Did you ever work for someone who would make your blood pressure rise 50 points just for walking in a room? Now imagine that person is the President and CEO of your otherwise calm and relaxing place of business and you have to privilege of dealing with him on a semi-regular basis.
We have one of them over here at The Company, he is affectionately known (pretty much by the entire staff) as The Gestapo.
One thing I will say to JP’s credit, even though he can a nightmare at times behind closed doors he is nothing compared to the Gestapo. Plus he acts like a buffer between The Gestapo and me (which is one of the reasons I usually look the other way when JP acts like a total douche and still go out to lunch with him or speak to him at all). For all the douchey-ness I take from JP, he takes a million times more directly from The Gestapo.
So you may be thinking, how the hell did The Gestapo get to his position, I mean with everyone on planet Earth hating his fucking guts? Or do they??
Well that answer is tricky.
Contrary to what you might be thinking, The Gestapo does know how to have a good time. If you are a potential new client or a high level new hire for that matter, he can charm the pants off of best of them.
He lives large, VERY large, so if he’s swooning a new customer, money is no object. Anyone in this courting stage will probably think he’s the greatest guy on planet Earth. He has this ability to make people really like him, they genuinely do, until….
The honeymoon ends….
But by then it’s way too late to do anything about it. He’s already got you locked into a contract, or you’ve already quit you’re other job, or any of the million other reasons you have to continue to deal with him.
Did I mention he is smart, REALLY smart!
Besides being one of the smartest people I know he’s also completely arrogant and narcissistic, but not many people wouldn’t be in that role, right? (I doubt I would, I’d feel too much like a phony dick – but money talks…)
He told me one time during a discussion (or an argument, however you want to look at it) that he is NEVER wrong.
The actual conversation went like this:
“I’m never wrong, well I was wrong once and that was a time where I thought I was wrong about something but it turns out I was really right, but since I thought for a minute that I was wrong, I was wrong thinking I was wrong…”
This kind of shit you just can’t make up. Plus it’s very difficult to argue with that logic.
The real difference between JP and The Gestapo is that The Gestapo would have absolutely no qualms about ripping you a new asshole right in the middle of a funeral. He hasn’t a care in the world (I mean he is never wrong) and he really, really enjoys catching people making any kind of mistake.
To his credit he is very smart and it’s almost masterful watching him in action (assuming you’re not on the receiving end.)
He’s especially brutal when it comes to negotiations, it is like a rock concert watching him in action.
He’s rough during negotiations but watch out if one of the other parties (we at The Company know better) tries to lie. He’s like a magician setting up the person. He’ll bait him into elaborating on the lie, he’ll get him to commit to it, misleading on the left side and then…
BAM….
He’ll hit you with a right uppercut (Figuratively not physically), but that’s when the person sees for the first time the true beast that is The Gestapo.