Listen Now

Full Show Transcription Welcome back to the Work Stories Project. I’m your host Carol Xu. In today’s show, Mark and his co-workers will continue with the workplace asshole story. In the last episode, Mark had no real awareness that his co-workers hated working with him for four years. When his manager Miles incidentally broke the news to him, it was a painful revelation to Mark. Mark: It just never occurred to me that I was disliked. So the idea that my self-image of being a nice guy that people generally like… To have that idea destroyed like that was eye-opening and painful. It’s like a revelation. To redeem himself, Mark went and bought flowers for the implementation coordinators (ICs for short), Mark: One flower for each IC and a little note saying, “I’m sorry I’ve been such an asshole” and… I think they gave me a hug. There was reconciliation. Apologies and coming together. It just turned the whole thing around. However, notice there were limits to what a symbolic gesture could accomplish. There were no real conversations where Mark and the ICs sat down and actually got to know each other. Mark thinks that the flowers were a good beginning, but shouldn’t be the end. Mark: It should be “let’s sit down and have a conversation and figure out what’s actually going on with our emotions and the interplay, and what exactly is happening here,” and be honest with each other and get to the heart of the matter. That’s what I value. But in the culture at BISNET at the time, such honest conversations seemed impossible. Mark: That’s corporate culture or whatever. You just can’t talk about that stuff. It could get heated. Maybe it was better the way it went down: “Let’s at least pretend that I’m not an asshole. And you pretend you don’t hate me. Maybe we can actually get to a point where you don’t hate me and I’m not an asshole, [laugh] if we just pretend long enough.” I ask Miles whether there were any lasting changes after the flower gesture, Carol: Do you remember any changes after the flower incident, in terms of people’s interactions or their reluctance (to interact)? Miles: No. I think like most things, it’s hard for people to change, both for Mark to change and for anybody else to change. I see it as a blip and  everything kind of falls back in the realm of people’s behaviors. After the flower gesture, Mark spent one more year at BISNET. During that year, Mark and his co-workers were more patient and tolerant with each other. But his co-workers still didn’t know Mark’s upbringing or understand his particular sense of humor. And Mark still got frustrated by the interruptions and wished in private that the ICs would put some extra effort in writing a problem-solving manual or take some programming training. In 2002, Mark helped to find a well-trained programmer to gradually take over his responsibilities. Mark left the company, on good terms, in early 2003. [music break] But our story doesn’t end there. After Mark has volunteered the story to me, I try to talk to as many of his former co-workers as possible. My conversation with the former IC Letitia reveals something surprising [sound: phone call with Letitia]. It turns out that there is one major difference between Mark’s version of the story and that of Letitia’s. According to Mark, nobody gave him any feedback about him being difficult to work with before the flower incident. Had he known that others hated working with him, he could’ve apologized much earlier. Yet, according to Letitia, she actually heard others calling Mark an asshole to his face, more than once. Letitia: There were people that gave feedback to Mark by calling him an asshole to his face. Carol [in surprise]: Oh really? Was that before or after the flower incident? Letitia: Yes, before. Carol: So they actually told him, “Oh you are being an asshole here.” But he didn’t really respond. And he just continued his way? Letitia: Yeah. But I don’t think it came out as ‘you are being an asshole’, I think it was ‘you are such an asshole!’ (laugh) I think that he had that said to him more than once and by more than one person. I would wager money on that.    Hmmm, from Mark’s perspective, he seems to have completely forgotten about being called an asshole more than once at work. Letitia goes on to say that she also gave Mark direct feedback in the form of an email once. One day Mark left work in the morning. Letitia: He just left. Basically left all of us hanging. I don’t remember what the big overhanging requirement was, but there were a lot of clients affected and a lot of employees of our company that were being affected. That was the time that I sent him an email. I said things to him that probably nobody else did, because I need to let him know, ‘Dude, I don’t think you are a team player.’ And that, in my mind, is one of the worst things you can say to an employee that’s part of a startup, ‘cause you gotta be team player. You gotta work together. You gotta come together for the greater good. And he was exhibiting more signs of “well, I’m the most important person here…” According to Letitia, soon after the email, Mark apologized to every IC with the flower gesture. I ask her how she felt about Mark’s apology. Letitia: I felt a little bit vindicated. I felt like he heard me. So, this is interesting. According to Letitia, the coworkers did give Mark direct feedback along the way. And Letitia’s email probably even directly led to the flower apology. But why doesn’t Mark remember any of that? I need to have a follow-up with Mark to relay Letitia’s perspective. Carol: Letitia remembers others calling you an asshole before the flower incident… Mark: To my face? Carol: Yeah, to your face, like “you are such an asshole” or “quit being such an asshole”. Mark: [long pause] I would think that I would remember that. If I don’t remember it, my only explanation for not remembering it is because it would have to be in a context where that could’ve been a joke or something. Maybe I took it as a joke. Or maybe [pause] I was in the middle of trying to defend some technical thing. My brain wasn’t in processing-emotions mode. It was in talking-about-technical-things mode. Maybe when someone said it, it just bounced off ‘cause I wasn’t in the space to really think about it. I don’t know. As an off-hand comment maybe. Nobody sat me down and said ‘Do you understand that everybody here dislikes you, right?’ Maybe it was a kind of willful ignorance on my part. Maybe I just felt so justified in everything I said and did, that any kind of criticism bounced off until the Miles’ thing? I don’t really know. I then bring up Letitia’s email and the fact that it happened one or two days before the flower apology. Carol: She specifically remember that after the email, she said either the next day or the day after, you brought everybody flowers. Mark: Right, well, part of my problem is I don’t remember the context of the thing very well. All I remember is I talked to Miles. But why did I talk to Miles? So it probably was after some incident that she’s describing. Mark tries to recall what happened Mark: Now that I’m thinking of it, her email was definitely part of it. Okay, this is one scenario that may have happened. But I’m not 100% sure, because it’s so long ago. I think her email spurred me to talk to Miles myself. She may have been the one who told me how bad things were. Then I go to talk to Miles about it. I think I was already upset by the email. When I talked to Miles, he basically confirmed everything in the email and said “It’s not just Letitia.” That was the order of events. I think her email upset me. Carol: do you remember specifically whether she said you were not a team player? Can you recall that phrase? Or what part upset you? Mark: [pause] Okay, a lot has started to come back to me right now. [laugh] So far what I’ve mentioned is… Mark goes on to say that now thinking back he was probably picking up some antagonizing feedback from the ICs along the way. But he didn’t understand what it meant. At the time, he just felt that Letitia and the other ICs had a misunderstanding of him. And they probably put him in the asshole box. Mark: I couldn’t get out of the box, the asshole box. Anything I said or did just reinforced it.” But because Mark never thought of himself as an asshole, all the feedback before the meeting with Miles didn’t sink in. Instead, Mark felt that he was the victim. So he started disliking Letitia. Mark: Because I felt she was the one that had wronged me, that had put me in the asshole box. And I was just some young dumb kid, trying to put some code together for them. Now I’m being labeled as something I don’t feel like I am. I always thought of myself as a nice guy. So when she wrote that email, my initial reaction to it was “this is bullshit!” After all the stress I’ve put myself through for this company and all the shit I put up with. After all that, for her to tell me I’m not a team player. Basically reinforce the idea that I’m some kind of asshole. It just seemed so wrong to me, ‘cause I didn’t see myself as an asshole. So yeah, I got defensive and I went… Mark went to Miles’s office to complain about Letitia’s email. It was then Miles turned around and told Mark that everybody else was on Letitia’s side. Mark: That woke me up and made me realize that I can’t defend my behavior. It doesn’t matter if she’s part of the problem. If she is antagonizing me to a point where I ended up becoming an asshole, that doesn’t mean I’m right to be that way. As our conversation goes on, Mark tries to make sense of why the feedback like Letitia’s email didn’t directly help him and instead agitated him. Mark: I think that was the problem. She just didn’t have an accurate model of me. Her model of me made me out to be an asshole. I feel there were legit explanations for why I was the way I was. That email, I feel was just even more antagonism. That was just her way of trying to tell me how to improve. But it was the wrong way. It was a bad way. Maybe I felt like she was trying to prove that I was an asshole. And I was defending myself the whole time. I’m not an asshole. But we couldn’t have a really deep discussion or anything. She c

