Debbie, Nasty Attitude Meets World & Completely Incompetent Genius

Once upon a time at a workplace, a nightmare of a gem named Debbie worked. Originally hired for a customer service role. Somehow spent most of her time not doing her job. When she did, it tended to cause the engineers a lot of headaches and large institutions having their networks go down.

 Debbie couldn’t seem to get the difference between adding new fiber lines and turning off fiber lines or keeping both. Some concepts, even with a roadmap, is hard. Debbie was a talker. Also like to wear lots of clanging jewelry. You could hear her coming. As with all, how did she land in that position stories…she landed the role of director.

She was a stay-at-home mom, and her only other job was a ‘director’ of day care. That day care was in her home. It was for two families on her street. The company’s HR person was entering her first year of college. She was going for human resources or liberal arts or to find a husband. It was hard to find a crayon sharp in her box. Which is why she missed or never looked at Debbie’s application.

The art of passive nastiest was what she was known for. Real sweet in asking, then complete nasty with stabbing motions to your back or when something went wrong. The worst came when she couldn’t articulate what the customer said was wrong, get angrier to your face like you’d made the mistake. That person would call the customer, and it was a completely different problem or subject. Somedays it was just ridiculous.

Most of the time, she hide in her office. Those were great days for her staff. Debbie didn’t believe snacks, swag, pizza, or anything that looked like a reward. It was always awkward when the groups on either side order pizza or did potlucks. The floor was wide open with low cubicle walls. Groups were separated by inches. Her group was always offered. Like any incompetent nasty, bad manager, she would never voice it, but she would send out a direct order email that no one was to touch that food.

Discussions would be whispered on if she was literally raised in a barn, far away from others and never taught the basics of etiquette. Beyond manners, it also seemed she functioned with no self-awareness. Workers were paid to work, not work and eat. Your paycheck was plenty. No one should have to say, ‘thank you’ or ‘great job’.

Given how she had no idea what her group did, she made them write their own performance reviews. Debbie would cut things out or change numbers; the metrics were submitted with the review. She would ask if the reports were faked. When the company hired a real HR professional, that poor woman was overwhelmed with complaints about Debbie.

Peers complained. All but one senior level manager complained. Practically all complained. As with any monster, there needs to be a protector in a company. The one who shuts down others. The one who suggests that the complaints are petty or silly or unwarranted. Debbie’s protector could have been her twin; the only difference was Jeremy was male and didn’t like interacting with anyone.

When the company was acquired, many thought both would be gone. Nope. Those two roaches survived. They pulled off a move that no one saw coming, used someone else’s ‘race’ card with threat of lawsuit to secure a SVP for Jeremy and Senior Director for Debbie. Monsters like this dumbfound everyone with their highly fraudulent abilities. They can’t perform that responsibilities, duties or task on their job description, but can pull crap moves to get them bigger salaries and titles.

When companies are merged; two things happen automatically: curiosity and recognition of skills. Everything needs to figure out and feel others, because many have hurt feelings as to why they didn’t get the promotion or where shifted to another role. With Jeremy being quiet he was a harder read. Debbie’s high level of genius level incompetence with snappish tone was easy to spot. Then the questions start. More questions are asked and the ball of yarn unravels from there.

Debbie’s group was a pack. They like each other and function as a strong team. They didn’t technically need a manager, that’s how proficient they were. When others would call one of them, to casually chat, it was obvious. They were not on a call with a customer. Debbie started asking how to listen to their calls. Odd request for someone who performed 4 QA calls a month on each member of her group.

This monster remains in top nasty attitude form. Still doesn’t have a clue about anything. And somehow escaped a sexual harassment claim. The victim was terminated and not her.