1090: More Workplace Fails and Bad Boss Tales | Feedback Friday

1090: More Workplace Fails and Bad Boss Tales | Feedback Friday

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[00:00:00] Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to Feedback Friday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with Feedback. Friday producer, the community service officer, directing traffic beneath this broken traffic light of life conundrum, Gabriel Mizrahi.

[00:00:16] Gabriel Mizrahi: And I've got my white gloves on and everything.

[00:00:17] Jordan Harbinger: That's right. Going way too hard with the hand motion.

Why do they do that? I guess it has to be visible.

[00:00:21] Gabriel Mizrahi: Why do they do that? Traffic. Cops are so extra with the hands

[00:00:25] Jordan Harbinger: they are noticed mean it's probably kind of intense. Also, you don't wanna get hit by a car, so you gotta wave around and I dunno, you know what it reminds me of? I

[00:00:31] Gabriel Mizrahi: don't

[00:00:31] Jordan Harbinger: buy it for the record.

You don't buy it? No. I

[00:00:33] Gabriel Mizrahi: think that they're just eating up the stage time and they were like, failed mimes or something failed. Failed mimes. I'm gonna enjoy this. They can't just wave somebody through. They have to make this like huge theater kid

[00:00:44] Jordan Harbinger: from high school turned law enforcement like I know. Yeah.

What?

[00:00:47] Gabriel Mizrahi: I don't need this presdigitation. Just tell me where to make a left and let me get on with my life. I don't understand.

[00:00:52] Jordan Harbinger: You know what this reminds me of? Those North Korea traffic ladies. Oh yeah. You've seen those right when we were there. Of course. Yeah. What's weird about them, not only is it that they don't have traffic lights, that's strange of course, but the fact that they use these, these ladies that stand on those little podiums in the middle of the intersection.

What's weirdest about that? It's not the uniforms, the makeup, the whole thing. What's weirdest about that is they do all of the motions, even when there's like three cars in a mile and there's no cars in the intersection. Yep. So they're still doing it like as if there's just a full load of cars. It makes absolutely no sense.

Just take a break until a vehicle pulls up. There's 20 cars in Pyeong Yang that have gasoline.

[00:01:29] Gabriel Mizrahi: I mean, that's kind of like the bartender we met in that remote hotel way in the north or whatever. Oh, that's weird. Who we walked in, there was nobody in the bar, but she's just behind the bar, like on duty waiting for somebody to come in and order a drink.

[00:01:42] Jordan Harbinger: That was super bizarre because do you remember how tired and exhausted she was, where when you didn't order something she would just shut off like a robot and look at the wall and then when you ordered something she would just like perk up a little bit and make a drink with Yeah, it was so like boot up.

Yeah. I was like, are you malnourished or tired or are you just having a day or, it was such a bizarre. That was so weird.

[00:02:02] Gabriel Mizrahi: I remember one of the traffic guards we saw in the Capitol was so beautiful. She was like. Uncomfortably attractive. And one of the guys, one of the guys on our tour was like, who is that?

And I was like, bro, I don't know who she is. Why are you asking me the crown jewel of Yeon Yang? I don't know what to tell you. Yeah. Like she just, this weirdly beautiful person who's directing traffic for nobody, which is the most North Korea thing I've ever seen.

[00:02:25] Jordan Harbinger: It truly is. I, I wonder if they recruit specifically good looking women for that job.

'cause they're highly visible, especially in the touristy area, not touristy areas. Let me catch myself. There's no such thing in North Korea, but in a capital where tourists might actually see them

[00:02:39] Gabriel Mizrahi: and everyone takes photos of them. Yeah. So that could be part of it. Yeah. They're iconic and so they probably choose that for a reason.

[00:02:44] Jordan Harbinger: All right. Well, on the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker.

And during the week we have long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, war correspondents, neuroscientists, investigative journalists, national security advisors. This week we had Victor Vevo on diving to the deepest parts of each of the seven Oceans. He designs submarines and crazy exploration vehicles, and it's just, it was an episode all about the, this general spirit of Adventurism.

Such an interesting guy. He was in the military, ends up getting a PhD in something like air power in Eastern Europe, and then he starts a hedge fund. Makes a bunch of money doing that over the years, then uses that money to climb the highest mountains and dive to the deepest parts of the ocean. It's just a fascinating conversation with somebody who's got kinda like a Jules Verne OG explorer guy vibe.

It's really something. He's really something. On Fridays though, we share stories, take listener letters, offer advice, play obnoxious sound bites, and compare Gabe to various pieces of essential infrastructure. I. We're doing something a little bit different from our usual feedback Friday. Today we're taking another round of Bad Boss slash Ridiculous Colleague stories.

You guys sent us a ton of crazy workplace stories the last time we did this, and we couldn't take 'em all, so we decided to do a bit of a part two since y'all seem to enjoy part one so much. And on that note, given our theme today, I wanna kick off here by sharing a little piece of advice for anybody considering a nude project, job opportunity, whatever, before you dive in and commit to something.

Always ask or think about what is the day to day actually like, because a lot of opportunities, they really do seem exciting, but they actually give you less of the life that you really wanna live. For example, being a writer might sound fun, and I'm sure it is, especially if you're James Clear Mark Manson, Ryan Holiday type of person.

And it becomes even more fun when you're thinking about release parties and book signings and fan mail. But the reality is routine writer's block rejection followed by years of grind and promotion. If you are lucky enough to even get that far, I. Designing furniture is another one. Sure sounds sexy. It sounds glamorous.

There's a reason every romantic interest in Hallmark movies does that, has that career, but it involves a ton of physical labor. You've gotta coordinate logistics. You've gotta deal with difficult clients. You've gotta source materials. In other words, everything that isn't the sexy, fun phase of sketching something in a cafe in your little book and making it a reality.

Every job has the 15% maybe of glamor or excitement or fulfillment. The other 85% is usually pretty routine and banal and sometimes quite taxing, project management, admin, grinding, stumbling in the dark, dealing with fear and rejection, whatever it is. So when you're assessing a new opportunity, your job is to pierce through the fantasy or the exterior or the sales pitch and find out what it is really like.

