Another Story from Days Past - My Boss Was an Asshole

This happened at a programming job I had several years ago. The boss' name was Lyle. Let me tell you about Lyle...

Lyle was the supervisor over two groups of programmers - one of which my friend, Brian, and I were in. Lyle was a big guy and hyper-competitive. During pick-up games of basketball during lunch, he had no problem "accidentally" elbowing you in the face to get the ball. He also had quite a temper which he used to keep other managers in line. At one point, it seemed that the only people not afraid of him were myself, Brian, and another programmer named, Jerry, who regularly stood up to him regarding impossible deadlines. Brian and I preferred to mock him... openly... to his face.

I will now divert from my original story to this one.

The company I worked for decided to try out the FISH program. The FISH program was created by a fish monger place in Seattle, and it has four tenets that one should do at work, and they're so obvious that only management would consider them ground-breaking enough to spend loads of money on the videos and other things to teach them to employees. The tenets are: Choose your attitude, have fun at work, be there for your co-workers and clients, and make their day (do something nice for your co-workers). The main reason my company did FISH was they would rather spend money on the aforementioned videos and buying various fish things like toy fishes, squeaky-toys in the shape of whales (I pointed out that whales are mammals), fishy decorations, etc. than give employees proper recognition in the form of raises and promotions.

Lyle had gone to our district head office and watched the tapes before us, and when he came back, he walked around the office with a single shot Nerf dart gun, shooting people over and over again, annoying the hell out of them. This was Lyle's version of have fun - take advantage of a program that hasn't officially started yet to pick on employees. Brian and I called him down our aisle and had this conversation.

Me: So, Lyle, what's with the Nerf gun?
Lyle: It's part of a new program we'll be doing here. I watched some videos of the program that shows how to have fun at work.
Me: So... you need a video to show you how to have fun?
Lyle: (starts to say something but is interrupted)
Me: That's kind of pathetic.
Brian: I don't know. I think it's brave of him to admit that.
Lyle: (starts to say something but is interrupted)
Me: No, it's pathetic, Brian. I think it's probably a sign of a bigger problem.
Brian: You might be right.
Me: (starts to say something, but by this time, Lyle has yelled something at us and stomped off).

Brian and I then went out to lunch and stopped by Toys R Us, where I purchased the largest Nerf gun they had - a three chambered, 21 ball, rapid-fire behemoth that took 4 D batteries to run and sounded like a Harley when you pushed the button to get the motor running.

Back to the story. This actually happened after we had done FISH for a while. Lyle decided that his two groups should go out for pizza and then go to the local Laser Tag establishment and play a couple of games in their tri-level maze. We got there, and the teams were divided up into our two programming teams, and Lyle played on the other team. At Laser Tag places, you are given a vest and a gun, both of which have several targets on them for people to shoot at while you're shooting at other people's targets. When you're hit, the gun vibrates, and you are temporarily unable to be hit again for five seconds. This allows you to get away from whomever just shot you. The system keeps track of who shot whom, who hit the most people, etc. and you get a piece of paper with that information and your rank in the game at the end.

My team won the first game. Of course, this could not stand with hyper-competitive Lyle, who immediately started demanding we make a bet on the second game and calling us chicken when we said we just wanted to play. I asked loudly enough for everyone to hear, "I'm confused... I thought normally the winners do the smack talk." Finally, it was decided - solely by Lyle - that the losing team would sing the, "I'm a Little Teapot," song.

We enter for the second game, and immediately, something is wrong. I'm getting hit over and over again in shoot-outs to the point where my gun was deactivated more than it was active. I even asked a member of the opposite team to let me shoot his chest target as a test, and when I did, nothing happened.

After the game, we saw Lyle's team had blown us away by about 1000 points, and he was having a good time talking smack and demanding the song. He was waiting for me to join the group before the singing commenced, but I was busy talking with the kid who was running the game. I asked him if it were possible to turn off one team's targets and if our boss had requested that. The answer was yes to both. I joined the group, looked at Lyle who was demanding his song, and told everyone what I had found out. Everyone from both teams just gave him a dirty look, and we filed out the door to go back to the office.

A few weeks later, Brian and I were in a meeting with Lyle. He was meeting one-on-one (or in our case, two-on-one) to discuss any problems we had with our direct manager or the company in general, and Brian and I replied that we didn't care for it when managers cheat at games. Lyle's face reddened (not out of embarassment), and he tried to explain that the reason that he had done that was because his team had all, "the older Asian women on it who hid in a corner and giggled and shot at people if they walked by," and he didn't want that team to feel bad for losing twice.

Brian and I didn't let him get away with that, telling him that none of us were talking smack or trying to make the other team look bad. Everyone else was mature enough to realize it was just a couple of friendly games of Laser Tag, and ultimately, we didn't care who won, and it was him that had the problem with losing. The meeting quickly ended after that.

A few months later, Brian had his best golf game after I paged him from work (he had taken a day off) to let him know that Lyle had finally been fired because he was such a giant asshole.