Fighting Back: "The Ranter" and the Lead Engineer

I am always interested in good ideas and good stories about how to fight back against workplace assholes, as I use them to keep refining my list of Tips for Surviving Workplace Assholes. An engineer sent me a good story last week about how he fought back, which is entertaining and suggests some important lessons for both assholes who want to push people around and their targets:

In 2004, I was working for a major Windows software utility company (name withheld deliberately).

I was the lead engineer on the company's premier product. We were all exhaling as we'd just turned the final build over for general release. It was about 6:30 in the evening, and suddenly the CEO's right hand man came running into the software development area, ACTUALLY FLAPPING HIS ARMS, saying that we couldn't release the software as the documentation changes hadn't been reviewed. Could I do it? Sure, I said, give me 20 minutes. He then started into a self-important rant about how it couldn’t take 20 minutes because he was the CEO's right-hand man and he had to report back to the CEO that it was done and it had to be done faster without stops because it was important to get it done fast and he couldn't let the CEO down because the CEO had ordered it. I was walking from my office to the lead tech writer's office as this rant was going on.  When I stepped into the lead tech writer's office I put one hand on the door, looked him dead in the eye, and waited for him to finish his rant, which took several minutes. My whole team was clustered in the hall behind the ranter looking over his shoulder at me, trying to see what I was going to do. The ranter continued, saying how important it was to get it done fast and sooner and how urgent it was that this not stop the software release because he'd already told the CEO that all the release steps were done. When he finished ranting, I continued to look him straight in the eye and said, "Twenty-five minutes," and shut the door in his face.

Later I heard that all my team was behind me 110% but they didn't have the nerve to say it in front of the ranter...the CEO's "right hand man".

It isn’t always possible to do what the lead engineer did in this case – to shut the door in an asshole’s face.  I suspect that “the ranter” made the serious mistake of believing that –- because he was associated with the CEO –-  he had more power than the lead engineer on the company’s most important product. Note the lesson: It is bad enough to be an asshole, but if you act like an asshole when you believe that you have a lot of power, but actually have little, you are in big trouble.  There was a double whammy in this case: The ranter didn’t get the deference that he demanded and everyone around him saw him as jerk.

Being an effective asshole requires substantial skill, especially at assessing power dynamics, and “the ranter” clearly didn’t have it. 

Comments

[Frederic Lucas-Conwell]

Why not put the asshole responsibility of this situation on the CEO who did not take time or courage to say what he/she had to say to the team leader, sent another person and put this person into a discomfort situation ? I take pity for this poor guy who flips his arms. There are many other ways of handling this situation and avoid unnecessary negative emotions, starting from the top of the company and from the lead Engineer. It's too easy to qualify people as assholes when things do not go fine with people ! One should first question what he/she should have done to avoid the situation go wrong, including the CEO and the team leader. Some people are just attracting those fights, like then, encourage them, and finally treat others as assholes. Speaking about talents : this is no talent to send people who have no communication talent in risky communication situations. Keep these people away from these situations. Everybody's leadership is taken down and the organization's functioning is badly affected. The problem described is not a asshole problem. The problem is incompetence, starting from the top.