Pierre, The Japie Bastard
I love South Africans.
I work with nearly 100 of them - of all races and colours - in my team and throughout the company, plus contractors. On the whole, they are top notch people - humourous, generous, hard-working, and just good fun.

And I have only met two that were utter wankers - one was Pierre; the other - the pathological liar who upon being fired for conduct unbecoming - had his desk drawers opened by people wearing rubber gloves and carrying tongs, so they could remove a number of soiled womens panties, opened condoms (they weren't game to check if they had been used), and some DVDs of hardcore anal porn. And as for what he had stored on his PC hard-drive.......!!!

But I digress. This is about Pierre.

Pierre, a former bank manager in SA joined the company as department manager, the fifth one in the space of four years (following on from "Tim The Pants", who requires a QOTW all for himself). He was physically large - 6ft4 and built like the proverbial brick shithouse. He didn't so much speak as snarl - this man could not talk normally.

Although he was my manager's manager I had little to do with him thankfully, and his reaction to a calculated remark I made more or less proved that at some stage he had been a member of the AWB. Which didn't surprise me at all....

Now, some managers incorporate different strategies from existing management experts, eg Covey, Kehoe et al, into their management methods. Pierre's method was more akin to that of Atilla the Hun, being simply "FUCKING DO AS I SAY!!!!!"

The walls in our building were very thin, and you could always tell when some poor sod was getting a roasting from him. Loud verbal abuse of a work nature followed by that of a personal nature was his only management style. And normally it was a woman that would bear the brunt of his bullying. The floor had a female-male ratio of 10 to 1 so in some ways its not surprising, however in all the time he was über-boss I only saw 1 male team leader get a reaming from him. At least 2 or 3 a day would get a bollocking, and one of those would walk out in tears.
So at least 5 women a week would be in a dishevelled emotional state.
A good friend of my Girlfriend At The Time endured this treatment every day for 3 weeks until she quit. She wasn't incompetent either - she did her job well and had done so for the previous 2 years before the arrival of Pierre.
He just took a dislike to her, and made her life hell. This was the pattern he followed with others for the next 3 to 4 years. Although there were a number of unfair dismissal cases, he somehow escaped with the equivalent slap with the wet bus-ticket.

The only person who I saw actually confront him was Matt, a Bradford lad and ex-Para who eyeballed him on more than one occasion and gave it back to him in no uncertain terms. Once or twice it nearly came to blows, and my money was on Matt to wipe the floor with his fat ass.

As a manager, he was crap. Motivation was through fear and intimidation, morale was non-existent, he would change his mind or department policy on a whim and deny he had ever done it. But he maintained a veneer of respectability, and kept budgets down by ensuring a constant churn of staff - usually those with experience and knowledge would be bullied out so the noobs he hired or promoted would be on lower salaries - and anything that he couldn't shoehorn into looking good was either dressed-up or quietly hidden.

When we amalgamated with another company, someone higher up the food-chain heard his loud braying voice and decided he was the man to manage the integration. This, he thought would be his crowning achievement - but it turned out to be the beginning of his downfall.
Lets just say it was a bad choice, and 8 years on we are only now free of the fallout from the physical and psychological damage his 'work' caused. The best part was, the higher-ups saw this, and decided to move the seat of his realm from Auckland to Christchurch.

The NZ South Islanders, or Mainlanders as they call themselves are a hardy bunch who take shit from no-one, least of all a loud bullying foreigner. They were familiar with his past and his methods and after a few meetings, presented him with a welcoming gift - the entire staff had joined the Union!
So with his staff standing up to him, the Union on his back for everything from his bullying to wages and terms & conditions, the higher-ups saw what was happening and began to turn the screws on him themselves. They placed enormous demands on him.....

....until he finally cracked. The story goes that one day he deliberately drove his car into the wall of the carpark and sat there bawling his eyes out with a smashed, steaming radiator and the horn blaring, until ambulance staff took him away.
He officially took two months of sick leave and never returned.

And all was peace in the little valley once more.


Length - four years of threats, abuse, bullying and downright incompetence to totally screw up a department.
(Sebulba continues to fight evil with evil....., Fri 15 May 2009, 19:02, Reply)