvious choice. The goal was to get a 4% pay raise.

So he went to the dinner with the faculty leaders; they gave him the nicest food they could get and treated him great. Then they asked him what he thought would be a reasonable pay increase, and he said "20%." Of course they freaked out, got mad at him for being so brash when they'd treated him to such a nice dinner, and threw him out. He called the next day to apologise, saying he'd realised how rude he'd been to them. He got them to agree to an 8% pay raise, double what they'd hoped for.

I later had him as a professor for my human factors research class, and got to know him a little better. To this day he's my favourite prof.
(racetraitor has an alibi for, Mon 14 Nov 2005, 9:16, Reply)