Work Stories Project Carol Xu

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?
Le

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 want