Monday, 12 April 2010
(death-zone.org being my sole physical and intellectual property, all content is personal opinion. Legal information follows..)
Sometimes good things do happen..
You see this glass of absinthe (blanche) at right? I've been savoring this moment, holding on to it and relishing it having had to wait so very, very long. I'm sipping it slowly while I type...
I'm doing this because my manipulative, egocentric, devious, passive-aggressive (and aggressive, both, which takes talent) braggart and abusive boss (who was a Director) is no longer employed by my company as of today.
Sitting down with this sweet glass of victory, I feel like relaying tales.
How about the one where the new manager came to him for help in getting an access card for another new direct report and my ex-director tells him that helping him has the same priority as wiping his ass. Actually, I stand corrected - he didn't tell him, he yelled at him (the receptionist stood up out of her chair wondering what the hell was wrong).
Speaking about yelling, the worst of it started when my associates and I were playing foosball at 4:05p (which the man who started the company brought into the office for general use). We'd made a mistake in that the person supposed to be left behind for personal contact had left the office (never mind our cell phones or the fact that we were right there, new ex-director rules - more on that later) and a delay had cropped up in the network. The ex-director couldn't find us in our office but figured we were playing foos, so he opened the door separating the spare datacenter from tier1 and 2 support in the Network Operations Center (one door away, we were right there) and yelled practically at the top of his lungs "What the hell do you think you're doing?!" and to get our asses back to our workstations and do our work. The whole NOC froze and we looked at each other, shrugged and went back to our desks. He came back to continue chewing on us but it didn't go as he expected as he eventually was backed out the door by some very angry systems administrators. I told him that his going off on a temper tantrum would "have predictable results" and he was absolutely, ignorantly furious in a self-centered rage. Later, it was "a matter of psychological warfare" (quote) as he started monitoring our IM's and emails to each other and whispering things in one or another person's ear to turn us against each other, and we spent almost a year learning to distrust the teammates we'd worked with for years before. Why? Because groups are hard to deal with, but if you separate the leader, split up the group and handle them one by one, the problem becomes managable (Which he said himself during one of his 'social engineering classes' he gave me and my counterpart).
It was over a year ago now that he wanted me and my counterpart in security to do a personality profile on someone in our group, evaluating our teammates' potential weaknesses, points of stress and whether they were a threat. Turn it into an essay - this is all for a social engineering exercise as he worked to turn us into his "little minions" (direct quote).
After the foosball event the social engineering "classes" ceased, and when he discovered he couldn't fire his "little minions" because we'd done nothing wrong, he proceeded to make our lives as miserable as he possibly could, desperately trying to get us to quit. The tales I could tell you as a result of these efforts would curl your hair.
To continue, there's the story where the security guard was snacking on our public candy jar at one in the morning and when my ex-director sees the security video he publishes that portion of the video to DVD and distributes it all around the office, saying what an incredible oinker this guard is (all of whom he'd abused terribly, I might add). Now that he's gone we learned that the security company didn't have a high rate of turnover as he told us, but that in fact the staff refused to work at our location. People were only sticking around a week or two because that was all the abuse they could take before they refused to work to secure our building anymore. (Now that they know he's gone, their manager is peaches and cream and we get our pick of staff again.)
It wasn't a week before his ass was finally canned that he set me up to take the fall for an internal security assessment gone wrong - I was working with a corporate assessor who couldn't tell me what his IP address was, making it somewhat, just a little.. impossible for me to whitelist the address for scanning. I told his manager that he needed some guidance and left it at that. Later, my ex-director IM's me asking why I was prohibiting the assessment and I told him "I'm not, I just need the source IP which he couldn't give me." and then forwarded the email chain. "Nevermind, forget it." he said, and that was the last of it until I learned he had paid for a flight and a week's hotel stay for the assessor to come on site to do the assessment from within our office. Turns out he'd been bad mouthing me to the assessor saying that I'm always getting in the way, "but don't worry - I'll commit the expense to ensure you can do your work."
Let's not forget the chili cookoff, where the VP was trying to hold a fundraiser by having the managers and directors cook their best chili with each vote costing a dollar to cast. The best chili wins and all proceeds go to a charity. What does my ex-director do but cook the most basic, quick'n dirty chili and then engineer the visiting auditors into "donating $20 to charity" each, putting his name on the donation and thus causing his nearly-inedible chili to win (and there were people in the office who'd put their best foot forward, I assure you).
