A Portrait of the Boss As a Turd Fondler

The BBQ Pit
21

You should just take to calling him “Liar” all the time. Substitute it for his name.

Rusty: “Pyrrhonist, I want you to set up a program so that if our department is taken over, I can press a button and soiled panties from Japanese schoolgirls will launch out of everyone’s CD-ROM drives.”
Pyrrhonist: “No problem, Liar.”
Rusty: “What?”
Pyrrhonist: “What?”
Rusty: “What did you just call me?”
Pyrrhonist: “Liar. On account of because you lie. All the time. Lie, lie, lie. Liar McLiarson.”

Just try it on for size, is all I’m asking. Oh, and more Rusty The Liar stories please.

22

My old boss in CA wasn’t as bad as Rusty, but she too fell into the “pathological liar” category. She lied about everything from “my car broke down so I couldn’t come to work” to “yes, I signed that student worker’s pay slip” to “I was in here to 7 last night (when I left at 5:15 and she was long gone by then)” to “sorry I couldn’t make the meeting, (college prez), because I was sick (read: had hair appointment).” I swear, if she said the grass outside was green, I’d have to go out to make sure. She’d lie to our faces when she knew we knew the truth. She’d lie to other people with us standing there. She’d lie to her boss. She lied to a nun we worked with, right in front of me! (At least she’s going to hell… :smiley: ) It didn’t seem to matter how trivial the subject, she was going to lie about it.

Her lies just killed our morale. I have never hated going to work so much. She also had the nasty habit of coming into work at 10:30 and leaving at 2, claiming “morning headaches”…actually, drug hangovers, we suspected…and unspecified “afternoon appointments.” Not that we cared if she came in at all, as we got infinitely more work done without her than with her. She’d mosey in, grumble at us, give us incomprehensible work assignments, then retreat to her office to make endless personal calls. Needless to say, this just sapped any energy we had, or any desire we had to get real work done. Hell, if we did anything, she’d snatch it up and take it over to the college president, claiming it was hers. We learned fast to sign our own names to everything, and, eventually, to just take things over to the president ourselves.

I guess if I had any advice, it would be to document everything, as we did. Not that it will send Rusty packing, but it will give you an out. The other thing that helped us was to try to pretend like our boss didn’t exist. Seriously. We’d have a meeting, then the other three of us would have our own meeting at lunchtime to discuss what was really going on in the office, and how we should get our assignments done. It wasn’t insubordination, it was the only way to sanely function.

The upshot of it all was that 11 months into my job at CA, when I was ready to crack, my mom in PA was diagnosed with cancer. I decided immediately to return to the East Coast, and thought out of duty I should at least try to turn our documented evidence to the college president, and explain what was happening. (We were a small enough college that I saw him every day anyway, so this was not too presumptuous.) I sat with him for half-an-hour, carefully detailing everything. He informed me that, yes, he had had numerous other complaints, and “would do something about it immediately.” Nothing, of course, was done.

Until 12 months later, when it was found during an audit that the boss, charged with raising $12 million during a three-year campaign, had personally solicited less than $5,000 over the previous year. Ooops.

23

Making him shut up might not be so bad, especially if it forces him to commit to paper. On the other hand, having her head shit on would probably upset Pyrrhonist no end.

Is it really? The police do it all the time to gather evidence, and as a private citizen she wouldn’t need a warrant. Although Linda Tripp, or whatever her name was, got into a pile of trouble for doing something similar with her phone conversations with Monica. I’m not a lawyer, though.

Do you think Pyrrhonist’s bosses would fire Rusty and her? Office politics is something I’ve never been able to get the hang of, but if someone came to me with proof that an employee was planning to destroy my property, I’d be grateful.

I’d still check with the Board of Labor. The bad mouthing of underlings to other department heads, at the least, could be considered detrimental to their career path.

In any case, something you and your coworkers might want to adopt is the “memo to confirm”. After Rusty gives an assignment (verbally), write up a memo detailing your understanding of the assignment and asking him to confirm that this was what he meant. If you start off with something like “This memo is to confirm that I understood what you want me to do”, you’ve got something that shows you’re being conscientious about your job. You’ve also got a paper trail. If he doesn’t confirm at all, follow up with another memo saying that since you haven’t heard from him, you’re assuming that he agrees with your statements regarding what you should be doing. If he only confirms verbally, write another memo saying thanks for the confirmation. Make sure you cc others, so that he can’t say you never sent it to him. If your system allows, get a return receipt and a reading confirmation receipt. Having a paper trail to CYA is a nice thing.

24

Rusty, On Circumventing Bad Traffic

Last winter, an unexpected snow storm created a horrendous traffic jam, causing the majority of company employees to be around two hours late. Rusty and two underlings all live with a five mile radius and take the same roads to work. While inching along, having spent thirty minutes and gone no further than a few miles, the first underling was considering alternate routes. On the radio the traffic report said “The Narrow and Winding Back Road has been closed due to severe weather conditions.” Okay, that option was out. So, after fighting another hours in traffic, the first underling finially got to the office. The second underling was already there.

“How long did it take you to get here?” asked the first underling.

