Extreme tactics
I guess this tale describes someone who was either the best or worst person for the job depending on your point of view.

It was the 90's, and I was a month into my first proper job - a sales executive for a specialist publishing company in London. This was before the rise of the internet, so imagine a trading floor with nothing but telephones and directories. Staff turnover was approx 10 people per week which tells you pretty much all you need to know about them.

As one of over two hundred sales execs on the floor, I was governed by a manager whose sole purpose was to 'motivate' his team into delivering the highest revenues possible. Let's call him Rob, for that was his name.

Rob was very friendly to new starters in the team, and seemed like the perfect boss. Indeed that sentiment grew enormously when I completed my first deal for the company and he gave me a bottle of champagne as a reward. Unfortunately my next deal was somewhat slower to materialize and Rob's mood soured by the day. His first tactic to improve my performance was to listen in on every call I made, wildly gesticulating when he wanted me to 'close' and hopping up and down when he thought I'd said something stupid.

His behaviour had a particularly negative effect on me, so I withdrew into myself and was far too scared to pick up the phone in his presence. His response was twofold. Firstly he forbid me to sit down all day by removing my chair. His reasoning was that by standing, the whole floor would see I wasn't on the phone pitching and I would be shamed into action. Slightly more drastically, he bound the handset of the phone to my hand with parcel tape each morning.

I guess in the environment he worked, Rob was the best person for the job, either quickly getting results or forcing out the non-performers. In any other business he would have been in front of a tribunal. I still wish bodily harm on him.
(BinDipper, Mon 10 Sep 2012, 12:59, 7 replies)

So he assaulted you on a daily basis and you did nothing about it?
You deserved everything you got, you fucking pansy.
( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Mon 10 Sep 2012, 13:04, closed)

I wouldn't have wished bodily harm on him
I'd have shoved the phone, roll of tape and the fucking chair up his left nostril.
(username failed moderation, Mon 10 Sep 2012, 13:20, closed)

I bet he took your favourite stapler away, too

( drimble he'd been white, he'd been black, Mon 10 Sep 2012, 13:21, closed)

That part was too painful to even write about...
(BinDipper, Mon 10 Sep 2012, 13:36, closed)

you know what you need to do
the interwebs have come a long way since the late nineties. track him down on linkedin, find out where hes working now and send him a turd in a box.

closure etc.
(magictorch, Mon 10 Sep 2012, 14:29, closed)

Always be closing!
(Simian Typewriter Supplies Pty. Ltd. is house hunting in the neighborhood of infinity, Tue 11 Sep 2012, 15:18, closed)

Sounds more like you were the wrong person for the job.
That's a compliment, by the way.
(Me, I'm not... in any way intoxicated, Mon 10 Sep 2012, 14:47, closed)