But certainty can be shaken up at any moment, and that’s what happened the day my new boss started. We were told we were to receive a new team member from the City, who had had a short but successful career as a trader and had now moved out our way with his young family in search of a change of pace. I liked the openness of this confession, as it made the man seem human.
The first day went very well. I was part of a team of eleven people and Peter was to head up our division. He was younger than I was, by a good ten years I would have guessed, but that didn’t bother me. So long as he had the experience and the competence to lead our team, then age did not matter. We had our first team meeting mid-morning, after he had had his introductions with the CEO and the Board of Directors. He seemed slightly stressed but I suppose that’s how one feels after a two-hour introduction meeting to the head team of the company.
Peter told us about himself and said he wanted to spend time with each of us over the next week getting to know us, our history with the company, and our aspirations. When it was my turn to meet with him, I ensured I went along prepared with notes about previous projects he needed to get up to speed on, as well as previous company presentations that I thought would help him understand how our team fitted into the wider company. I was, after all, the most senior member of the team in terms of experience, seniority and years with the company and I thought I would be able to help him settle in and get up to date as quickly as possible.
I sat down opposite Peter in his office. He had chosen to remain behind his desk rather than move us to the couch and the armchair that occupied the corner. I found that odd but I soon shrugged it off. He then started to ask me all sorts of questions about my life, my goals and what my five- and ten-year vision was for my career. I hesitated while I thought how best to answer this line of questioning. I was a bit taken aback as I didn’t have the kind of vision he was asking about. I took a deep breath and lent back in my chair to think.
‘Come on, I don’t have all day,’ he said. ‘You either have goals or you don’t.’ He looked at me with chin slightly down towards his chest as if looking over the top of imaginary glasses. He was a big man, an ex-rugby player I had heard, and I must admit his size was slightly intimidating. His hands were placed on the desk in front of him, crossed in front of his enormous chest. I continued to stare at his hands while I tried to get my brain to work. How was he getting to me like this? Why was I now feeling so nervous?
He spread his hands suddenly, in an exasperated gesture, and then slapped them down on the desk. I jumped.
‘At the age of sixteen,’ he continued ‘I had already decided which university I would attend, what age I would finish my degree, where I would work in my first professional job, at what age I would get married and at what age I would have both of the two children I had already planned to have. I met my now-wife during the year I said I would, and we had our first child at twenty-seven and our second child at twenty-nine, at… guess what… the exact ages I had already decided upon. If you don’t grab life and tell it what you want, you will end up with nothing, a nobody, and that is a waste of everybody’s time.’ He sat back in his chair continuing to challenge me with his eyes.
I nervously opened my mouth to speak. ‘I… I suppose I have always believed in working hard and then rewards would come when they were due. Promotions would arrive when I had proved myself beyond doubt of being capable, which is what I have achieved several times since being with the company.’ My response came out stammered and I could feel the heat rising in my face.
He looked like a giant father looking down on his very disappointing son, a look of ‘Why do I bother with you?’ written all over his face. The man didn’t even know me! Needing to turn the situation around quickly, with shaking hands I pulled out the presentations I had brought for him, and handed them over, briefly explaining what they were. He took them and immediately cast them aside, saying he would look if he had time later. He laid out very clearly what his expectations were for the team and for me and said he didn’t suffer fools gladly. Was he calling me a fool, I asked myself? What had I done to deserve such wrath when we had only just met?
When I was dismissed, I stood up slowly, pushing back my chair in a stupor. As I left his office I turned around and asked if he wanted me to leave his door open.
‘Close it!’ he barked at me, never lifting his eyes from his computer screen. I went back to my desk, and heavily sat down in my chair. I was in shock and feeling slightly nauseous, as if I had just witnessed a terrible accident.
‘How did it go?’ whispered my colleague Amanda. She was holding her breath, eyes big and full of expectation. Her meeting with the new boss was coming up next.
‘Um, I don’t really know,’ I answered honestly. ‘He was a bit abrupt and direct I suppose and wanted to know what I had planned for my life and what my goals were. I would recommend you use the time now to prepare some.’ I told her, leaving her to sit back at her desk to create a life plan in less than three minutes.
When Amanda came back out of her meeting she looked pale and shaken. I asked if she wanted to get a cup of tea and she gratefully said yes, so we headed to the kitchenette to put the kettle on.
‘What a horrible man!’ she exclaimed, a little too loudly.
‘Sshh,’ I said. ‘You don’t want him to hear you!’
‘But how can he speak to people like that?’ she asked, eyes moist with tears threatening to fall. ‘He told me that he didn’t have time for unmotivated people and that he would be watching us over the next few weeks to see who needs a shakeup. I feel like he was threatening me. It was most unpleasant!’ Amanda fell silent, holding her mug close to her chest in her two hands, the warmth seeping through the ceramic providing her with a small comfort.
