'I knew everything': Poor treatment of previous employee costs business $1,000,000 contract when they're assigned to manage the account

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Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
Dec 29, 2023 9:00 AM EST

It's not personal; it's just business—a phrase you'll hear only when someone has decided to treat you quite poorly or has gone back on their word and is hoping that these simple words will prevent you from retaliating. The more accurate truth is that business is personal—it relies on trust and established relationships. And when you've established that you can't be trusted and have a habit of disregarding your relationships—well, don't be surprised when people no longer want to do business with you.

After being poorly treated and made privy to their employer's business dealings, this employee went on to work for a company that was an important vendor for their previous employer. At their recommendation and armed with the knowledge of how their previous employer conducted business, their new employer decided not to take a $1,000,000 contract—proving that good interpersonal conduct is good business.

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  • 01
    Boss missed out USD 100m for treating his employee poorly I used to work at a consulting company in Asia owned by a Babyboomer European guy. Let's call the company "COG" and the owner as "Dick". To give a brief background, Dick spent his entire career working in the hospitality industry for various hotel brands all over the world. At one point, he specialized in one niche area in the industry and set up a consulting firm to provide consultancy to his business connections. The company employees w
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  • 02
    I spent my entire career working in the financial industry and am quite a specialist in the field of capital market fundraising. Dick approached me with a great plan to list one of his properties in North America in a stock market. At that time, it seemed to be a good project. He also offered me a management position in the company he set up to deal with the listing process and a good salary in comparison to the job I had at the time. The agreement stated that "if any party would like to termina
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  • 03
    Unfortunately, I joined the company at the worst possible time - the year-end of 2019. Initially, things were alright. Dick spent only 1-2 days a week at the office and spent the rest of the week abroad to acquire new businesses. However, as everyone knows, a few months after that, the COVID pandemic hit the hospitality sectors globally. Dick lost all his business deals in the pipeline. His property in North America was also shut down. The only income stream for the company was payments from the
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  • 04
    contracts. Dick got stuck in the office for 7 days a week with not much money in the bank account. This is when he showed his true characteristics: Despite the government's highly encouraged "work from home policy", Dick was dissatisfied with the idea. As a Boomer, he wanted to see his employees working all the time. He called anyone who chose to work from home as lazy and cowardly. In addition, he would randomly call them several times a day on non-important issues just to ensure everyone was a
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  • 05
    • He cut off 20-30% salary for all employees including himself. (This seemed acceptable at that time given the economic conditions) However, this will come up later. • He would be off at anyone in the company who mentioned any news about the pandemic. He just wanted to pretend that nothing severed happened and that things would be back to normal soon.
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  • 06
    Due to the pandemic and the financial status of the company, my role significantly shifted from "getting a company listed" to "selling our assets to whoever gives the right price". Thus, the company can survive. During these months, I had to work closely with the company CFO called "Fatty". Fatty had a very impressive resume with a degree from an Ivy League University. However, for some reason, there was nothing
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  • 07
    inside that brain. He could talk about all the financial jargon all day long but he could not understand even the basic concepts of those words. Fatty would make mistakes all the time and trouble other colleagues. For some odd reason, Fatty would receive only minor criticism from Dick. Conversely, if other employees made 1/10 of the mistakes that Fatty did, they would receive harsh criticism.
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  • 08
    We were approached by various buyers. One of them was one of the largest Real Estate Developers in this country, let's call "Mackie". We had a few meetings with senior executives from "Mackie" to present our North American properties. They seemed to be interested to invest $100 million in acquiring the property, but then they just disappeared.
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  • 09
    Later on, we were approached by a Private Equity firm, let's call "Dummy". Rather than acquiring the property, Dummy made an offer for shares of COG. As a result, a series of due diligence occurred. I had to lead the deal from my side. During the process of document preparation, I found various histories about Dick and COG: ● Dick always claimed to his potential clients that his company had been involved in various projects worth billions of dollars in the past. It was partially true. However, h
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  • 10
    • There were a few projects in that COG played a vital role. However, those projects were relatively small. To make matter worse, 100% of them fail before completion.
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  • 11
    • There were various companies that Dick claimed to have co-founded or was a part of the key management. However, there were no official records of it. • By digging into financial statements, I found out that he paid back all the money he saved from cutting employees' salaries into his personal account as a form of "bonus". I felt horrible for working for such a phony. However, at that time, it was in Q4/2020. It was way too difficult to get a new job in the middle of the pandemic.
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  • 12
    The last straw came when we were about to submit the financial model to Dummy to set the valuation. I developed a financial model which would calculate all the potential deals into the valuation. All I need was the input of pipeline data from Fatty. After I plugged in the data, Dick asked Fatty to help review it. Fatty complained to everyone that the model was wrong and there were so many mistakes. When I checked, all those mistakes that he mentioned came from those inputs he provided to me -- G
