Just to be clear: I agree with you that I handled it badly. I disagree that just because a manager says something you automatically should do it, but I’ve learned to play ball and sometimes make the best of a bad situation instead of swimming against the tide. There are some policies that I disagree with at my current job, but I explained my disagreement to the right people and then moved on and followed them anyway. In my opinion knowing when to push back and when not is something that depends a lot on internal politics and personalities involved, less on technical “objective” realities. There are usually many ways to get to the destination, and the long way around may be the quickest if all the right people are bought in to that approach. I failed to appreciate these subtleties at the time.