The next few weeks proved fairly uneventful as Peter was preoccupied with learning the ropes and meeting with the other divisions. He had a few work trips to do and so was away from the office a large part of the time. But one day he called a team meeting and told us to bring a project update to share with the team.
We all sat down quietly but nervously in the meeting room waiting for Peter to make his entrance. He walked to the front of the room, placed his two large hands down on the table in front of him and leant on them. He looked slowly around the room to see if he had everyone’s attention. Suddenly the door opened and in walked Gemma, one of our junior accountants, a look of quiet terror on her face. Unfortunately, the only spare chair was at the front of the room and as she walked past the staring faces of her equally terrified teammates and took her seat at the front of the room, she mumbled an apology for being late.
‘I DO NOT TOLERATE LATENESS!’ Peter’s deep voice boomed, eyes glaring at poor Gemma. He left his piercing eyes resting on her reddened face for a few seconds longer, letting his point sink in, and then turned to the rest of us and started the meeting.
Once Peter had taken us through his team rules that he expected all of us to follow, it was then our turn to go around the room with an update for the team on what we were working on and any obstacles we believed were standing in the way of achieving our goals.
When it came to my turn, I cleared my throat nervously, feeling tension rising up my back like cold fingers, that then settled into the base of my neck and dug into my spine. Why was I so tense around this man? Why did he terrify me so? Here I was, a grown man, older than Peter and with certainly much more life experience, and yet he had reduced me to a blubbering child!
Then came poor Gemma’s turn. Having already been scolded once in the meeting, she had started off on shaky ground and I could see that her confidence was waning. As she started to talk through her topics for the meeting, Peter interrupted her and started challenging her on some of her numbers. It really put poor Gemma on the spot and I felt terribly sorry for her. She mumbled a few answers but was shot down each time.
‘Enough! Stop! I’ve heard enough.’ Peter spat. ‘To be late to the meeting is one thing, but to come unprepa
red is another!’
‘I’m s-s-sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t bring the printout with me as I didn’t think I would need it.’ She looked down and I could see her wringing her hands under the table.
‘Let’s just move on,’ Peter said, disappointment and what felt like loathing in his voice. What had we done to deserve this? We were what I would consider a high-performing team but ever since Peter had come on board I could see that team performance dipping and the morale that had once been fantastic, had seeped out of every one of us and evaporated into thin air. The meeting drew to an end and everyone left quietly, the silence speaking volumes.
Not everyone in the team was affected as badly as others, but no-one enjoyed having Peter as a boss. A few of the team members seemed to perform better with each meeting, as they knew what was expected of them and they made sure they prepared exactly what Peter wanted to hear. They knew their numbers as they memorised them before each meeting, wasting precious time on trying to please a very displeased god, afraid of the lightning bolts he could throw down at them from the sky.
Peter took great pleasure out of arriving unannounced at someone’s desk and demanding the latest share price of a particular product our company sold or what position our company held on the ever-changing stock market. Numbers that did not need to be memorised but which he used as a way of keeping us small and terrified and firmly in our places. We weren’t allowed to look the number up, even if we had them printed out in front of us. We had to memorise them every morning and hope and pray that we still remembered them by lunchtime. If you didn’t know all your latest numbers, he would bark ‘Not good enough!’ and walk away shaking his over-sized head. In my opinion it took our focus off what we should have been doing and kept us tied to our desks out of fear. Fear does not sustain us, it wears us down and takes away our precious energy and our hope for the future.
As time went on I realised that Peter was clearly in over his head. He had been given a lot of responsibility, with a large team working in an area he was not completely familiar with. He had a lot to learn, but rather than rely on the team and help them in order to help himself, he chose to project his fear on to us and build himself up by bringing us down. Why couldn’t he see that he is only as good as his team? If the team shone, he shone, and yet he seemed to believe that if he made out that we were all a bunch of imbeciles any failed results could be shifted on to us, and he could simply shrug his shoulders as if to say ‘Look what I have to work with.’
He used to steal our work. It started off innocently enough; he would ask us to prepare a presentation for him, usually for the following day without much warning. We were never present at these meetings, so we assumed that we would at least get some of the credit. But one day Peter was asked to present at a company-wide meeting, and this was the first time that we saw him in such a situation. He walked up to the stage, and his face cracked into a very unfamiliar and unbecoming smile, as if the muscles had to remember which position they were supposed to go into. He looked more like an ogre than a man, but I suppose that is rather unkind of me. Still, that is how I remember him. On went the screen and up went his slides, and to the team’s horror, he assumed full responsibility for all the work and successful quarterly results he presented that afternoon, giving absolutely no credit to his hard-working team who had made it happen. We all sat there in seething silence as the audience clapped their thanks and he went and sat back down in the front row, a job well done.
We used to have mixed feelings towards any meetings where Peter’s boss would be present, as the lead up to those meetings was always dreadful, but the meetings themselves were very relaxed as he was always so charming to us in front of the Vice President. She never saw the truth, only the façade of a wonderfully well-coordinated team who were incredibly lucky to have such a caring boss.