This is part of your due diligence and your homework, not just if you're choosing something, a creative thing on your own. Also, when you were getting a job or getting into a career, there's a kind of a little bit of a, it's a joke, but not really that most people who went to law school really should have just been a summer intern at a local law firm, and they never would've gone to law school because most of us, we had no idea what a day-to-day for an attorney looked like.

And the people that did, most of them chose not to go to law school because they were like, Ugh, this is pretty ugly and heinous. Another way to get insight is to informally interview people at whatever job or in that field, make it safe for them to tell you the truth, as well as doing your own homework, reading about the reality of the situation.

And if you can't do that, you can at least remind yourself that it will not be all high fives and rah rah and creative satisfaction 24 7 because no job, not even hobbies. Are that. All right, Gabe, what is the first thing out of the mail bank?

[00:06:30] Gabriel Mizrahi: Hey, Jordan and Gabe. Years ago I was hired to be fresh blood for a brokerage firm branch office that had not exactly evolved with the 21st century.

It was predominantly run by men, and the assistants were exclusively women in their late fifties to sixties. One of my coworkers was a woman. We'll call Dolores, the self-appointed office manager, self-appointed,

[00:06:52] Jordan Harbinger: oof Dolores. Great choice. 10 outta 10 on the name. I'm already getting a picture of who this person is.

[00:06:56] Gabriel Mizrahi: She was a mob wife type in her sixties, had had four molars removed and loved hot dogs. Okay. And her only social life was her grandchildren and an online word game where she'd often meet men to date. Wow. What a description. I'm picturing Carmella soprano with a bottle of Heinz in her desk drawer. And like a, A Wordle subscription.

Yeah. So

[00:07:17] Jordan Harbinger: instead of a bottle of whiskey, she just busts out her favorite of the 57 flavors. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For her hot dog, her daily hot dog. What a character.

[00:07:25] Gabriel Mizrahi: That's my backup relish. Mm-hmm. She divulged all of this information to me within the first seven minutes of meeting her.

[00:07:31] Jordan Harbinger: Okay. Well, okay.

Interesting data point there already. Yeah. When people open up way too quickly. There's nothing wrong with appropriate vulnerability, of course, but when you tell the new person at the office, yeah. So I meet men through words with friends, and also I don't have any molars.

[00:07:45] Gabriel Mizrahi: That's a little weird. I'm sorry, what did you just say?

Did you just say molars? Yeah, molars. Yeah. Molars. Molars. Dude, I've never heard anyone say molars before. Molar. What? Molars? What are you talking? Is this a Michigan thing? Maybe. Now I feel self-conscious about it. Oh, I love this moment. What a, this is great. Oh, how the tables have the molars have been pulled.

Okay.

[00:08:07] Jordan Harbinger: Why don't you soldier that into your memory?

[00:08:09] Gabriel Mizrahi: I just did, and you didn't even have to tell me. And by the way, speaking of soldiering, I got a very lovely message from our editor, Jace, telling me that I did not pronounce it wrong in England. They say soldering so fine. Well, when we start doing this show in England, you'll be right.

But

[00:08:25] Jordan Harbinger: until then you're wrong. You're still wrong.

[00:08:27] Gabriel Mizrahi: Frantically books, digital Nomad Visa for the UK

[00:08:30] Jordan Harbinger: anyway. I feel like nine times outta 10, these are rapid oversharers. They're just, they're a little nuts. These people,

[00:08:37] Gabriel Mizrahi: as opposed to the two podcasters who spend eight minutes dissecting how to say the word molar.

Molar. At first, Dolores was my pal and was set up as my mentor. Oh God. Or is it mentor?

[00:08:47] Jordan Harbinger: Uh, I might go, no, I'm in my head about it. You know

[00:08:49] Gabriel Mizrahi: what, just let it mentor however you want. Let's pretend that didn't happen. Once I learned the ropes though, I didn't need her as much or at all. In her view, my excelling was a slap to the face.

[00:08:59] Jordan Harbinger: Well, there you go. Insta besties. Insta enemies. A

[00:09:01] Gabriel Mizrahi: tale as old as time. Mm-hmm. I knew I sealed my fate when I caught a clerical error on some of her paperwork, which would've had huge financial repercussions when I brought it to her attention. She took it extremely personally and felt I was quote unquote out to get her job.

Within the year I was enemy number one.

[00:09:18] Jordan Harbinger: Ooh. Hypersensitivity and paranoia. Red flag number two. Yep. Maybe typical for a mob boy from the 1960s, but you know what's weird? Yeah, that's true. She brought it to her. She didn't go to the boss. It was like, Dolores messed this up. Good point. She brought it to her attention where no one else had to know, and she still wasn't smart or her EQ was still so low.

She thought, oh, she must be out to get my job. I mean, it doesn't make any sense.

[00:09:41] Gabriel Mizrahi: How insecure do you have to be to take somebody doing you a favor as a threat?

[00:09:45] Jordan Harbinger: Exactly.

[00:09:46] Gabriel Mizrahi: I distanced myself from Dolores and kept it as professional as I could in an extremely small, gossipy office. She would speak poorly about me to the other assistants, attempt to blacklist me from the more important projects and was all around unpleasant.

I let my management team know, and they basically told me Dolores would be retiring soon and asked if I could just deal with it until she left. Besides, everyone already knew what she said about me wasn't true. I mean, I

[00:10:10] Jordan Harbinger: kind of get it, but also wait a dodge, a necessary conversation. Cool. Management bro.

Just waited out. She's gonna be going soon.

[00:10:17] Gabriel Mizrahi: Then one week, Dolores seemed to turn over a new leaf. She was friendly, conversational, and even chummy towards me. She then quickly gushed to me about a man she met through the apps.

[00:10:28] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, okay. Speaking of tale as old as time, but which apps, dating apps are like Scrabble?

Go.

[00:10:34] Gabriel Mizrahi: Why do you care?

[00:10:35] Jordan Harbinger: That's so

[00:10:36] Gabriel Mizrahi: funny. Why do you asking? Dunno. I don't.

[00:10:37] Jordan Harbinger: Is that even I, I'm hoping that's a real game for some reason. I wanna know if she met a guy on Bumble or on some New York Times brain teaser. Literally doesn't matter at all. Carry on.

