Big egos in little Chandigarh

It's been a busy couple of days at work for me. The boss gave us a project and appointed me the leader on the project. All the work would flow through me, so I have been assigning work and training the newer engineers etc. After they worked on the basics, I took over and started the more detailed stuff. At that point the others didn't have much work and they were idling.

On this particular day, after a long day of work where I barely glanced away from my computer, I called up my boss who wasn't in town, and explained to him the status of the project. While I was talking to him, I had a game of FreeCell open and was idly clicking away at the cards. At this point I noticed a guy standing behind two members of my team. He had been looking at their computer screens for a while and then he was talking to them. I didn't pay much attention because I was on the phone. When I was done, he came over to my station and pointing at my screen, said, "What are you doing?" More than a little peeved, I replied, "I was talking to my boss." He replied, "No, you are playing cards". At this point I was no longer inclined to be polite, "Who are you?" "I am ******" replied Mr. Jackass Smallunit. The name sounded a little familiar. He was some sort of big shot, but I didn't know his exact title. So I swallowed my pride a little and continued, "Well, I finished my day's work and I was talking to my boss and yeah I was idly clicking through a game." He persisted, "No, you are playing cards. This guy's talking to his friend on the phone, and this other guy is shopping for mobile phones. It's bad enough that you're playing cards, because of that these two are goofing off as well." "OK," I interrupted him, "It's not fair to anyone to blame their behavior on me." "Hmm," the Jackass nodded much like his namesake, "Give me your names on a piece of paper and give it to me", and walked off.

Oh boy, were the tempers in the group high at that point! None more than mine. How dare he question us on our work practices based on his tiny window of observation! I calmed down my team members, assured them that nothing would happen and gave him the list he asked for. Then I called up my boss and explained what happened. He simply said, "I'll take care of it". That was enough for me. Except, none of us could stop thinking about it and it kept bothering us for a while. One guy even said that he wouldn't have minded if he got fired on the spot, but for the Jackass to stand there and talk to us in that fashion was just very unprofessional. As of now, no one knows the end result of that incident but it's probably somewhere in the middle - no one's getting fired or even harshly reprimanded, but on the flip side, we won't be getting our apology either.