One day, Gemma came to see me. She asked if we could slip into one of the meeting rooms and have a quick chat about something. When I sat down she asked me directly and bluntly what I thought of Peter. I was guarded in my response as, even though I knew Gemma had been having a hard time with him, I didn’t trust the man and didn’t know who to trust in the team anymore. I wanted to protect my own back.
‘He is a tough boss but I suppose that is what we need,’ is how I answered the question. Gemma sat back looking defeated.
‘But you see how he treats us? We are treated worse than a piece of chewing gum stuck on the bottom of his shoe! I have had enough and I want to go and see his boss and tell her the truth of what is going on. I am talking to the team on a one-to-one basis and I want to see who will join me. Are you in?’ Gemma asked.
I thought for a moment, wondering what I should do. On the one hand I could join Gemma and support her in trying to get rid of this vile creature who had taken over our team, but on the other hand, I could lose my job in the process. I had a family to feed and a mortgage to pay and so I made my decision.
‘I’m sorry Gemma. I salute your bravery and think you are making the right decision to go to the top, but I have too much at stake and need this job. You are young and can find another job if things don’t work out, but I am not as flexible as you.’ I sighed and then fell silent. I felt enormous guilt welling up inside me but I had my family to think of.
Gemma opened an angry mouth and spoke again. ‘Fine, you are just like the rest of them. I thought that out of the whole team, you are the one I could rely on but I suppose I will just have to do this on my own.’ She stormed out of the room and disappeared in the direction of the Vice President’s office.
An hour later, Gemma reappeared, face ashen and mascara streaked down her cheeks.
‘What happened?’ I stammered. ‘What’s wrong?!’
‘I’ve lost my job that’s what!’ she snapped and with that Gemma started to cry. She went on to explain that the meeting had seemed to start off well. She was careful to not get too emotional when describing the situation with Peter and to remain as factual as possible. She said the Vice President listened intently, occasionally asking a question or for a point to be clarified. Then as the meeting felt like it was coming to a close, she received a reply that she had not been expecting. She was told that Peter was a star performer and that big things had been achieved since he had joined the company. Gemma was told in no uncertain terms that if there was a problem it lay with her, and that according to Peter, Gemma’s performance had been below par lately. She was told that clearly she was not suited to the culture of the company and that due to that fact they would not be able to continue her contract. She should therefore go and say her goodbyes to the team, pack up her things and leave. She would be paid any outstanding holiday or overtime pay in her next and final pay cheque.
I was stunned. As I watched Gemma placing her belongings into a cardboard box, tears streaming down her face, I thought about how unfair the world can be. How can someone clearly not qualified to be a leader end up in such a position, and how had he managed to pull the wool over the management team’s eyes? I decided then and there that something had to be done.
‘I’m really sorry this happened to you Gemma. I will pick up the fight.’ I said. I truly meant it. She nodded as she kept packing her things.
‘Well, that’s it,’ she said a few minutes later. ‘I have everything so I suppose I will go now. It’s been nice working together. Please keep in touch,’ she said quickly. With a sob, she turned and walked away, clutching the cardboard box to her chest as tightly as she could. She had to go and see HR and then would leave the office, never to return.
I sat there for a while in stunned silence. I felt a mix of emotions, each vying for the dominant position. Shame won in the end. How could I not have stood up beside her against our boss? But I felt shame at the relief I felt because I had not been the one to lose my job. Shame that again another person good at politics but not their job was able to win. Shame to work for a company that allowed their employees to be treated so badly. It was at this unfortunate moment that Pete
r decided to come over and talk to the team.
‘Right, so you know what’s happened. Gemma wasn’t the best fit for us and so she has had to leave. It’s a shame but we need to have a strong team and Gemma simply didn’t fit the mould. Let’s get back to work shall we?’ and with that Peter walked off, completely unaffected by the life he had temporarily ruined. It was this callousness that sealed his fate. I stood up, grabbed a notepad and pen and went to a meeting room. I closed the door and spent the next two hours jotting down everything I could remember; all the atrocities Peter had produced, and the effect he was having on team morale. Sure, productivity may have been temporarily high, but it certainly wasn’t sustainable, and we had already suffered the loss of another team member, in addition to Gemma, who had left simply because the strain was too much.
When my notes were finished, I took a deep slow breath, put my pen down, sat back in the chair and rubbed my eyes and then my face. What a complete and utter waste of energy, but I was no longer going to put up with this situation, even if it meant risking my financial security and that of my family. Leaving my notes on the table I stood up and headed towards Peter’s office. I didn’t knock but walked straight in and said I needed to talk to him. I wanted to speak in neutral territory so I took him back into the meeting room where my notes were waiting and shut the door. I told him to sit down as I wanted to talk to him about something. There must have been a strength to my voice that he hadn’t heard before as he sat down with a puzzled look on his face.
A Lifetime of Goodbyes Page 12
