Today at work I had an altercation with my boss. He was being unreasonable. I was trying to do what he wanted, but nothing I was saying was making him happy. I expressed my frustration about this, calmly. I said that I'm trying to give him the information he wants, but that nothing I'm coming up with seems to be right. I feel like there is no right answer. He replies that it is "unecessary to come at me like that". Now, I can be a good deal self destructive when the moment is right, but this was not one of those times. I felt like I was totally calm, and just trying to express that I didn't know what he was after. To be honest, I think he was in a bad mood and no matter what I said or did it was going to be wrong, or not enough. I find this extraordinarily difficult to deal with. We went back and forth (in front of two of my co-workers) for close to 15 minutes, all the while me getting more exasperated. Finally I got up and walked out of the meeting. I grabbed my **** from my desk and walked out the door. It was 3 in the afternoon, a full 2 hours before my day was done. I'm quite sure I'll have to answer for that tomorrow. 
If anyone has any advice on how to deal with someone who *knows* they are right, and *knows* they have the one and only right answer, yet won't tell you what it is, all while leaving you to twist in the wind in front of a room full of peers I'd love to hear it. Cause right now I'm ready to tell him to screw, and I'm pretty sure that won't help my case in the long run.
Oof. The fact that it happened in front of other people is good and bad. Good because he can't claim something happened that didn't (unless he gets the others to lie), and bad because he may feel that you tried to challenge him in front of others and then walked out on him.
You definitely need to decide how you want your future relationship to go with this guy.
- If you want to try and just keep your head down you'll probably have to act contrite and take some of the blame, even if there's nothing you did wrong.
- If you want to fight for a "better" (for varying degrees of the word) working relationship I'd probably roll in and confront him tomorrow and explain exactly how he was acting and how he made you feel. Some people are much more manageable one-on-one and can even change (hey hope springs eternal).
The thing you probably don't want to do is roll in like nothing happened.
The one thing I will add: If this is the kind of place that has an HR department, you need to involve them ASAP. I recognize that not all businesses have them, but if you do, never, ever, never, never attempt to solve any serious workplace related conflict on your own. An even longer-shot is if you are part of a union, have a rep (which can be any member) *and* HR involved in everything. It is literally HRs job to mediate and make sure that everyone is doing what they should to be respectful, safe, and productive. They aren't there just for the paperwork.
I'm going to sound old here (which... I probably am... sigh) but way too often I see young people trying to solve their own problems in the workplace thinking that they are "self-starters" or something like that. Nope. Taking initiative on a task or project, great. Doing it to try and work out a serious conflict with a co-worker or superior, bad idea. There are currently multiple people in my workplace who are on administrative leave (and in serious trouble) because they tried to take action on their own with regards to a conflict with a superior and ended up doing something they should not have.
And that's good enough for my grump: we don't *have* enough people working in that dept. to place a number of people on leave and still get **** done. This is going to be a disaster.