[00:10:45] Gabriel Mizrahi: No, it doesn't. But that is a, I don't know if she plays the New York Times brain teasers.

It might be more like Candy Crush with like a side of vocab.

[00:10:53] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:10:54] Gabriel Mizrahi: He was an architect in his sixties, successful and extremely good looking like. Way too good looking. The disparity between Dolores and her new dude was immense. When she told me he had a British accent, all my alarm bells went off.

[00:11:08] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, we've seen this movie before.

Geez.

[00:11:11] Gabriel Mizrahi: She was feeling herself though. She started wearing makeup, taking care of herself, and even wearing little kitten heels. All in anticipation. Now, Jordan, you wear those when we record, don't you?

[00:11:21] Jordan Harbinger: Kitten heels. I was, I I was gonna ask you

[00:11:23] Gabriel Mizrahi: what those actually are. I think that's, um, those low heels on the shoot, like, it's not like a spike heel.

I see. It's like a sm but it's kind of like a cute, I don't actually, no, but I think it's, no, it's late elegant. You can't pretend

[00:11:35] Jordan Harbinger: you don't know now.

[00:11:36] Gabriel Mizrahi: It's definitely not a heel where they just stick a sticker of a kitten on it. That I know for sure. Women's kitten heels, Google image search.

[00:11:44] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, they have the tiny little, little spike in the back, but you're right, it's lower.

It's not like a, it's a low one, right? Yeah.

[00:11:49] Gabriel Mizrahi: Okay.

[00:11:50] Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

[00:11:50] Gabriel Mizrahi: All in anticipation of her new bow coming back from Greece once his mega hotel construction project wrapped. Oh God. Oh man. I knew I couldn't say anything because she'd think I just didn't want her to be happy or that she couldn't land a hot guy. So instead, I'd ask open-ended questions, hoping she would connect the dots.

[00:12:09] Jordan Harbinger: Nice. Well done. That's a tricky dance right there, especially when the person doesn't like you, doesn't trust you and doesn't want to hear what you have to say.

[00:12:16] Gabriel Mizrahi: Well, the dots never connected and the catfish scam took off from there. Still feeling sorry and nervous for this woman. I finally expressed my concerns to a male coworker when I asked him to be frank with Dolores.

He told me, as long as she isn't sending the guy money, let her have her fantasy. I. Well, the fantasy ended when the week this British supermodel turned architect, hotel mogul was gonna fly to the states. He ended up in the hospital. A nurse reached out to inform Dolores that she was this guy's power of attorney.

Yeah, because that's how nurse, the nurses are also power of attorney in hospitals. I. They needed a wire of $23,000 in order to perform life-saving surgery.

[00:12:55] Jordan Harbinger: Okay, so I think you might be a little confused. Dolores, the nurse reached out not to say hi, I am a nurse and I'm this guy's power of attorney. It, she reached out to be like, Hey, Dolores.

Got it. This stranger that you've never met and talked to once on the phone, you're his power of attorney. Oh,

[00:13:08] Gabriel Mizrahi: that makes more sense.

[00:13:09] Jordan Harbinger: And also he needs $23,000. Which you don't need a power of attorney, like none of it makes any sense. It's just all stupid. That's hilarious.

[00:13:17] Gabriel Mizrahi: I don't know why I assume that the nurse was his power of attorney, but yeah, this makes even less sense.

[00:13:20] Jordan Harbinger: It's just a cheesy romance scam that you really have to have three neurons maximum to fall for.

[00:13:27] Gabriel Mizrahi: At that point, she couldn't lie to herself any longer and admitted to everyone, including herself that the jig was up.

[00:13:33] Jordan Harbinger: That's actually faster than I would've thought. Good for her. I'm glad she didn't get scammed.

Even if she is the office, busy body,

[00:13:39] Gabriel Mizrahi: she confessed. She knew it was a scam, but she just wanted to feel important and loved. Oh, that's pathetic. But yeah, I had an empathy towards Dolores that didn't exist before. It had to be hard being alone. And all any of us really want is to feel loved.

[00:13:54] Jordan Harbinger: Well, fair point.

And it's really nice that you could have that empathy for her. But yeah, this is exactly the vulnerability that these scammers exploit and it is so sad.

[00:14:03] Gabriel Mizrahi: Although how somebody can know it's a scam and keep it up just because they want to feel loved is very weird to me because then you're playing a lot, you're basically scamming yourself.

[00:14:11] Jordan Harbinger: That happens a lot with these scams. That's also what she's saying. Right. But who knows if she really knew it was a scam. Maybe she just said that to save face. 'cause when she realized it, she realized it was so late that she should have realized it earlier.

[00:14:22] Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah. Like I'm not that dumb. I'm just lonely and I really company.

Which

[00:14:25] Jordan Harbinger: is, I don't know. Maybe that's better. I don't,

[00:14:27] Gabriel Mizrahi: I don't know. I don't know. Hard to say. I'm happy to say she never sent the money, although I feel like she must have sent him something along the way. Yeah. 'cause this guy was around for months and I'm not sure how many love scammers are in it for the long game.

[00:14:40] Jordan Harbinger: Well, you'd be surprised. It is hard to say, but you're probably right. Scammers don't like to hang around if they're not getting anywhere. It seems like before asking for $23,000, they would've tested the waters with $500 or something like that. So yeah, they look for easy targets, and when those targets dry up, they just move on.

[00:14:54] Gabriel Mizrahi: Unfortunately, Dolores became almost intolerable after all this. She went back to hating me, and my only respite was when Covid hit and our office shut down. When she heard I had landed a promotion within the company, she only said, that's good. You weren't happy here. Gee, wonder why signed cringing at the scavenger bachelor who went after my petty office manager.

And because her judgment wasn't spectacular with debt, he tried to saddle her even though I tried to cross examinee her.

[00:15:22] Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Poor Dolores. Huh? What a piece of work, you know, potential plot twist that male coworkers, like You're asking too many questions. I am messaging her on this app to keep her from driving all of us crazy.

And you want me to warn her?

[00:15:36] Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah, right. Why are you complaining, dude? She's being nice now. Everybody. Why are you complaining? Yeah,

[00:15:39] Jordan Harbinger: exactly. You know what this person coulda slash should have done has been like, this is a scam. My next steps are clear. Go on Google images and find another handsome person.

