Bosses are Marmite. You love them or hate them and rarely anything in between, it’s the same with Star Wars movies. I could write an entire post on the last trilogy…. Be calm… breath…. At least there was no JarJar Binks.
When it comes to company leaders, I’ve worked with some interesting people (and by interesting I mean “How can they consistently make so many bad decisions?”).
I should point out that I don’t mean bad leaders on a personal 1:1 level, more how they acted in general, I don’t want you all thinking this is a rant, this is meant to be entertaining!
*cue more wavy lines*
It’s 2003, Britney still has her hair and Web Agencies are still a thing. I was working for one of the many “We build your website, we do your SEO, you pay us lots of money” outfits. I didn’t fit in from day one, I should have read the room in the interview and realised this was a clique that wouldn’t suit me. The fact that the boss spent more time boasting about his business than actually interviewing me should have triggered alarm bells, well, you live and learn.
On to the story, which sums up this “leader” perfectly.
Him (walking in to the room): “The funniest thing happened last night”
Me: (removing headphones… this must be important): “…go on”
Him: “So I was collecting Pizzas from this shitty place in Chandlers Ford, I opened them up to check them and they were wrong. I said to the guy I wanted a refund and he said no, that’s what we ordered”
Me: “…was it what you ordered?”
Him: “Obviously f**king not, I asked him if he knew who I was, what I did for a living.”
Me: “I’m guessing not”
Him: “So I told him, I run one of the biggest SEO companies in the UK, I can ruin his business by this time tomorrow, I can make it so no one finds him again.”
Me: “{literally dumbfounded}”
Him: “I got my refund, and I got to keep the pizza”
That was 2003, when pathetic bosses threatened minimum wage food staff by somehow “reverse SEO’ing”. I quit about 2 months later. Whenever I see someone treating service staff badly I still get PTSD flashbacks to this.
On a lighter note, a special mention to two bosses who I loved, Tom Barnett of Switch Concepts and Dr Boris Mouzykantskii of Iponweb. It’s no coincidence that the two business owners I admire the most led very successful companies. Tom was chaos, I loved it. Brainstorming chats with Dr Boris were the fastest and most insightful I’ve had in ad tech. If every ad tech company had a “Dr Boris” the industry probably wouldn’t be in the mess it’s in.
I can’t end a blog post with something nice, so I’d just like to say that if iRacing doesn’t add Thruxton to their circuit list soon I’m going to start mailing them pictures of dead pigeons. There, that’s better.