Show Transcript [Section I: Introduction] Welcome to the Work Stories Project. I’m your host Carol Xu. Oh, workplace assholes. Have you ever worked with one? Have you ever wondered what’s going on in their head when they’re making other people miserable? Well, I’ve got an interesting story for you. We’ll hear the victims’ perspective first. Then, we can also get into a workplace asshole’s head and poke around a little and ask him questions like “So, were you aware that others regarded you as an asshole? And how did that feel?” So, let’s get started.  [music] [Section II: The Coworkers’ Perspective] Our story took place in a silicon valley startup named Bisnet in the early two thousands. The main product of the company was an online platform and database to help other companies manage their employee data, such as payroll, insurance, and employee benefits. Mark was the lead software engineer in the company. He was regarded as the workplace asshole by many of his co-workers, especially the implementation coordinators. The implementation coordinators, or let’s call them ICs from now on, had to interface with both Mark and the clients. They just HATED working with Mark. Here’s what Letitia, an IC at the time, recalls her experience working with Mark: Letitia: He wasn’t very popular. Some people thought he had a self-righteous attitude. And he was exhibiting more signs of “Well, I’m the most important person here.” For example, Mark once proposed in a group discussion that as the web master of BISNET’s website, he’d like his email to be God@BISNET.com Letitia: he wanted that to be his email for if you have any questions or comments about this site or whatever. That was shot down rather quickly. But that’s kind of how he saw himself, at least in my eyes and other people. I think they thought he viewed himself as God of Bisnet. Miles, the executive vice president at BISNET at the time recalls going to one of the Company’s Christmas parties. He heard Mark’s mom talking about Mark in front of the group, Miles: His mother would try to elevate his status and raise how important he was… And so, we already know what Mark’s ego was on that topic. And you got the mom. And you saw some of the dynamics going on. That’s what I remember.   Although Mark didn’t have any formal managerial power over others, he played an indispensable role in the company. Because he was in charge of developing BISNET’s sole product, the company’s business to a large extent relied on his work. Miles likened Mark to someone who holds the keys to your car. Miles: Again, the situation was challenging when you got somebody that’s hard to work with that holds the keys to the car. It’s not a place you’d like to be. He had a little bit free reign, because he could do what he wanted, because he had the keys to the car. If he walked, we would be in big trouble. In everyday work, the ICs felt like they had to beg Mark to answer technical questions or to improve the software to accommodate customer requests. Here’s Letitia again, Letitia: Oh, there were many people that just hated dealing with him at all. It’s like they would do anything to avoid having anything to do with him because there was a little bit of the “awkh, what do you want now?” kind of thing. And the conceit, you know, ‘you need to bow to me because I’m the one who’s gonna be able to fix this for you.’ That doesn’t always work very well. (laugh) I ask her whether Mark had the power to directly affect her job security, Letitia: while he may not necessarily have the power to affect my job directly, he could affect how things got done for the customers that I had to be face-to-face with. And that’s a biggie, because I had one customer that, while I was face-to-face with her, she started crying because she was spending so many hours fixing problems that the system was creating. That made me feel just awful! I wanted to fix it for her. I probably thought that I would piss him off and he wouldn’t get my customers enhancements or requirement changes taken care of. And then I’m still hanging out there having to face the customer. It became more of a personal ‘I’m gonna do this for you,’ instead of ‘my job is to improve the system for our clients.’ And that is dangerous territory for any employment situation, any professional environment. You can’t make it about a personal situation ‘I’m doing this for you.’ More than 14 years later, Letitia still vividly remembers this one time when the whole team including Mark were working on a project overnight,  Letitia: I think one of the things that he emphasized was something like ‘I can always find another job. I’m just worried about the rest of you.’ Oh wait a minute, what you were saying is that none of the rest of us is bringing any value. And we are here because we can’t get another job? (laugh) It’s a real put-down. I also get to talk to Bret, one of the few friends Mark had in the company at the time. Mark introduced Bret to work at an IT support position at BISNET. Bret recalls that Mark liked to argue with others. Bret: I saw a few times he would... He was really good at arguing. [Laugh] He should’ve been on the debate team when he was in school, because he definitely had a point of view and he defended it till the last. I’ve seen incidences where he would…He didn’t exactly yell, but he made people feel small. Like he wouldn’t out loud say ‘you are an idiot.’ But he would essentially imply that with what he would say. I did hear that a couple times. Making people feel small—I really like Bret’s way of putting it. It kind of summarizes our experience dealing with most assholes. Why would they do that? I’ve got to talk to at least one asshole to find out! [short music break] Section III: The asshole’s perspective          So I manage to have a series of long conversations with Mark over the period of 3 months. You may wonder whether it is hard to track him down and get him to talk. Well, it is easy in this case. He happens to be my husband. And in fact he has volunteered the story to me.           He worked at BISNET long before we met. I had little knowledge of his BISNET years. When he shares the story with me, I treat him just like any other story contributor to the show. I don’t try to make him look better or worse than who he is or was. My role is to provide a special space for reflection. Imagine a space where you can feel at ease and be yourself without any internal or external judgments. That’s the space I hope to co-create with all my story contributors. You may think of your work experience as monotonous and boring. To you, it may taste like bland water. But to me, every drop of your experience has a unique sound and feel. I want to be a soundboard that reflects all kinds of qualities in the human experience of work.           Mark and I start our first free-form conversation in our living room on a Saturday morning. When I ask Mark to tell the story from the beginning, he starts with his back story. Mark: Well, I think it’s important to hear a little of my back story. It kind of helps to explain things. Keep in mind that the people at the company didn’t really know much of the back story. They didn’t know what to expect from someone who had my history. In any case, the history is I grew up poor. My dad wasn’t around… His parents divorced when he was two years old. At some point in his childhood, his family relied on social welfare to survive. He taught himself computer programming in high school. BISNET was his first full-time job. He was 21 when he started. To his surprise, some big companies started to use the program he wrote.  Mark:…We eventually got some big customers, like Ebay and Etrade. These are software companies and they are using our software to manage their online employee health benefits. So, that was kind of mind-blowing. So, it was kind of a mix of humble beginnings and being in a very unfamiliar situation for which I was not prepared. And also a situation that kind of blew up my ego a little bit. I thought ‘well, I must be pretty good, if we are having so much success. And it’s just me by myself, bla bla bla. But at the same time, I’m think ‘well, the software has all these problems. The website is kind of ugly. I’m not really good at design… Anyway, the whole thing was just emotionally weird for me, not really negative or positive, just weird. It was all surreal to me. So, the kind of humor that I would engage in would be the stuff that, in retrospect, is really only funny to me, because I don’t think it was very surreal to anybody else. I was the fish out of water there. But they were used to that environment. I ask him to give me an example of his jokes. Mark: My jokes would be about how surreal the whole thing was to me. So there was this one incident that really highlights that aspect. There was an investor meeting. They had a series of A fundings, series B and series C, whatever… So we had this meeting where the investors are meeting the employees of the company in this big conference room. And everybody’s introducing themselves. And I said something along the lines of ‘I am the original programmer. Almost all the code is written by me. So I guess that makes me the God of Bisnet!’ Carol: And you actually threw your hands in the air? Mark: Something like that. I thought I was being funny. But there was this kind of silence in the room. And maybe the perception was that I actually thought of myself as the God of Bisnet? Maybe they thought of me as not being the humble nice guy that I thought I was. And I always just thought of myself as the nice guy, the nerd.” Carol: So when you said ‘I guess I’m the God of Bisnet,’ what was going on in your head? How did you feel when you said that? Mark: [pause][sigh] I don’t know. There was some pride mixed in with all of it. It was pride plus also just the feeling of absurdity. So it was both of those things. I grew up in an environment that encouraged putting all your emotions on your sleeve at all times. Just be honest and always tell the truth. I kind of have faith in t