Yeah. Start talking to Dolores by using words with friends or whatever. Just so every day isn't a bloody nightmare in the office.

[00:15:56] Gabriel Mizrahi: Imagine catfishing somebody, not to get money out of them, but just to make them tolerable. Yeah. In the kitchen at

[00:16:01] Jordan Harbinger: what is sort of unrewarding. It's a weird scam. That is. Yeah.

What is your angle? I really just wanted to go one day without you belittling me for absolutely no reason. So that's why I am sending you pictures from a dude who's an underwear model online. Yeah. It's interesting. We've talked about how to support people who are the victims of scams, especially romance scams, but that gets a lot more complicated when they're people at your office and they have some sort of power over you or in the place where you work.

It can be hard. To intervene when bruising, someone's ego might actually create blowback for you.

[00:16:32] Gabriel Mizrahi: And when you're not super close with them and you don't feel a lot of loyalty toward them, right? But then you feel bad for them because you're a decent person. That is a, that's a hard spot to be in.

[00:16:41] Jordan Harbinger: Your approach was absolutely the right one though.

Ask a lot of questions. Plant the seeds for them to realize what's happening. Give them some room to figure it out. I think you handled it well.

[00:16:48] Gabriel Mizrahi: The other thing that jumps out at me about this story is that people who are mean to you at work are almost always just miserable in their personal lives.

[00:16:56] Jordan Harbinger: Of course.

Of course no one who's happy even bothers to make someone else's life hell at work. Why would you go through the trouble,

[00:17:03] Gabriel Mizrahi: or why would you view everyone as competition when they're actually trying to save you? Yeah, that too. Dolores just sounds so insecure as we talked about, on top of being unhappy, and I have to think that that also played into her susceptibility to a scam like this.

[00:17:14] Jordan Harbinger: For sure. Yeah. Why else would you fall for something like this? She literally said, I just wanna feel important and loved, which is pathetic. That's so sad and sad. To your point, Gabe, that's a strange thing to admit to someone. 'cause if you're self-aware enough to know that you fell victim to a scam because you just wanted to feel important and loved.

Wouldn't you then wanna figure out, you know, why you wanted to feel important and loved to the point of blindness?

[00:17:37] Gabriel Mizrahi: Well, there's no iPhone app for that, Jordan. You know, that's gonna take actual work. So, I

[00:17:41] Jordan Harbinger: mean, there is an app, it's called Better Help, but maybe I'm overestimating Dolores here. This is a great coworker story, poor, confused, thirsty, Dolores Carmella soprano with a hole in her heart and an addiction to crossword puzzles.

A

[00:17:54] Gabriel Mizrahi: hole in her heart, and apparently four in her head too.

[00:17:56] Jordan Harbinger: The hole in her heart though. That six across,

[00:18:00] Gabriel Mizrahi: yeah, that's a 28 tooth woman in a 32 tooth world. Poor thing. I

[00:18:04] Jordan Harbinger: hope she's doing okay wherever she is. She's probably sitting near a hot dog cart by a children's park. Yeah.

[00:18:09] Gabriel Mizrahi: Or like a in a, in the chair in a Chilean back alley dentist's office.

One of those two places. Oh, nice. It's one of those two places for sure. Yeah.

[00:18:15] Jordan Harbinger: But seriously, this is a good reminder that everyone's going through something and while you never have to put up with cruel treatment, it does help to remember that it's rarely about you. More importantly, I hope you're doing well.

Sounds like you moved on and up and are living a Dolores free life, which is, eh, it's something worth celebrating. You know, it costs less than $23,000 and will actually make you happy. The fine products and services that support this show, we'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Better Help.

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Alright, back to feedback Friday. Okay, what's next?

[00:21:06] Gabriel Mizrahi: Hey guys. I worked as a chef after I graduated from high school. I went from being a dishwasher to assistant kitchen manager inside of a year, and six months after that I became the head kitchen manager.

[00:21:17] Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Impressive. Nicely done.

[00:21:18] Gabriel Mizrahi: After a year of running the place, I was hired at another restaurant.

The chef there took me on and everything was great. I was learning new techniques, recipes, and a bunch of other skills. There was always something off to me about this chef. He was very quick to hand over responsibilities to me, even though I wasn't even the sous chef yet, like opening the restaurant, disarming the alarms, and organizing the prep cooks and food shipments.

I just started a couple months before and thought that I must have been doing a good job if he was already trusting me with these extra things. Also, after running a previous kitchen and seeing how much more business we were doing, I expected the tips to be quite a bit more significant. The chef handled all of the tips, dividing them among the other cooks as he deemed adequate for the shifts and hours worked, which was pretty standard practice.

Oh boy, I see where this is going, but there were a few times when another cook and I at the same level with the same experience, shifts and hours, got different tips. One time I got $50 more than him. Another time he got a hundred dollars more than me. I confronted our chef about this one day and he said, oh, I'm sorry.

I must have miscounted won't happen again. He then pulled out a decent sized wad of cash from his pocket and made up the a hundred dollars difference

[00:22:27] Jordan Harbinger: that isn't shady whatsoever. Cool accounting bro. Just bust out a rack

[00:22:32] Gabriel Mizrahi: and peels off a couple benes like, yeah, this should fix it.

[00:22:34] Jordan Harbinger: Hey, don't spend it all in one place.

Could this guy be any less subtle about what's going on here? Come on.

[00:22:40] Gabriel Mizrahi: At that point, I knew something was up. I was speaking with one of the cash girls in the office a few days later and noticed that the one table where he always counted the money was also the only table in the restaurant that none of the security cameras could see.

I brought it up with the general manager, but he said that he controlled the front of house business and the chef controlled the back of house, so he couldn't really do anything about it.

[00:23:00] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, pretty sure that's not true. The manager is probably getting a taste of all this. It's so corrupt.

[00:23:06] Gabriel Mizrahi: A few months later, other coworkers started noticing the chef parked in the parking lot really early in the morning and allegedly saw sex workers getting out of his car.

