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| c. helpcom.net |
Mary was a powerhouse Ph.d economist, lawyer and law
professor who was brought in to a prestigious Chicago law firm to head up a
lucrative consulting group. The business along with piles of paperwork quickly
came rolling in.
Well, as it turns out, the old adage about people in
academia being out of touch and not able to function in real life has some
truth to it, at least in Mary’s case. She arrived at work at 6, and locked
herself in her office until 9 at night.
Mary had been a professional student and had many shiny
degrees but had no experience leading, organizing, or even functioning in an
office environment. She was clearly out of her league running an organization
of people.
She would call employees at all hours of the night and
weekends, assigning things that were outside their job description. She would
miss paychecks and be dismissive when called on it. She would freely talk about
how incompetent her staff was.
No one questioned her, or really held her accountable,
because she was the supposed “expert” or pro. Anytime it came up to her, she
would blow it off as someone else’s fault. I
have to deal with all of these incompetents, you see. Her staff wasn’t
allowed to talk to her or each other, lest they compare notes. She would
contact them when she needed them. She was not to be disturbed.
Her staff spent the majority of the time clueless about what
to work on. When they were assigned projects it was not uncommon to discover
midway through it that they had been due months ago, and were now obsolete. It
seems the piles had gotten out of control on her desk. In a haggard frenzy, she
would consistently assign overdue projects to her staff.
She would rush into the office, frenetic, with her hair in all
directions, demanding that a staff member get her so and so’s phone number, as
she had misplaced it. The thing was, no one had so and so’s number, they
weren’t supposed to, per her rules.
Obviously, the work wasn’t getting done, so all fingers
pointed to Mary. Her excuse was that the clients were all lying and her staff
was incompetent. If she had been smart, she would have blamed an individual,
but she blamed everyone collectively.
When one of her staff finally took her to task for not paying
him, she threatened him. Before he could go through with the proper channels,
he found an envelope in his door with way more than the amount he was owed,
along with a note that said, “don’t ever talk about this to anyone.”
In an amazing tour de force, she ended up suing the company
for $16.5 million for mold exposure, which diminished her cognitive functions
and caused emotional distress.
c. 2012
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