Dateline: 2005-07. Buckle up loyal readers as here is where it gets bizarro. During my time in the Mpls office, when I was still coming in every day, I hired 4 people. All new college grads. All failed spectacularly. 4 for 4 bad decisions. Ran the table
Hire #1
My favorite college professor ever Martin Markowitz recommended a former student when I asked him for a suggestion. He was working at a liquor store nearby (1st red flag), went to visit him. didn't notice he had demonic halitosis (2nd red flag). Wish I had. I actually gave him breath mints after a few weeks, it was that bad. The gig was placing him onsite at one of the big global food company in town to run a single project of ours. Great opportunity for someone with their shit together. Of which he did not. He was in over his head & it's my fault for not pulling plug. It was too high visibility. He was a new hire, no track record. We swapped him with an existing solid project manager Imogen, she was the ticket. I recall taking her & her bf out for sushi with my missus (I was hitched during this time). The 4 of us got one of those fancy private rooms, take the shoes off, sit on the floor. Spent $hundreds but I was making about a grand a day at the time and we were celebrating her being so solid. Together we gorged. Heady times.
Hire #2 A real doozy. Let's call her Ashley. I stupidly did not google her until after she quit in a mic drop huff. Had I done 30 seconds of due diligence, I would have read about her embroiled in some campus controversy a year prior. She was trouble wherever she went. Hired her to be my assistant, basically help triage the shitload of bids that came in daily, other email stuff, meetings whatnot. The heavy hitter sales guys got an assistant. Had 2 blowups with her.
I told her to send out a PR statement or something to my top 10 clients. And she did. And she didn't use bcc. The 10 all saw each other and oh yeah: their company name / email addresses also. I fucking blew up at her. People that don't use bcc drive me fucking batty. Then & now. I was so pissed & baffled at her ignorance.
This next one was the dealbreaker, where she got the goods on me to make a dramatic bridge burning exit. We were out at a happy hour & I showed a few office worker bees my personal card, pic here. I referred to it as my 'dating card' back when I was single (I was married when I worked there). Ashley asked for one & I gave one to her. Apparently. Because that came up in my chat with HR soon after. Along with the fact that when I said I was flying out for a sales pitch I referred to it as 'going into the bush' like they say on nature shows.
Ashley tried to burn me with the HR head we'll call Donna. Donna was basically a walking vegetable. Came off like a granny in way over her head in a fast moving startup, which she was. But anyhoots had to explain what 'going into the bush' actually meant. Donna never heard of it. Or the travel channel apparently. Ashley told her it was porn related. Lucky me. And then the 'dating card' had to explain that one. Note I was married at the time, it was just a personal card. But Donna was clueless. Guessing she wore loafers to avoid having to learn how to tie shoelaces. Ashley quit that day btw.
Hire #3
Let's call her Katie. Also early 20s (they all were). Runner. Hot bod. Wore deep V neck shirts and bent over a lot in front of me. She was oblivious to this of course, because she was oblivious to everything. I knew she was clueless during the interview but she took out notepad and took notes which I overestimated as being intelligent, or at least organized. She was fucking clueless. Transferred shortly after to the broader office of desk jockeys coordinating bids with Bulgaria. Have fun with that.
Hire #4
blanking but I know I botched four
The office only had 2 employees when Amy & I started. Suresh the Indian bloke & Natalia a rooskie skirt. Suresh always wore nice dress clothes, with, wait for it: white athletic socks. Everyday. I almost said something nearly daily about his hosiery, but never did. Natalia was an extremist evangelical who was good at her job herding cats. Suresh went on a hiring spree due to my sales success. He hired 20(!) new college grads during my time there. Most of them stuck. Most were female. Glad I was married at the time; kept me out of trouble. He also leased the adjacent empty office space, knocked down walls and we started taking over the floor. Years later I heard he tried that at a subsequent firm. He either ordered an expansion or almost hired the firm when an exec refused to sign off on it. Got in trouble, maybe fired. Actually, he worked for 6 or so bad months at the Encino firm when I started there. Unbeknownst to me he was telling everyone at HQ how awesome a sales guy I was and to pay me near double the normal salary. I walked in there making $115k a year plus commish. Nice, other than you're the 1st to go during layoffs. Salary knocked back a year later. Suresh was whacked a couple months after I arrived. It was either pay cut or me getting whacked, ergo happily took the cut to $70k. He bounced around all over the place, landing gigs briefly as VP of Ops or similar, due to his India connections I reckon. Much of what passes for the pseudo-science of 'market research' in USA actually occurs in India. Let's focus.
The CEO / Founder of this place is one of the smartest, most articulate ppl in biz I've met. Also the most intense. Force of personality. Direct & unfiltered. Passionate about his baby, that's for sure. Right place right time. The conversion of telephone interviews to online interviews required 'panels' of allegedly internet humans agreeing to take boring surveys for The equivalent of $5 bucks an hour. Who could resist that?
A coupla fun stories about the force of nature.