“A little over two hours. How about you? What route did you take?”

“The usual. The Narrow and Winding Back Road was closed.”

“Did you try it?”

“No, I heard about the closing on the radio, so I didn’t try.”

“You want to hear something odd? My aunt called me on my cell while I was driving in and told me the Narrow and Winding Back Road was closed. She drives it every day. The police had it blocked off. She had to go a different way. I didn’t try it either.”

“What’s so odd about that?”

“Rusty just got in and claimed it only took him 45 minutes to get here because he took the Narrow and Winding Back Road,” the second underling said, paused for awhile, then added “But he is just as late as everyone else.”

“Well, he is often two hours late anyway,” the first underling said. “Maybe the police opened the Narrow and Winding Back Road after your aunt called. And after the radio reported it closed. Could be true, I guess. It could have been reopened while I was stuck elsewhere. It is odd though. It would take almost 45 minutes under good weather conditions to get here on the Narrow and Winding Back Road. That’s if there was no traffic on the Parkway to get to the Narrow and Winding Back Road. It took me thirty minutes to just to the turn off.”

“Yeah, but there is no reason to lie about what route to he took to work. Is there?”

“No, there is no reason to lie, no one will be held accountable for being late today,” said the first underling, scratching his chin in thought. “Nope, can’t think of any good reason to lie at all about that.”

“But do you think it is possible? Could he have got here in 45 minutes on the Narrow and Winding Back Road?”

“I don’t know, maybe. There is no way to prove didn’t take it. Perhaps the snow plows did bang up job clearing the Narrow and Winding Back Road while leaving major roads covered. He does have a bigass SUV, you know, so maybe that got him through okay. Why would he lie? Why?”

25

I’ve known a few liars in my career. None was my boss, though, thank Og.

It sounds like Department C escaped Rusty’s clutches. Perhaps your department could do the same thing? Go en masse to a VP, with a list of complaints and an offer for a solution. (Rusty is doing x, y, and z. Here is our documentation. We believe it would be better for the company if we were moved to work under Honest Abe’s supervision.)
Remember, don’t go in to bitch without a solution to offer. Mention what his lying is doing to your morale, and how it is detrimental to the company.

26

Shit floats.

27

Funniest. Thread-title. EVAR.

28

downstream

29

Clearly, you must determine immediately if Rusty’s pants are flammable.

30

Rusty, On Business With Balls

Whenever Rusty thinks he is taking charge of a situation, he calls himself Big Nuts McKlutzsky; whenever he wants his underlings to bamboozle other departments into his way of doing business, he says “You’ve got to act like Big Nuts McKlutzsky.” He says this to men and women alike; rarely will a week go by without a reference to doing business with the male gonads.

The talk about Big Nuts McKlutzsky isn’t truly offensive, per se, it is more childish, like something out of a boy’s high school locker room. His underlings are ashamed that Rusty is the representative of their group to the rest of the company.

In a meeting a few weeks ago, with two men and one woman, Rusty was going over how he wanted his underlings to develop a program to release to the rest of the company. He didn’t want to ask the rest of the company what they wanted or if they agreed with his business model; he said, asking for the woman’s pardon, “You’ve got to act like you’ve got a pair. We decide what and how we make the program and everyone else will have to comply or miss out on the information we’re providing.”

This week, Rusty called another meeting about a how to handle a business process, again with two men and one woman; he wanted his underlings to handle the process aggressively.

Starting off the meeting, asking for the woman’s pardon, he said, “I need everyone to grow a hairy pair.” He then spewed his business plan for ten minutes and how if everyone handled the other departments firmly that ours would eventually gain more head count. He ended his diatribe by saying, “Every one needs to grow some. If you can’t grow some, buy some. If you can’t buy some, strap some on.”

I’m dumbfounded that a Director of Company with over 500 employees could make such a ridiculous statement. I’m not a woman, but I think the machismo talk of how the male gonads should influence business policy is not quite appropriate for the modern day workplace.

Rusty is not on a habitual liar, he is beyond rational belief.

31

I see, and hear, this a lot. From friends at other companies, on message boards, from fellow empoyees here where I work.

Pyrrhonist is right to doubt what good talking to HR would do. HR, at any company on the face of the earth, is not the employees’ friend. They’re not there to help employees. They are there to protect senior management (as well as do all the annoying employment paperwork). That is the sum total of their mission.

They are there to prepare and keep documentation so that at-will employees can be terminated without fear of lawsuits.

Although HR directors often claim to have an “open door,” or to be “employee friendly,” both claims are usually lies. Anything you say to an HR director can and will be used against you.

32

What the Lady said… Well done! I admire your style and your reasoning.

33

Pyrrhonist, if Rusty’s behavior is making work life difficult (that is, it’s not just something you can laugh about with your coworkers), you probably should circumvent HR and proceed directly to http://eeoc.gov/.

A “hostile work environment” is loosely defined, and with good reason. It depends mostly on how a person perceives his or her work environment; it’s not limited to direct threats or harassment.

This whole business of the gonads falls under this category, no question. If people cannot do their job properly because of his behavior, then someone at the EEOC needs to know.