Then saw him stumbling in looking disheveled and hungover. It later came out that he was addicted to cocaine, gambling and hookers. Ah, yes. The holy trifecta

[00:23:24] Jordan Harbinger: all paid for by the hard earned tips. He was stealing from you guys, right? What a mess.

[00:23:28] Gabriel Mizrahi: In the end, I decided to leave. I didn't wanna work in that environment anymore.

A couple months after I left, one of my old coworkers called me one morning to tell me that the chef had been caught stealing $10,000 from the safe upstairs in the office. He had been arrested and taken to jail.

[00:23:43] Jordan Harbinger: Wow. So he must have been in way over his head, man. Probably owed money to some loan sharks or some underground casinos or something like that.

Meanwhile, he's putting garnishes on people's tilapia every night. That's actually kind of terrifying.

[00:23:56] Gabriel Mizrahi: No one ever heard from him again.

[00:23:58] Jordan Harbinger: Ooh. So he might have skipped town maybe. Or maybe sleeping with the fishes. Yeah.

[00:24:01] Gabriel Mizrahi: I'm loving this like late nineties Italian dude. This is great.

[00:24:04] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. This is all I got.

You know, I was kind of bummed. My last ad pivot wasn't as funny, so I feel like I'm trying too hard now to make up for it. It's not, I don't know if it's working.

[00:24:12] Gabriel Mizrahi: The following month when the new chef took over, everyone's tips in the kitchen went from an average of $200 every two weeks. Two around 600 to $800 every two weeks.

[00:24:21] Jordan Harbinger: Oh my gosh.

[00:24:22] Gabriel Mizrahi: We were one of the busiest restaurants in the chain. My suspicions were right. He was skimming thousands of dollars off of every cook's tips to feed his drug and gambling habits. We had around 50 to 65 cooks working full and part-time. So the amount of cash this guy was taking was huge. We also found out that his salary from the restaurant was upwards of $120,000 a year, not including the several hundred dollars a month in food and booze that he was allowed to have.

Signed knew something was fishy when our restaurant was so busy and after seeing stuff that wasn't pretty, I got out of there in a Jiffy, which meant that sadly I wasn't privy to him doing a little sniffy sniffy. But that doesn't mean I wasn't itching to find out if he really was iffy.

[00:25:03] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, okay. So this is gonna be a Gabe going ham in the Signoffs kinda week.

Is that what's going on?

[00:25:07] Gabriel Mizrahi: I feel like I need to match the energy of the letters today. That's what's happening.

[00:25:11] Jordan Harbinger: I feel that you're getting upstaged by these absolute maniac bosses and you gotta keep up. Yeah, and like

[00:25:15] Gabriel Mizrahi: Dolores, I'm feeling very insecure about it, so That's right. That's what that is,

[00:25:18] Jordan Harbinger: man. What a grift, though.

I am now. I'm sure the general manager was getting a cut of that. How else could he look the other way? This is wild. I'm also curious, which restaurant has 65 chefs

[00:25:28] Gabriel Mizrahi: and cooks? Dude, they were working at like Houstons or something, like one of those big chains. I think that's must be what it is. It's gotta be That's, I'm trying to even imagine

[00:25:36] Jordan Harbinger: how many people can work at once.

I mean, it just must be a massive kitchen. It's a big operation. The only thing I can really say about this story is good on you for confronting this guy when something was off. That takes him Kas and was absolutely appropriate. Of course, it didn't fix the issue, it just made things somewhat right for you and your colleague that week.

But kudos to you the fact that the GM didn't do anything about it, even if there were a world where it wasn't under his control. I think that's unconscionable. If I were in your shoes, I would've kicked it up to the owner. 'cause you know, that person would've been pissed to find out. The chef was almost certainly stealing from his staff and that the GM refused to do anything about it, and as it turned out, he was stealing from the restaurant too.

So I can't imagine the owner not taking action if they got wind of this.

[00:26:17] Gabriel Mizrahi: Oh, for sure. What I'm taking away from the story though, is how much damage an addiction like this can do. Yeah. We've taken so many stories over the years about people who have hurt their families, their friends, their peers, their employers because of their addiction.

You remember Jordan, that really moving story we took a couple years back from the guy, such a sweet guy, really a gem of a human being. And he stole from his own parents when he worked for their company when he was in his addiction. Yes. So heartbreaking. This chef was obviously a criminal, not a good boss, but he also was out of control.

And to your point, Jordan, he was probably scared and desperate, or maybe he was just feeding his addiction and this was the only way he knew how. But either way, stealing seemed like the only option possibly to stay alive. I don't know. It freaks me out. It's just a good reminder that when you do not address an addiction, it can ruin your life and it can hurt a lot of people, including really good people like our friend here along the way.

[00:27:08] Jordan Harbinger: Of course, the stakes are incredibly high. Everyone pays some kind of price for being around an addict, which is why so many people have to pull back, draw hard boundaries, because it can be too chaotic and painful to have a lot of contact with somebody like this. This is a wild story, man. I do wonder what happened to this guy if he's buried in the woods outside Schenectady or whatever, or if he's hiding out Walter White style flipping burgers in New Hampshire.

Who knows what a world, man, I mean, he went to jail and no one ever heard from him again. That's a little bizarre. You can reach us friday@jordanharbinger.com. Keep your emails concise. Try to use a descriptive subject line that makes our job a whole lot easier. If your sister-in-law is ruining your parents' life, your partner's been accused of things you can't disprove, or your partner read your journal and is now holding your private thoughts against you, whatever's got you staying up at night lately, big or small, crazier, mundane, and hit us up friday@jordanharbinger.com.

We're here to help and we keep every email anonymous. Don't forget, of course, about our newsletter wee bit wiser. It's every Wednesday. It's about a two minute read. It's a bite-sized gem from a past episode delivered to your inbox there. If you wanna keep up with the wisdom from our thousand plus episodes and apply it to your life in a very practical way, I invite you to come check it out.

You can sign up at Jordan harbinger.com/news.

[00:28:18] Gabriel Mizrahi: Okay, what's next? Hi, Jordan and Gabe. I'm a department manager at a supermarket and back in the day I had a janitor who worked under me at night. He was in his sixties and had a Homer Simpson build. One weekend he called me because the compressor for the freezers was down.

