Defrauding USAid in the 2010s? The guy was a vanguard in skullduggery. You were riding the crest of a wave there.
One of my best boss-as-asshole stories took place when I was working at an early cell phone provider start-up, in the nineties. We had a team of salespeople who truly did toil hard, unlike a lot of sales departments. It was an uphill business, convincing companies that yes, this cell phone nonsense was here to stay, and you needed to jump in. They were all in their thirties, family-types mostly.
Our drunk, disgusting marketing manager decided the best time to schedule a haranguing motivational meeting was from 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm on October 31. Yep, Halloween night in an office of parents with young kids. It caused a flat-out uprising until it was rescheduled for the next Saturday, when they opened the office at 7:00 am and had everyone come in for two hours.
Well, yes, it was indeed among, if not the, funniest post of the year. However, the post also could have been an example of serious journalism if only it had been accompanied by documentary photo evidence of the accounting department staffed with "The Hottest Latin Women Who Ever Lived."
"My guess is that a higher-up had a thing for Latin women, and I was a diversity hire in case the Department of Labor sued them for only hiring women who looked like they should be doing the weather on Telemundo."
Maybe they were all the boss's daughters, like the waitresses at the coffee shop on Seinfeld who all had big breasts.
“Prosecutors said the scheme involved billing the U.S. government at falsely elevated rates and directing **company accounting staff** to meet overly high targets.”
My first office job was also run by a dumb asshole. He was well known to do layoffs every holiday season, and seemed to relish them. The company was run terribly and often teetered on the edge of solvency. The year I worked there happened to be 2016 and, you'll never believe this, but this scumbag CEO was also a huge Trump fan!
He was so excited about the election results that he put out a company-wide email going on and on about how we were entering an age of prosperity and this was going to be great for the company and he didn't foresee any layoffs in the future.
5 weeks later I got laid off along with a whole bunch of others. This time though the senior guy in my department who had been there for years had finally had enough and he quit right after, leaving them critically short in that area. Days after being let go they tried to rehire me. Despite being broke and inexperienced I told them to fuck off, which felt great and very much worked out for the best.
The fact that you made us hunt via links for the fact that the guy's name was Derish Wolff (!!!!) is fantastic stuff. It was funnier discovering that comically villainous name on my own than if you had added it to the article. Nice touch.
The lede to one of your linked stories describes your former boss as “A CEO of a New Jersey-based construction contractor.” I stopped right there, as there was no need to read further. My home state: it never disappoints.
In my own working life, the overlap between "bosses who make a point of publicly excoriating employees in order to 'motivate' them" and "bosses who are later caught with their hands in the till" has been... considerable.
Nothing says “visionary leadership” like calling a 9AM meeting two days before Christmas to announce that everyone else is the problem. It’s almost poetic how often the loudest lectures on accountability turn out to be early drafts of a future indictment. Scrooge energy with a DOJ epilogue.
"The CEO’s guilty plea was entered on December 14, which seems like a miscarriage of justice; he obviously should have had to wait until 9AM on December 23 in a tacit acknowledgement of his many crimes."
It would have been fitting, but if you think the Assistant US Attorney, the probation department, the Judge and his/her staff wanted to work on December 23rd, then your time in the Federal government taught you nothing. By the time you reach December 20, you're officially in, "Let's circle back to that next year" season.
"scamming USAID"? Say it's not so. I have been reliably informed by my betters that USAID was only ever involved in feeding starving children and lactating persons around the world.
No, but when the US government calls up USAID and says "You're actively hurting diplomacy with these countries, and we're trying to prevent a war." and USAID says "fuck you, we're still funding terrorists." [Welcome to the land of "Personal Anecdote"]
... this shouldn't feel like a good idea, to anyone.
I mean, when I was deployed to Iraq they were doing yeoman's work on the reconstruction projects across the nation; but I guess you can take the word of that crazy guy that tweets at Elon 24/7 instead.
My second job out of college, as a newly minted BA English, I discovered on December 23rd that I had missed the Christmas party of the Landmark Hotel ™️®️where I worked as a cater waiter. The blow was softened by the news that the GM, a grandmotherly woman, had made her entrance, fired half the staff by pointing at a person and saying “You!” then made her exit.
Defrauding USAid in the 2010s? The guy was a vanguard in skullduggery. You were riding the crest of a wave there.
One of my best boss-as-asshole stories took place when I was working at an early cell phone provider start-up, in the nineties. We had a team of salespeople who truly did toil hard, unlike a lot of sales departments. It was an uphill business, convincing companies that yes, this cell phone nonsense was here to stay, and you needed to jump in. They were all in their thirties, family-types mostly.
Our drunk, disgusting marketing manager decided the best time to schedule a haranguing motivational meeting was from 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm on October 31. Yep, Halloween night in an office of parents with young kids. It caused a flat-out uprising until it was rescheduled for the next Saturday, when they opened the office at 7:00 am and had everyone come in for two hours.