Back to the social engineering exercises, my favorite is the one where my counterpart and I are in his office and an auditor walks in and our ex-director suddenly goes off on the guy, verbally beating him out of his office and when we closed the door he smiled and asked "Know why I did that?", to which we shake our heads, stunned. "Because every relationship worth having is one worth earning. Watch, I'll not give him the time of day tomorrow, Wednesday I'll apologize and take him out to lunch and start working with him, and by Friday he'll be eating out of my hand." Low and behold over the course of the week that's exactly what he did and the auditor didn't have any idea...
Until next year, having come back from other offices where the staff were starting to talk about this ex-director of mine and compare notes. The auditors started comparing notes amongst themselves and figured out what he was doing, and the proceeded to rake him over the coals having discovered that he was hiding little details here, little details there and blowing smoke up their asses all year.
Oh yeah folks, this guy's a real winner. Our company is hosting a weight-watchers program and they had a competition in which the person who lost the most weight would win a free Wii. It was in the conference room with all these self-conscious and shy people where my ex-director blurted out that he was gonna beat all their asses, that HE wanted that Wii, and that the others didn't stand a chance (another quote). They thought he was a real winner, too.
When you Google this guy's name you get only the best - volunteer for the local fire department, recommendations for staff placement and a plethora of other material that makes you think this guy walks on water. I hope this post serves as a warning that this material has been PLANTED there, it's intended for people to find. I want to warn people that Vince is manipulative to the core, and Gods help you if you have something this man covets! The fact is that while some people would admire the intellect, experience and practice in human manipulation that this man exhibits, it's driven by selfishness and a desire to prove himself at any cost. I don't know what this guy's dad did to him, but it's shaped him at a very young age. Associated with the self-rightiousness and viciousness of his nature, the result is everybody around him getting burned, and that is worthy of admiration only in the same way as the awesomeness of a train crash.
There's a great deal more I could go into but it involves other people and their shame so I won't bring them into this post. Suffice it to say that he is in fact the very worst person I've ever had to work with in my entire career, bar none (and Oh Boy have I seen a few). Having survived the Dot-Bomb and gone jobless for two years, I would never imagine myself being happy, neigh delighted to see anybody laid off in this current job market. Considering how this guy always bragged about his huge savings account and portfolio, how he poured thousands into redesigning his barn, custom painting his recreational vehicles and what his most recent scuba-diving trip was like, I don't give a rats ass. I hope he suffers, to be frank. As he goes home with his office crap stuffed in boxes, I'd only have the following to say:
You don't treat people that way, jackass. May the woman you refuse to marry because she's too far in debt start seeing what kind of person you really are and actually listen to her own daughter who hates you so much (and, on that note - Woman, what is your problem? Are you so insecure that you settle for this guy? Surely you believe you're settling because otherwise, you're just plain ignorant. Listen to your children, woman!). May she start making wiser decisions, may you rot in the Hell you so richly deserve, and oh, by the way, "Big Daddy" - how're you coming on that free Wii? Better get to work finding the bottom of that ice cream pail 'cause you know, once you start something you'd better stick around to finish it.
Now that I've consulted with my lawyer, I have something else to add: Vincent Grimard in an unhirable, abusive bastard who hides behind certifications while involving himself in every meeting possible to escape actual work and culpability. For the love of all that does not suck, this man should not be hired for anything more taxing than waxing carrots or involved with any more people than the truck driver, who over time will surely come to hate him as well as Vince would be shmoozing him out of his job in no time.
-- addendum - I learned that Vinnie sent emails to select people in the office, including statements like "I'm sure my guys are having a field day". That's right, jackass - now that you're not here to micromanage us, your personal group of seasoned systems administrators have been slacking off, playing foos and paintball in the datacenter. That's definitely what we do, in between the times we have to FIX YOUR SHIT, such as the cardkey system with the front doors backwards and the keycard readers all having different times, or the stage-1 solenoid on the fire system that's been broken for a year and a half. We really need your guidance before we can tell the difference between the datacenter we literally built and the fucking crater you left in your wake.
Me? Bitter? Hell yes, and after you deal with this man for a year and a half you'd find yourself clubbing baby seals to escape, I assure you.
---- (select Read More, below, for legal information) |
I wasn't sued for libel or slander, but I did loose my job today over the post below. I was told that I had posted confidential company information (never mind that I never mentioned my company and didn't post the plethora of things I could have specifically to avoid this situation) - the limited scope I chose didn't seem to matter.
