First job out of school

wundt submitted 606 days ago

In my first �industry� job I worked for a small consulting firm run by a Jeckle/Hyde type of boss (who I will call �C�). It was a small company and I was still in graduate school when I started. The company had only 2 full time employees, and three or four part timers. I was brought on as a part time, and then moved to full time after a couple of months.

�C� was a woman with lots of experience in the industry who had left a large company and started a consulting firm because, as she put it, she was tired of �watching consultants drive up in their nice cars�. Pretty much everyone else who worked for �C� was still a student, including the VP (she was an MBA). �C�s method of running the business was to spend all her time trying to get clients while her relatively inexperienced staff tried to do the actual work. She would then sweep in at the end of the project, slap her name on the top, and present it. As a result, many companies felt they were not getting the attention they expected from her (anyone could hire some grad students) and we had virtually no repeat business.

Eight months after I joined the company, our client list evaporated. We had no work to do and I would spend much of my time making up work. I created a set of macro tools to make our job easier, created presentation materials for her to show to perspective clients, and generally just surfed the web doing �research�. Now that �C� was spending more time in the office, her true nature became obvious. She would screw things up and blame other people. She sent nasty letters to former clients. She would make wild accusations and statements with no understanding of the issues. Other people in the company had had enough and everyone who had been at the company when I started left. Unfortunately, I really needed the job and stuck around.

Eventually, she laid me off, mostly, she said, because she could not afford my (pitiful) salary. She made three promises when I was laid off: (1) I could continue to work part time, (2) she would help me find a new full time job, and (3) she would give me a good reference. She reneged on all three promises.

(1) She managed to find about 10-20 hours/week work for me to do over the next month. However, they screwed up my paycheck and I bounced several checks as a result. I managed to get her to pay my bank charges, but not without a lot of grief. She also wanted to fight my getting unemployment because I was still part time. The offers to work part time dried up pretty quickly after that.

(2) To help me find another job she gave the names of several other managers in town and claimed that she had �put in a good word for me�. Every person on the list said, �I don�t know why she gave you my name, I don�t have anything to offer.� And, when I did manage to get an interview with a local company and she claimed she was due a referral bonus even though my initial contact with company had not been through her.

(3) I was out of work for 6 months, when I did get a job offer I put her down as a reference. My new boss called her several times and she would not return the calls. I had to scramble to find another reference. She then called my new boss, after I had started with the company, and said I was unreliable and could not be trusted to work without supervision. My boss was very upset by this and I almost lost my new job before it had even started.

The happy ending� At my first review at my new job, my new boss gave me a %15 raise and a promotion, and said, �I don�t know what the hell �C� was talking about�. I am still with the same company and doing well.

Meanwhile, �C� has been pissing off everyone in town. When I go to industry gatherings and meetings, if people learn I worked for �C� they invariably have a story about their dealings with her and how crazy, stupid, or evil she is. Examples include: her firm getting fired for using undergraduate students to do the work, stealing or laying claim to work done by other consultants, and charging outrageous prices for fairly basic services. One fun quote from another consultant, "I don't mind the competition, it's that she gives the entire industry a bad name."