‘I paid the price’: Workers share their Scott Pelley moments of boss talkback — and what it cost them

As if Scott Pelley’s years in a glamorous, globetrotting, seven-figure dream job weren’t enough, he’s pulled off one more thing to stir your envy: a cutting takedown of his boss that went loudly public. The “60 Minutes” correspondent’s searing rebuke of CBS management this week, in which he questioned his bosses’ credentials and motives, may have ended in his firing, but amounted to the sort of mouthing-off that workplace peons typically only fantasize about. “That’s the American dream — to be able to tell off your boss and walk out the door,” says Zach Tyra, a 40-year-old data analyst from Jones, Oklahoma, who found a kindred spirit in the newsman, recalling his own experience with a former boss he said was clueless. “I couldn’t do what Scott Pelley did because I didn’t have the safety net or the resources or the network that he has. I couldn’t tell my boss to stick it. I just had to sit there and eat it.” Pelley’s message may have been delivered in the measured baritone of someone polished by decades on the airwaves. But his backtalk stirred many who’ve felt the simmering rage of feeling a clueless boss was turning their days into a nightmare. “It’s also kind of weird, like, Pelley isn’t some blue-collar hero. There’s a wide gap between, like, Pelley and your local everyday guy down at the hardware store,” Tyra says. “But I think everyone can relate to standing up for what they believe.” A staff meeting that went deeply awry Pelley’s dressing-down came in a Monday staff meeting with the new executive producer of “60 Minutes,” Nick Bilton, brought aboard by Bari Weiss, who became CBS News’ editor-in-chief in October. The correspondent reportedly grilled Bilton about the firings last week of Bilton’s predecessor, Tanya Simon, and correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, accusing management of “murdering” the program, a revered cornerstone of TV journalism and a mainstay of Sunday nights for nearly six decades. “She has no qualifications for her jo