Editor’s note: This article was first published in October 2013; the statement that most of the companies described had closed or were in insolvency proceedings refers to that time.
One of the pieces of advice we usually give candidates for a job interview is not to speak badly of your former company or bosses. The funny thing is that more than once I have wondered what would happen if I were the one going to a job interview and had to talk about my experiences at previous companies, and especially about some of the bosses I have had in the past… Either I would have to lie outrageously to the interviewer, or I would have to tell the truth, in which case they probably wouldn’t believe me.
I have seen it all at some of the companies I have worked for. I should say that I learned something at every one of them, both what to do and what not to do. These anecdotes also don’t reflect my view of the owners or of the companies themselves, only of some of the bosses and managers I met, at some of their branches. All of these companies have since closed or are in insolvency proceedings, except the one in the first case. And, much to my regret, every single one of these cases is true.
Cases 4, 5 and 6 all happened at the same company.
Fortunately, I have also known and worked with great leaders and mentors at other companies.
1. The weather-watching boss
At the time this woman was 27 and was managing director at a major international company with more than 2,000 employees and over 100 branches.
She lived about 90 km from the workplace, so she used to call to ask what the weather was like. If you told her it was cloudy, she wouldn’t come in to work in case it rained. Sometimes she didn’t come in when it was sunny either, because the air conditioning in her car had broken down. But that wasn’t her biggest flaw.
The accounts department noticed that a lot of orders had been placed for materials that didn’t exist. When they got to the bottom of it, they realised that she and her immediate boss (the one who had promoted her) had been defrauding the company for some time. Word has it that she now runs a business with that same boss.
2. Fine bosses
On a company trip, one night two Guardia Civil cars (Spain’s national police force with military status) and one local police car turned up at our hotel. They had come to take our bosses away. The next day we were given the appropriate explanations: we were told that the brother of one of them had had an accident and that the police had come to let him know.
Clearly, nobody sends three police cars to tell you a relative has had an accident. Although we never found out for certain what happened, everything suggests that while we were working, they had been stealing somewhere.
Which wouldn’t be surprising, because that company didn’t usually give advances on pay, yet it was our bosses who almost always asked us for a bit of money: “I’ve left my wallet behind… my card has expired…” Clearly they had what you might call “hidden vices”.
The company no longer exists, although my former bosses are still recruiting salespeople for all kinds of direct selling.
To be fair, despite their visible and hidden secrets, these people were great teachers for me in the world of sales, and they even taught me to always stay alert, because if you let your guard down, they could take you for a ride.
3. A broken promise from the start
This company had created a new sales section, whose previous head had failed with sales of €75,000 a year. That was the only figure I had. The manager negotiated my commission package for meeting targets and gave me two options to choose from:
- A 1% monthly commission on sales, or…
- A €6,000 commission if I reached €600,000 in sales over the half-year.
The truth is I didn’t know whether reaching €600,000 would be easy, since I didn’t know that market or the kind of customer I would be dealing with very well.
I chose option 2, to show some ambition and, above all, so as not to spoil the manager’s pitch, because option 1 was exactly the same as option 2: €6,000 is 1% of €600,000.
To my surprise, the €600,000 had been sold within the first four months, and at the end of the half-year I went to collect my €6,000 commission. I walked away with only €600, because the manager said he couldn’t pay me that much in commission when not even the veteran section heads earned bonuses that big. We closed the year with €1.2 million in sales, and my total commission for the whole year came to €900.
My mistakes: clearly I was young, because today, if someone doesn’t honour what they agreed with me, I tell them where to go straight away. It’s one of my red lines.
4. A section head throws a supplier down the stairs and the company does nothing
Arguments between customers and suppliers are normal, although it isn’t right even to get to the point of being disrespectful or losing your manners, let alone hitting a supplier of around 50 so that he falls down the stairs.
A section head who had already been involved in several physical confrontations with other managers, and even with workers, didn’t hesitate to push a supplier down the stairs on purpose. By sheer luck, the supplier wasn’t badly hurt.
The company never took any action against this section head, who, I insist, was not doing something like this for the first time.
5. Family is family, and the experts… what do they know?
The head office of a national supplier placed me in a neutral section at this company. This meant the company paid me but couldn’t fire me (it’s hard to explain). The company was like a circus, with more bosses than workers. Everyone was somebody’s relative, and every middle manager shared surnames with a senior manager or with one of the countless general managers.
The company had the capital and infrastructure it needed to compete nationally, but it never stopped being a provincial business that had expanded into four nearby provinces. In a way, that was what I was there for, and although my section was supposedly the future of that market, nobody liked it or respected it.
I saw experts come through who had advised even some listed companies on restructuring and expansion. But when these experts presented the list of people who had to go, including middle managers and general managers, the company got rid of the experts instead and everything carried on as before. After seeing that (and many other things), I decided to leave.
6. Pitched battles inside the company
I have seen a pitched battle between manufacturing on one side and distribution and part of the office staff on the other: everyone against everyone, objects flying, and so on…
While all that was going on, I was in the manager’s office, watching the show from above. As calm as you like, the manager said to me: “It’s all these young people… so much energy and adrenaline…”, to which I replied ironically: “Yes, that’s passion.”
That pitched battle was the climax of a series of isolated incidents that had been happening for months and that nobody had done anything to resolve. In fact, it didn’t take anyone by surprise.
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