$100 Tirade
A high percentage of big dogs at companies feel it is their place to rule by intimidation and fear. They have no other tools in their tool pouch other than to walk around with a scowl on their face and complain incessantly. They dare not praise a worker for something, or the worker might think it is okay to become complacent.
No one was better at totalitarian management than the owner of one of the companies I worked for. This man started at least two very large food processing companies.
Since the owner was such a pain, naturally, some of those under him took the same approach as he was their role model. He liked to hire cronies and family members as top management, so they had no other example of how to run anything. You might say that he was a type of community organizer of sorts.
These lightweights that he set up with cushy jobs, had them at everyone else's expense. They were difficult to work with and had very little to offer the Company.
As proof of this entrepreneur's tyranny, he was featured on the television shows, 60 Minutes, and The Tonight Show. He talked about how abusive he was to suppliers. He left out the part about how crappy he was to his own people.
I talked to one of his ex-COOs who was in charge of another company I worked for, and he told me that most of the drama was an act so he could get his way with people.
He would fire a supervisor for the least offense. He would fire them for putting salt on the food at a taste panel, since they were not getting the true flavor of what was being produced. I know that part was no act. He fired so many that his minions would hire them back later hoping that he would not realize it.
You would think that the owner of a large company would come strutting through the front door and expect the red carpet treatment. Not him.
Instead, he would have his limo driver take him around to the back of the plant. Then he would go into the trash dock and start going through the trash. He wanted to see what was being wasted.
At least one time he was so angry that he went from the trash dock to the production area. He used a lighter and lit a $100 bill and threw it down on the floor and stomped on it. Then he said, "You are wasting my money, so I might as well too!"
The clever little devil probably easily got his $100 worth of savings from his display.
I only saw the guy once. Our managers would not even let supervisors meet him, which I took offense at. However, maybe they were protecting us.
Winner Winner; Chicken Dinner
Evelyn was a worker at one of the places I was a supervisor at. She was a real problem child as we would describe those of her ilk.
A common trait of those sort of people is that they miss a lot of work. Evelyn missed a crazy amount. The usual protocol is that we interview people when their absenteeism reaches certain benchmarks, then give them write-ups of increasingly negative consequence.
We had so much absenteeism that some supervisors would try and ignore the problem because they were desperate not to lose the person. As difficult as it was to manage in food production situations, it was much more difficult to run short-handed. If someone did get fired, it would take a long time to get a replacement.
Human Resources was always trying to blame supervisors for being mean to people and running off their eminently qualified darlings that they hired.
Anyway, I had to bring Evelyn into the office for her absenteeism and her lack of personal hygiene. Her immediate team leader, another woman, had to be there as well. In the midst of the discussion, Evelyn started to go into graphic detail of her big bad menstrual period she was having.
The team leader had an incredible ability to express herself with her eyebrows. The eyebrows were really working while Evelyn was brining up all of this unwanted information.
It was really comical to see since Evelyn was oblivious to the crazy faces being made next to her. After the meeting, the team leader told me she could not believe that I did not react to any of the nasty information.
Evelyn seemed to always have troublesome coincidences that she had no control over. One day another woman had her coat come up missing. Strangely enough, Evelyn had the same style and color of coat, but it was way too big for her.
The coat's true owner was furious. She said that Evelyn stinks and did not want the coat back.
I told Evelyn that I thought she was lying and she better not take anything else.
On another occasion, the woman who had her coat stolen by Evelyn said the her chicken dinner was also stolen by Evelyn. She told me it was a fried chicken meal and that she we in the women's restroom eating it while in the stall.
I waited outside for her. When she came out, I confronted her about it. Naturally, she said that she brought the same thing to eat that day. I told her that I did not believe her and that even if she was telling the truth, we did not want people to work here who thought it was okay to eat lunch in a restroom stall. I told her to go home. No one missed her.