Maybe I'm just super jetlagged, but this is one of the funniest posts of the year.
Well, yes, it was indeed among, if not the, funniest post of the year. However, the post also could have been an example of serious journalism if only it had been accompanied by documentary photo evidence of the accounting department staffed with "The Hottest Latin Women Who Ever Lived."
It's not the jetlag!
"My guess is that a higher-up had a thing for Latin women, and I was a diversity hire in case the Department of Labor sued them for only hiring women who looked like they should be doing the weather on Telemundo."
Maybe they were all the boss's daughters, like the waitresses at the coffee shop on Seinfeld who all had big breasts.
Maurer, tell me you started taking Spanish lessons within a week of starting there.
Wait a minute….
“Prosecutors said the scheme involved billing the U.S. government at falsely elevated rates and directing **company accounting staff** to meet overly high targets.”
https://www.enr.com/articles/1536-ex-berger-group-ceo-charged-with-overbilling-scheme?utm_source=chatgpt.com
My first office job was also run by a dumb asshole. He was well known to do layoffs every holiday season, and seemed to relish them. The company was run terribly and often teetered on the edge of solvency. The year I worked there happened to be 2016 and, you'll never believe this, but this scumbag CEO was also a huge Trump fan!
He was so excited about the election results that he put out a company-wide email going on and on about how we were entering an age of prosperity and this was going to be great for the company and he didn't foresee any layoffs in the future.
5 weeks later I got laid off along with a whole bunch of others. This time though the senior guy in my department who had been there for years had finally had enough and he quit right after, leaving them critically short in that area. Days after being let go they tried to rehire me. Despite being broke and inexperienced I told them to fuck off, which felt great and very much worked out for the best.
The fact that you made us hunt via links for the fact that the guy's name was Derish Wolff (!!!!) is fantastic stuff. It was funnier discovering that comically villainous name on my own than if you had added it to the article. Nice touch.
The lede to one of your linked stories describes your former boss as “A CEO of a New Jersey-based construction contractor.” I stopped right there, as there was no need to read further. My home state: it never disappoints.
In my own working life, the overlap between "bosses who make a point of publicly excoriating employees in order to 'motivate' them" and "bosses who are later caught with their hands in the till" has been... considerable.
Nothing says “visionary leadership” like calling a 9AM meeting two days before Christmas to announce that everyone else is the problem. It’s almost poetic how often the loudest lectures on accountability turn out to be early drafts of a future indictment. Scrooge energy with a DOJ epilogue.
Ya wonder if he pissed off some footsoldier so bad that they ratted him out to the feds.
Give Derish Wolff credit. Within 7 months of that meeting he made the cover of ENR! Something obviously worked. In the short term 😆
Sorta like the impromptu meeting before xmas to announce $300MM dollars in layoffs.
Nothing says holiday spirit like Santa outsourcing the elves to Bangladesh.
It's actually a piece about a whistling duel while taking a shit on corporate commodes.
We had no shits to give - https://darby687.substack.com/p/no-shits-to-give
"The CEO’s guilty plea was entered on December 14, which seems like a miscarriage of justice; he obviously should have had to wait until 9AM on December 23 in a tacit acknowledgement of his many crimes."
It would have been fitting, but if you think the Assistant US Attorney, the probation department, the Judge and his/her staff wanted to work on December 23rd, then your time in the Federal government taught you nothing. By the time you reach December 20, you're officially in, "Let's circle back to that next year" season.
"scamming USAID"? Say it's not so. I have been reliably informed by my betters that USAID was only ever involved in feeding starving children and lactating persons around the world.
“scamming USAID” =\= “USAID is a scam”
No, but when the US government calls up USAID and says "You're actively hurting diplomacy with these countries, and we're trying to prevent a war." and USAID says "fuck you, we're still funding terrorists." [Welcome to the land of "Personal Anecdote"]
... this shouldn't feel like a good idea, to anyone.
That would certainly explain why the CEO had hired those Latinas
I mean, when I was deployed to Iraq they were doing yeoman's work on the reconstruction projects across the nation; but I guess you can take the word of that crazy guy that tweets at Elon 24/7 instead.
I used the link to read the story about the company you used to work for.
Hey, they were a New Jersey based company. Must be something in the water but the overwhelming possibility of grift is a given.
And yes, something was going on with
Slippery Seal Team Six. I wonder if even they had to do their part to "assassinate the overhead"
(an actual quote from your ex boss).
Sigh, negative reinforcement rarely works. I think some psychos just like to use it.....
My second job out of college, as a newly minted BA English, I discovered on December 23rd that I had missed the Christmas party of the Landmark Hotel ™️®️where I worked as a cater waiter. The blow was softened by the news that the GM, a grandmotherly woman, had made her entrance, fired half the staff by pointing at a person and saying “You!” then made her exit.