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  • 13
    mistake but Fatty. However, Dick criticized me for not being responsible for my own mistakes and said that even though it was Fatty's mistake, I was still responsible to verify them (how the could I verify the correctness of the raw data???). I wanted to quit so badly at this point. Remember the 3-month notice period. This is where it became relevant. Throughout 2020, various employees quit. However, the term became a pain in the
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  • 14
    • It would be highly difficult for anyone to find potential employers who would be willing to wait for 3 months till the notice period is served. Thus, employees had to either pay the penalty fees or put in their resignation in advance before start looking for a job. For the locals, we could take the risk of staying at home with no job. However, the ex-pats needed to choose either to take a risk in leaving the country or to pay the fees. Most chose to do the latter.
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  • 15
    • The worst thing I experienced about this contract clause was when one of my colleagues who was one of the first employees of this company decided to quit because her grandmother was about to die in a few weeks. Therefore, she wanted to go back home as soon as possible to spend the remaining time with her grandmother. Yet, Dick insisted that she needed to pay the penalty fee. • In every meeting, Dick would try his best to scare the sh*t out of everyone but talking about those companies that wen
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  • 16
    I hold my grudge and waited patiently till Feb 2021. The pandemic became better and employers start hiring again. I got 3 offers within the second week of the month. Based on the situation, I knew that I would eventually get a job either in these 3 companies or somewhere else. Thus, I submitted my resignation which would be effective in May.
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  • 17
    Dick was furious. He knew he could not lose me at this stage since I was the only one who could execute with Dummy, but he was too arrogant to admit it. Instead, he gave me the worst "counteroffer" discussion anyone could have: • He said that I was a coward for jumping away from the crisis, and I would be a failure all my life if I choose to walk away now
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  • 18
    He tried to talk about all the deals that would be coming, and I would miss out on working on those projects • He said that I should ignore the higher salary that other companies might offer. The pandemic was harsh for everyone. I should stay to see the company's greatness. In the meantime, I could ask for money from my parents or my wife's parents!
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  • 19
    Needless to say, the conversation did not change my mind even a bit. When all those efforts failed, he brought up the 3-month notice period. He said that no company would be willing to wait 3 months and that I needed to pay a penalty fee to him if I quit. Unfortunately, this was when his own policy backfired: I intentionally did all the stupid mistakes that Fatty did. When he complained, I
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  • 20
    simply responded, "it was his responsibility to verify the information that I submitted". • I did my job very slowly. Thus, he basically had to pay me 3 months' salary for the work I normally completed in 1 week. • Whenever he complained, I told him that he could fire me anytime (in that case he needed to pay me 3-month salary as a penalty fee)
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  • 21
    For a person who always takes advantage of his employees, he probably wanted to scream at me. However, that was not the best part yet. By the end of April, HR from "Mackie" approached me. She said that she got my contact from a business card I gave to the senior executives several months ago. It turned out that the executives were very impressed with my skills. They wanted to hire a new Vice President and viewed me as a high-potential candidate. I took the offer and started working two weeks lat
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  • 22
    A few months later, Dick tried to use all his connections to reach Mackie's Chairman to propose his North American property once again. The Chairman assigned my team to review the property one more time. Last time, they were interested but they did not want to make an acquisition in the middle of the pandemic. This time, they felt the timing might be right and would like to explore more detail.
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  • 23
    My boss assigned me to look after the project. Since I knew everything about the property, he let me decide whether we should move forward with the deal. To be honest, the property was fine and Dick has improved the property's performance very well since his acquisition. However, a year ago when we first approached Mackie, Dick explained to me how he would screw every penny out of Mackie's pockets.
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  • 24
    To avoid criticizing Dick directly (I don't want to look like a guy who badmouthed his ex- employer), I pointed out all loopholes within the business model and explained that we could be taken advantage of from these loopholes if we proceed. Being a smart man, my new boss could sense something fishy about Dick, so he asked me to speak more about my experience. I told him about some of Dick's unethical behaviors mentioned above. Mackie management not only decided not to invest in COG's properties
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  • 25
    Death Bestowed - 1 day ago Im working at a company with many vps and it's quite exciting seeing more vps with any semblance of technical understanding of todays technology. 635 Reply Share cbelt3 10 hr. ago I fondly remember the CIO of a mega billion dollar steel company being proud that he had never used a computer in his life. He went on to waste over $1 Billion on a failed ERP system implementation, which helped the company to shut down and get sold off for pennies on the dollar. 58 Reply Sha
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  • 26
    MarsupialEuphoric35 1 day ago . You know what they say about Karma? Sounds like he got what was coming to him from his treatment of others. It's extra satisfying when you get to actively assist Karma without really being vindictive. 146 Reply Share
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  • 27
    stumpdawg 1 day ago I love it when people screw themselves with their behavior and practices. Reply Share 281 BadgerBreath- 9 hr. ago "What goes around comes around." 5 Reply Share
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