We've all heard someone make such a claim to legitimize getting whacked from a job. It's typically those you know to be incompetent who make it, so no one takes it seriously. However, in my case, it's true. Below is my story.
It started out as the best thing that happened in my career. I was an actual executive with a VP title and everything. All of North American sales and marketing reported to me. The company was privately held, based in Switzerland, but mostly run by Germans. I was the first American to run the business in over a decade as was my boss, the president of North America.
Unfortunately, I quickly realized my boss was in way over his head. He'd never actually managed anyone before and his previous role was as an application engineer. The controller and I agreed we'd mentor the president; we were confident he'd rise to the occasion. Except, not only did he not rise, he withdrew and became more resentful toward me as time went by.
When I started, he told me he would be in the office from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. as he was responsible for the logistics for his offspring at school. He'd be working from home and available on his mobile outside that window. Except not only did he keep that same schedule year round, he was completely dark, when not in the office. And that's when he decided to come in at all. On the full days he worked from home, he was not only unreachable, but occasionally posted golf scores on his FB page (according to those who were friends with him). There were periods of time where no one knew where he was or could get in touch with him. One of those was when a board member from Switzerland popped by. 'We were in the same meetings, how could he just disappear?'
The man refused to make a decision on anything. The most jaw dropping example was at a baseball game. We'd booked sky boxes for the entire staff, complete with catering. Sometime around the 6th inning, a hostess popped by to ask Jason if we were about done eating or would we like a final food restock. My girlfriend and I were sitting behind Jason and were both stunned when he literally began to stammer, finally spitting out 'uh...go ask our controller'. That's how paralyzed he was.
Another perfect example of his complete lack of ownership was the day our office was in the path of a complete nightmare of a storm. Hail, wind, torrential rain. It was so bad, I grabbed my team and hustled them to the safest place in the building I could think of. No surprise that we lost power. That shouldn't have been a problem because our building had a generator. But it wouldn't start because Jason hadn't signed the maintenance agreement. So there we were; about 20 people dead in the water without power. After it was clear that situation wouldn't be remedied any time soon, I headed over to Jason's office to huddle up on next steps. I planned to let my own people go home, but he owned the operations side. I wanted us to be aligned on our actions. When I reached his door, he was in front of it, his cute little backpack on his shoulders, locking it up. When I asked what he was doing, he said 'I'm goin' home.' I stood there dumbfounded as he walked away, his people stuck in the dead building because he hadn't given them permission to leave. I turned on my heel and went around, sending everyone home. The most telling aspect of the story came the next morning, when the warehouse manager called my cell to inform me the power was still off and that they needed direction. Despite being completely useless, I always deferred to Jason on operations issues and responded to the warehouse manager that Jason would have to make that call. She interupted me mid sentence to say she'd already tried him and it went right to voicemail. Then, she said something to the effect of 'you and I both know Jason's MIA and couldn't make a decision even if she could reach him. Wow.
Because of his paralysis, I became the de facto leader of North America. And I worked my ass off for my team; 60 hour weeks were the norm. I quickly garnered their respect by being decisive and having a vision for the future (and communicating it). There were literally occasions where a customer service person would stop at my door and say 'I'm so excited for the direction you're taking us'. I shit you not.
It was quite the downward spiral. Jason could see he'd lost the team's respect, whereas I'd gained it. His resentment toward me grew stronger by the day, as he saw me being who the team looked to. He'd occasionally try to force me to kiss the ring, by berating me for doing something he didn't like, but would come up empty when I'd ask how I should have handled it. We were spending too much money on promotion, but I caught hell for planning to skip some expensive trade shows, where we didn't have anything new to promote anyway. There are those who would suggest he was afraid of me. Those episodes became more and more common, until they reached a breaking point. I remember telling him 'you want to be a leader, then you have to lead!!!'
Shortly after, there was some sort of upcoming celebration planned, with both the Swiss owner and the CEO coming in to participate. I had solid relationships with both. Things with Jason had gotten to the point where it was time for all of his laundry to come out. It was time for a coup. Obviously, I kept that to myself, but Jason would have had to be brain dead to not realize I had reached my limit and would serve up a mound of dirt on him. I suspect there were also things he caved on to the Germans that he was afraid to tell me, so he was afraid of what I'd say about that to the Swiss.
That's when Jason actually grew a pair of balls and made a decision (to save himself). He lobbed a note to the aforementioned owner and CEO stating I had to be dismissed with utmost urgency. This note also outlined my various, and completely fictitious transgressions, to support his decision. Because the Swiss are scum bags (I've got a dozen data points on that one), they let him do it. I know these things because the owner and his wife invited me to dinner with them, the next time they were in town and shared the whole thing. Hans said it came out of the blue. I remember looking him in the eye and asking, 'didn't you think the timing was a bit odd, Hans? He absolutely had to get rid of me right before you and Walter came over.' Blank stare. With Hans being Swiss, it was dropped there.
Returning to when I was shown the door, Jason waited until a day I was working from home to inform me. Some might say he was too afraid to do it face to face. I was told I was done, that someone would be by to collect company property, and that I would be arrested if found on the company property. Then came the crown jewel. Jason went around to the members of my team I was closest to and informed them they were to have no communication with me and doing so would be grounds for termination. What would lead the president of a company to put illegal conditions on employment for select individuals?
In the years since, the owner recognized he was in over his head (we was a young guy and his grandfather was the founder) and hired a professional management team. I'm sure the new CEO took a all of two minutes to see Jason for what he was, although it took a year before Jason was demoted back to engineering manager, having led the North American operation to double digit losses in the interim.
Info about the company and Jason here.
