Magazine Resources

FC NOW: The Fast Company Weblog

September 29, 2006

Wit's End: Your Stories Needed

Do you have a psycho boss? Or a great one? Or did you, once? We’re looking for real-life tales from the workplace—your actual stories about bosses you’ve known and loved (or not). We want stories that are human, funny or sad, and (importantly) true. We’ll pick the best one to be published—in comic-book form, in the pages of Fast Company. The winner will get a frame-worthy print of the cartoon, signed by the artist Michael Kupperman.

Send your stories to wits_end@fastcompany.com.

Posted by Keith Hammonds at September 29, 2006 11:08 AM | Category: administrivia | 5 Comments

5 COMMENTS

Posted by: Mark Alan Effinger at September 29, 2006 3:38 PM

OK, I have two that have to be shared:

1) Disposable: That's how it felt.

I'd founded a company with a consultant who saw the technology's potential, and decided to become a partner.

He handed me Covey's "Seven Habits" and said "if you dig this book, then we can work together".

I was floored. This was my dream gig, if we were to run it like the book.

Well, I guess everything's up to interpretation.

What he meant by Win/Win (the popular Covey expression) was "I win, and then I win again"...

And he sure did.

After 3 gruelling years driving the company with my consultant partner as co-CEO, then him taking the "sole CEO" (our Souless CEO) role, I found myself back from a tradeshow in Florida. The sort of show you work 18 hours a day for two months prior just to pull it off.

We won every award that mattered, and scored some great sales.

As my shoe hit the Portland tarmac on our return flight, my partner turned to me and said "we won't be needing your services anymore"... and the company I founded suddently became his company, and it was years before I received another nickel on the deal (umm, after my personal bankruptcy).

OK, so that's the "Boss from Hell" story.

May all your partnerships be more... fulfilling.
Best,
Mark Alan Effinger
ThoughtOffice.com

Posted by: Mark Alan Effinger at September 29, 2006 3:46 PM

OK, so someone ought to delete my first 2 above...

Here's the one I couldn't believe:

My first company was purchased in 1986 by a much larger firm that was sort of hitting their peak.

Buying my company helped them become an Inc. 500 firm in terms of 5 year growth, so it was cool, and we drank the growth-firm Koolaide for a while.

3 years later I left, and sort of watched from the sidelines as the company fumbled and shrank and bumbled along.

The amazing part?

4 years later I had lunch with the CEO, and I asked him what was going on with the company, what's the plan, where's he see the future.

His response?

"You know Mark, no matter what I do, I just can't seem to kill this thing. No matter what I do, it won't die!"

That's the voice of an Inc. 500 CEO?

Hmmm...

Today the company continues to operate, roughly the same size as just before I left in 1989. Amazing.

I guess he really COULDN'T kill that thing!

May you never repeat this in earnest...

Mark Alan Effinger
ThoughtOffice.com

Posted by: roger fulton at September 29, 2006 5:45 PM

amazing but true, the pirate story repeated throughout the seas of capitalist tormoil every day of every year throughout Christendom. You have to have the heart of an alligator, the eyes of a lizard and no pulsebeat to succeed.
And as Ahnold once said in a book by a famous Chicago writer, " Vonce I become rich, den I becahm Miesteah Nice Guye."
Trouble is, God forbid you ever really are like that.

Roger Fulton
Yuma, AZ

Posted by: mahendrakumardash at October 2, 2006 7:19 AM

One day my boss inspected my branch.He was very sick and had problems with his leg.Next day morning he had to leave early for inspecting another branch.He asked me for some medicine.Because the small liquid was not available in a very small bottle,I had to purchase,a slightly bigger one so that at least onec after use,the paid will go and he will feel better.But when I brought it for him he first asked the price and then fired.It put me in bed temper.I said either you use it which is the only one avaialble here or tolerate the pain and make it more painful in the next journey.It was just below the piants.
He looked at me.And took the medicine away.

Posted by: Kim at October 5, 2006 5:39 PM

Never, ever, under any circumstance, work for a man who has baby pictures of HIMSELF in his office. Especially one who also walks around in a flight jacket and drives a Corvette because he thinks it makes him look like Tom Cruise.

I had no choice -- I was on active duty and this guy was a Navy Captain. How he made that rank, I have no idea.