I. I came in and to my surprise, he was pushing the floor scrubber around in just his underwear and nothing else. That's a great image. Peter Griffin buffing the linoleum floors at Albertson's. Needless to say, I told him to put some clothes on. Well, sure. Yeah. You can't buff in the buff, which you do in pal.

[00:28:52] Jordan Harbinger: No, you cannot. Pretty sure. That's 12 different health code violations in the supermarket as well. For sure. Especially if you are anywhere near the deli section. That is not okay. His only answer was. It gets hot in here though. Amazing. So this guy was like, it's toasting here. I'm just gonna strip down to my fruit of the looms.

I gotta be comfortable

[00:29:10] Gabriel Mizrahi: another time. The same janitor out of nowhere told me cocaine isn't as bad for you as people say it's a bit like coffee. So maybe that adds something to do with him stripping when nobody was in the store.

[00:29:21] Jordan Harbinger: I mean, it does tend to get hot when you're absolutely bomb blasted on cocaine.

So from what I've been told, uh, even if you're standing inches away from a stack of frozen stoves, lasagna,

[00:29:33] Gabriel Mizrahi: what a weird place to have the cocaine sweats.

[00:29:35] Jordan Harbinger: I love that he uses the Sigmund Freud defense dude. Like, Hey, cocaine's not so bad. It's basically just espresso you put in your nose.

[00:29:41] Gabriel Mizrahi: I mean, some people do say that, but I don't know anyone who robbed the safe at their work because they were addicted to macchiatos.

[00:29:48] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, the chef from the last question wouldn't be skimming tips if he was addicted to flat whites.

[00:29:54] Gabriel Mizrahi: So he goes on. Thankfully he no longer works for my store, but. That doesn't change how bizarre a situation it was. No, no. It does not signed a boss who contemplated sick leave after walking in on a guy in his skis.

[00:30:07] Jordan Harbinger: I mean, what can I add to the story? Nothing. Just a chef kiss of a visual perfection. Yeah, that's

[00:30:11] Gabriel Mizrahi: right.

[00:30:11] Jordan Harbinger: The only thing that would make this better is if the janitor was singing when our friend walked in, like risky business. Remember that scene?

[00:30:17] Gabriel Mizrahi: Oh yeah. Just lip syncing Bob Seger by the butterball.

Turkeys. That would be nice. Exactly.

[00:30:21] Jordan Harbinger: Backlit by those heat lamps on the roasted chickens.

[00:30:26] Gabriel Mizrahi: I wish I had half this janitor's confidence. Dude, my life would be very different. This guy's insane.

[00:30:30] Jordan Harbinger: You know how you can get it?

[00:30:31] Gabriel Mizrahi: Tell me

[00:30:32] Jordan Harbinger: cocaine. Oh, there you go. It's little bit like coffee. I mean, it's basically the same

[00:30:34] Gabriel Mizrahi: thing.

That's what I need. I need a raise, Jordan. So you need a raise. Oh, now I'm gonna start stealing from your sponsors.

[00:30:40] Jordan Harbinger: That's right. Sometimes I agonize over which button? Down shirt to wear on camera. Uhhuh. And then there's this guy doing manual labor in his tidy whitey after calling his boss to come to the store.

That's the funniest part, knowing he's

[00:30:51] Gabriel Mizrahi: gonna walk in knowing that his boss would find him in his right. Why I don't the ball's on this guy.

[00:30:57] Jordan Harbinger: That's a level of D gaf. Yeah. That I personally expire to. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. The yayo helps. I think so. I think it does. I think that might be

[00:31:06] Gabriel Mizrahi: the secret to a success.

Alright, next up. Hello Jordan and Gabe. Years ago I worked for an Ohio newspaper covering the legal system. The boss was a psycho who had an affair with one of the reporters, and management did not care. In one of my stories, I wrote about a secretary who testified that she found banking records in someone's desk that she thought were fraudulent.

My editor changed it to say that she found wads of cash in a filing cabinet. I was the only reporter in town who covered this story, so my boss pulled this straight out of his ass. I called him out on this at a staff meeting, which really embarrassed him and put a target on my back a mile wide.

[00:31:44] Jordan Harbinger: I wonder why he did that.

Was he just sensationalizing the story? It's his weird choice. Sounds

[00:31:48] Gabriel Mizrahi: like it. Or maybe, I mean, it was bad enough, but, or maybe he added out for this company. He wanted the story to sound worse. I don't know

[00:31:54] Jordan Harbinger: either way, and I'm sorry to keep repeating myself, but yeah, cool. Journalism bro, just makes stuff

[00:31:59] Gabriel Mizrahi: up wildly unethical.

Yeah. This is a proper newspaper. This isn't some kind of like Tabloidy blog being run from Koala Lumpur with like zero oversight, where you can just say whatever with impunity. This is not good. So he goes on days later, he accused me of missing an important judicial ruling that happened on my day off when I pointed out that I wasn't working on the day that opinion was issued and someone else was filling in for me at the courthouse.

He said that was quote unquote, no excuse. He said I should have written about the judge's ruling before it was even issued.

[00:32:30] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:32:30] Gabriel Mizrahi: As a former lawyer, Jordan, you would understand that no one has access to court rulings until they are released by the clerk's office.

[00:32:38] Jordan Harbinger: No. Yeah, I got it. I might have been an average lawyer, but I do know that courthouses don't give sneak peeks, especially to journalists.

So this guy is a, a total loon

[00:32:47] Gabriel Mizrahi: cool understanding of how time works, bro, I guess. Yes. So he goes on exactly. I tried explaining this to my boss, but he said that was no excuse and wouldn't listen. He claimed that they had covered judicial opinions before they were issued in the past, but couldn't offer a single example to back up this claim.

After that, he told me to cover two trials at the same time and not miss a word of testimony in either one. I pointed out that I couldn't be in two places at the same time, and he said, that's no excuse. Fortunately, one of the other reporters volunteer to cover one of the trials for me.

[00:33:21] Jordan Harbinger: I love this. No excuse thing.

I want you to cover two different trials. One's in Ohio, one's in Kentucky. Okay? But I can't bend space time to make that happen. It's no excuse.

[00:33:30] Gabriel Mizrahi: No excuse. Yeah. Astral project yourself into the courtroom, or you're not a real reporter.

