Day 11 - Bob

I started my career as corporate attorney at a small law firm in NYC.  My first deal was the acquisition of a small injection molded plastics company that was being purchased from heirs following the death of the founder.  Our client was a new private equity firm run by a former consultant named "Bob."

From the moment I first met Bob at a "kickoff" meeting for the acquisition, it was apparent that he would be a difficult client.  I would come to understand that Bob's fund was new and that he had been given one year by his investors to close a first transaction.  When we started on the project, we had less than four months until the first year anniversary of the fund.  Bob needed to close the plastics acquisition by Christmas or lose the opportunity.

The 100 or so days following the kickoff meeting were complete chaos.  The seller and their attorneys, somehow sensing the desperate state of our client, were completely unreasonable.  Bob, in his state of distress, insisted on daily update meetings to review a master "to do" list and personally reviewing every document that left our firm.  Bob took the concept of "control freak" to a new level.

To make matters worse, Bob's interpersonal skills were nonexistent.  Whether intentional or unaware, Bob had decided that the secret to unleashing the best performance out of staff and hired hands was to berate them constantly.  A spelling mistake on page 47 of a 60 page document was cause for an extended verbal lashing.  Yelling, or maybe more aptly screaming, although contrary to accepted standards of professional behavior, was acceptable behavior as long as Bob was the perpetrator.

We closed the transaction on December 24th at about 11:00 am.  I caught a flight home to Texas at 3 pm, exhausted but happy that the ordeal was over.  The firm I was working for had done nothing to control Bob and the three or four associates that had worked on the transaction were scarred by the experience.  With a first successful transaction under his belt, Bob's fund was secure.  Although it would be easy to expect that Bob's behavior would improve once the pressure of losing his fund had been removed, the opposite was in fact the case.  Bob became convinced that he was one of the firm's "most important clients" and his demands became even more unreasonable.

Reconciling Bob and the firm's misbehavior is not easy.  Somehow,  misbehavior is excused when the goal is making money.  At the time, I rationalized that Karma would have her way with Bob and the Firm at some point in the future. In the case of the Firm, they burned through a host of associates and ended up being swallowed up by a larger firm.  The partners made a lot of money but left behind the charred remains of failed marriages, bodies broken by stress and general unhappiness.

I haven't kept up with Bob.  Last I heard, he too had made a whole lot of money.  In my travels, I have met alumnus of Bob's firm and the universal sense seems to be that he is in top running for worst boss of the last two decades.  If money is the only way you keep score, then Bob's approach has been extremely successful, otherwise it looks like he has created a small piece of hell on earth.  Wealthy or not, I can't imagine that is a nice place to live.