Shithead
Prior to my current period of unemployment, I spent seven curious months working for Shithead- not his given name but one that suits him very well and the one generally used by those that worked under him. With hindsight I should have seen the signs- the employees of the merging part of the old company deserted almost to a man rather than join the new team under him and the confused looks on my co-workers faces when I joined them. And I guess the fact they all called him Shithead.

He has worked for this company for over 25 years. In absolute terms save for a student job here or there he has worked nowhere else and has no experience of any other working enviroment. In addition, is childless and unmarried- women do appear from time to time but never stay. He essentially lives to work for the company. Not that he was particularly keen on attending the office though. Within the first two weeks, items where his sign off was required (and despite my job having "manager" in the title, that was pretty much everything except my stationary order) were piling up. Generally at about 9.30, we'd receive an email stating Shithead would be working from home or otherwise not attending. To add variety to this however, he would periodically turn up late in the day and proceed to call a two hour meeting. His personal best was arriving at the office on a Friday with a 5pm finish- at 16.56.

Of course the fact that a huge amount of work was late whilst it waited for his illegible scrawl wasn't Shithead’s fault. His ability to fly into a petulant rage when something wasn’t right or delayed- irrespective of the fact that the delay was largely centred around the two weeks it had sat in his in tray- were the stuff of legend. I’d be instructed to fire contractors or demand written apologies or some other symbolic pound of flesh before they would be invited back on board days or even hours later. Above all though; Shithead knew best. Never mind the fact he had worked for 25 years selling something only tangentially related to what I had been bought in to do- Shithead could do it better. Most curious- and often damaging- was that despite being a forty something childless, single male with a dress sense akin to Tintin having a gay weekend, he was convinced he was absolutely representative of the man in the street. This led to some startlingly misdirected marketing work and some truly cringeworthy decisions- I have demonstrated a five grand hifi system with Barry Manilow to a group of journalists I knew personally.

I suppose it is telling that even though I was made redundant in the first real recession for a while, I was actually fairly relieved to be “let go.” Shithead in a rare moment of generosity doubled my redundancy pay- from one week to two. Since then, I have watched from an independent industry position as the wheels have started to come off the company’s wagon. My salary is available as an additional sum to the budget but when it is being wielded by a man who thinks that “Night birds” by Shakatak represents “cool, modern music” its effectiveness is going to be limited. I hope never to work for someone as aggressively clueless ever again.

Length? Well I am glad he did very few full days in those seven months to be honest.
(Leonard Hatred briefly did some work on, Sun 21 Jun 2009, 17:01, 1 reply)

I saw Shakatak
Last year, partly because the drummer lives 5 minutes walk from me. They were very good, but modern they weren't.
( MatJ LOOK, Sun 21 Jun 2009, 17:38, closed)