[00:33:34] Jordan Harbinger: Exactly. What do you, you're supposed to Doctor Strange this shit, or you're fired.

This guy's. Yeah, he's literally nuts. Okay, so then what happened?

[00:33:41] Gabriel Mizrahi: The reporter hated this guy so much that we had an hours long staff meeting to try and sort things out. This meeting caused me to miss several hours of an important trial I was covering. I explained this to the boss beforehand and he said he wouldn't blame me for missing some of the testimony because the staff meeting was mandatory.

[00:33:58] Jordan Harbinger: Wait a minute, wait a minute. So when you're missing a trial, because you guys have to discuss how insane he is, he's fine with that. Yeah. But when you miss it, because you can't defy the laws of physics, you're bad at your job. You're

[00:34:10] Gabriel Mizrahi: fired. Yeah. Yeah. Two days later, he chewed me out for missing a key part of the trial.

I told him that missing part of the trial was his idea that he said he wouldn't blame me for it. He responded by storming out of the room. I. One day he called me into a meeting and noted that two weeks before I had written a story about a years long legal case that was finally coming to a close, but I didn't write a follow-up story about how the case ended.

I told him that I hadn't written about the final results because the case hadn't closed yet. We were still waiting for the final ruling from the judge. Oh God. The editor replied, oh, I didn't know that. Well, you're fired anyway. Oh god. Years later, this guy held a high profile job in politics and government, but he had to resign under a cloud of ethical violations and trying to cover up a sexual harassment scandal.

[00:34:59] Jordan Harbinger: Of course he did. Wow.

[00:35:01] Gabriel Mizrahi: He's now teaching somewhere.

[00:35:03] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. And he's now, he's pulling the same BS with fifth graders. Oh yeah, for sure.

[00:35:06] Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey Billy, where's that book report you owe me? Um, you haven't assigned it yet. No excuses. No excuses. Signed an erstwhile hack who took a ton of flack from a guy who was whack and finally had to clap back when he went on the attack.

'cause I. I just couldn't crack a way to report back from two incompatible tracks.

[00:35:27] Jordan Harbinger: Man, Gabe, this one scares me because this guy sounds legitimately unhinged. Yeah, it's one thing when your boss has a dick or outta control, or he is wrestling with an addiction, but when your boss lives in a completely different reality, that's a little terrifying.

[00:35:39] Gabriel Mizrahi: No, you can't reason with somebody like this. Yeah, they should have fired this guy. As soon as they found out. He made up a detail in a story and possibly when he was having an affair with somebody on staff. Although maybe that's a gray area. The making up facts in a story in a newspaper that is unconscionable as an editor.

They fire people for that. In this profession, they should anyway.

[00:35:57] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, for sure. Someone was asleep at the wheel or he was being protected by somebody higher up. Another interesting theme I'm hearing on today's episode, bosses looking the other way when it comes to bad behavior. Yeah. This

[00:36:08] Gabriel Mizrahi: is not okay.

Either that, or maybe it's slim pickings when it comes to finding an editor for a local newspaper. I know small newspapers are really struggling to stay alive these days, but I gotta think they could do better.

[00:36:17] Jordan Harbinger: Maybe. But he did say this was years ago, so they have even less of an excuse plus. They were big enough to cover trials.

This wasn't like, you know, new community garden opening in Pleasantville. Yeah, this sounds like a fairly legit operation.

[00:36:29] Gabriel Mizrahi: I'm just remembering that the last time we did a bad boss's episode, we took a letter from another reporter at a local newspaper who was harassed by her alcoholic boss. Do you remember that?

[00:36:37] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Was this tea bags in the coffee guy? Tea bags in the coffee guy. Hate just you leave, but I love to watch you go, Hey, that guy, that's the one, and there's

[00:36:44] Gabriel Mizrahi: that accident again.

[00:36:45] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's all I got. That

[00:36:46] Gabriel Mizrahi: guy was being protected by the publisher of the paper, so I wonder if the same thing was happening here.

And by the way, we should have said this, our last bad bosses story, if you guys haven't heard it, it was really fun. It was episode 9, 9, 8, if you wanna check it out.

[00:36:56] Jordan Harbinger: It could be that he is being protected. So man, local newspapers, they gotta be hotbeds for dysfunction apparently. I wonder if other listeners have experience with that.

I'm curious to know. You do hear about crazy older industries like print publishing. They're just full of weird folks.

[00:37:10] Gabriel Mizrahi: Dinosaurs and regressive policies and strange people. Yeah, maybe. Yes.

[00:37:15] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I don't know why, but they seem to be that way. It's

[00:37:18] Gabriel Mizrahi: like the movie, did you see the movie Zodiac?

[00:37:19] Jordan Harbinger: No.

[00:37:20] Gabriel Mizrahi: Uh, it's about the Zodiac Killer.

It's about the guy who cracked the case or mostly cracked the case and they all work at the Sacramento Bee. Mm-hmm. Which back then, I think the Sacramento Bee was probably a very legit paper. It probably still is pretty legit, but those local newspapers. Yeah, they collect interesting personalities. Yeah.

Maybe this guy was part of that. Came with the furniture.

[00:37:36] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, came with the furniture. Great way to phrase it. Anyway, my takeaway from this story is when your boss isn't just difficult, but literally nuts, there's no reasoning with them. You gotta either let every terrible thing they do, roll off your back because they're off their rocker.

Or you gotta make management understand that a literal, crazy person is at the wheel. There's no gray area here. It's not like, oh, my boss is tough and he screams at me sometimes. This is, my boss believes I can physically be in two places at the same time that I can bend the rules of space time. He's out of his tree.

Do something about it. And if management won't, then you bounce. 'cause you're never gonna get any backing. If this won't cause them to take your side, then nothing will. Or you stage a coup with the other reporters or something. 'cause you can't work under a straight up, crazy person. You just can't do it.

Alright, now it's time for recommendation of the week. So my recommendation of the week is Gmail, keyboard shortcuts. Do you use these Gabriel? I feel like you're Oh yeah.

[00:38:27] Gabriel Mizrahi: Huge part of my life. Game changer.

