The PHB Is Real

About a year and a half ago, BigHugeCo got a new CIO (Chief Information Officer or Career Is Over. You make the call.) The new CIO was a straight-shooting guy from India with a sense of humor. His underling, the Vice President of Infrastructure (or "Infantile" as we liked to call him) wanted the job.

Infantile was a poster child for bad management. His conversations were designed to hunt for flaws in the other person so he could cut them down "like a good manager." His all-hands meetings rewarded all the ass-kissers who'd worked for him since he was just a team lead. He openly trashed managers at the business units for being more concerned with doing business than [*gasp!*] following his IT edicts (many of which were overridden as part of the previous CIO's Monday morning routine. Coffee, read Wall Street Journal, invalidate all or most of Infantile's new policies.) Infantile had managed to become one of the few managers at his level where people questioned his parentage within earshot. And why not? He wasn't allowed to fire people, only humiliate them. And humiliation doesn't hurt your mortgage payment the way termination does.

When he didn't get the CIO's job after his previous boss left, Infantile decided the best way to look managerial in front of his new boss was to take him around and introduce him to the peasants. Where I work, we sat with the Help Desk at the time. It was a quiet afternoon, and one of the techs had us riveted with a tale of Duke Energy using his payment to pay someone else's electric bill. How did the new boss react?

"That's good, can you pay mine?"

Well, Infantile was having none of that. We just got friendly with his boss before he had a chance to poison the well. What a horrible crime. Infantile looks around and notices no one's on the phone. Well, it's a Help Desk, isn't it? Aren't these people supposed to be on the phone?

"Why aren't these phones ringing," he said. "Come on. Let's get back to work."

Silence. Staring. Roomful of jaws hanging open.

Finally, Rafferty, the one who had his light bill payments funneled to the wrong account, spoke up. "Um... People have to break something before we can fix it, you know. And they're just not breaking stuff today."

CIO cringed. So did we.

Infantile was fired two weeks later, replaced by an unabashed Office Space fan who let me keep my stapler.

We had a party.