[00:38:29] Jordan Harbinger: So I didn't really know that these existed until a couple of years ago. And every person I show them to, they just go gaga for this.

'cause it's something you kind of think like, oh, maybe it exists, or you forget that it exists, or you didn't have any idea in the first place. They save you a ton of time. You'd be shocked at how much faster it is than clicking around to the next thing and clicking the buttons. Just these keyboard shortcuts.

You can process hundreds of emails in a short period of time. Look, think about it this way. You can respond to your insane boss's demands even faster.

[00:39:00] Gabriel Mizrahi: Do you have a favorite one? A favorite shortcut?

[00:39:02] Jordan Harbinger: Geez, I've got a few. I mean, I use a special client for Gmail called Superhuman. Mm-hmm. So that has even more keyboard shortcuts, but I know that everybody has Gmail, so I think my favorites are the ones that remind you of somebody doesn't answer your email within a certain period of time.

Oh, nice. That's a good one.

[00:39:17] Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah. Yeah. My favorite is R is reply. A is reply all and shift pound is delete. And you can just blast through email like that in no time.

[00:39:26] Jordan Harbinger: I remember, and I have to be focused to do this. Doing the click method, just the normal method. I think it took me all morning to get through about a hundred emails, you know, maybe four hours.

I got through a hundred emails in one hour. Wow. Using keyboard shortcuts. Crazy. So it's something like three to 400% faster. So Cool. And I know people are like, oh, I gotta memorize all this stuff. It takes a few minutes, you know, the first half an hour, it's a little slow. And then for the rest of your life, using email,

[00:39:52] Gabriel Mizrahi: it's lightning fast.

It just becomes muscle memory at that point. Yeah, it's great.

[00:39:55] Jordan Harbinger: Exactly. Also, in case y'all didn't know, there's a sub Reddit for our show. If you wanna jump into discussions with other listeners about specific episodes, episodes you like, episodes you don't like, or if you wanna share additional thoughts, learn more from other people in the show, fam, come check it out.

A lot of cool conversations happening over there on Reddit in the Jordan Harbinger sub Reddit. Okay.

[00:40:13] Gabriel Mizrahi: What's next? Hi, Jordan and Gabe. In my career, I've encountered various leaders, but none as paradoxically brilliant, yet destructive. As my former boss, Helga, she possessed an intellect that overshadowed everyone around her, and her confidence and her superior knowledge was palpable.

But Helga failed to realize that brilliance loses its luster when it diminishes others rather than uplifting them.

[00:40:38] Jordan Harbinger: Hmm.

[00:40:38] Gabriel Mizrahi: Well said. Helga managed a team of managers, including me. My partner and I supervised a vibrant team of 15 bright and energetic people. Despite our expertise, Helga incessantly critiqued our work demanding constant redos without clear justification.

Her explanations, which were steeped in esoteric jargon, often left us more perplexed than enlightened. Even my attempts at clarification were met with responses that only spiraled into deeper confusion.

[00:41:04] Jordan Harbinger: Something I've learned over the years when people are super vague or they use a ton of buzzwords, and then when you ask 'em to clarify, they just leave you even more confused.

They're almost always, not always, but almost always just full of shit. Yeah, they're usually confused themselves or they're afraid of committing to a plan or a point of view, so they just deliberately obfuscate things.

[00:41:26] Gabriel Mizrahi: Totally. Nine times outta 10, I think the emperor has no clothes, or they're just trying to create confusion for some other reason.

So he goes on. The tension peaked during stress induced shaming sessions that Helga would call before the crack of dawn. These gatherings were ostensibly for feedback, but they felt more like verbal beatdowns, where she lamented our inability to grasp her vision, which she believed others were too inept to understand.

[00:41:49] Jordan Harbinger: Ugh, so unpleasant. Starting to get strong narcissist vibes from Helga as well.

[00:41:54] Gabriel Mizrahi: A particularly searing memory was when after organizing a successful planning session with our team and partners at a local university, I returned to Helga to report our progress. She had been invited to join the session, but declined saying she was too busy, although her peers from other departments participated.

Initially, she seemed pleased as I began outlining the plan we had developed, but her demeanor darkened as I continued. She interrupted to denounce the entire strategy, claiming it had strayed too far from her, quote unquote perfect plan.

[00:42:23] Jordan Harbinger: The perfect plan that she was too busy to show up to defend or present in the first place, that perfect plan.

[00:42:29] Gabriel Mizrahi: The next morning, she dismantled our efforts and insisted we persuade our team to adopt her overnight revisions as their own, A directive that felt both unethical and demoralizing

[00:42:40] Jordan Harbinger: y. So underneath the bluster and the narcissism is a ton of insecurity as per you. Yeah. Once again, always the case, isn't it?

Yep. Always. Just appreciating how that theme shows up again and again. Insecurity. It's not just a weakness, it's a real vulnerability. Whether you're threatened by other people's good ideas, you're falling for a romance scam on Wordle. And it can create a ton of dysfunction in the workplace.

[00:43:01] Gabriel Mizrahi: Even when we achieved great results.

Helga never acknowledged our successes. She always found a way to critique our efforts, always ensuring we knew she could do our jobs better. Ugh, Kim Jong Helga over here. I can't with this lady.

[00:43:13] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I'm over. People like this. What good is your intelligence if you're gonna use it this way?

[00:43:18] Gabriel Mizrahi: Eventually my peer and I driven to the brink, approached Helga's boss Chad, to express our concerns.

We explained that while we were eager and committed to our roles, helga's, constant replanning and our tendency to sabotage our relationships, were hindering our progress. Chad listened, but frustratingly nothing seemed to change. It was only years later that we learned that Helga's conduct was well known and there were ongoing efforts to terminate her employment, but she had cleverly initiated lengthy investigation processes that delayed her termination.

I. Prolonging our team suffering.

[00:43:50] Jordan Harbinger: Wow. So she knew how to work all the angles and apparently had no shame in doing it.

[00:43:55] Gabriel Mizrahi: You know what, that's what scares me about these people, man. The true narcissists, the people who are like low key sociopathic. Mm-hmm. They're not constrained by the same embarrassment that keeps normal people in check.

You know,

[00:44:07] Jordan Harbinger: you see that all the time in online videos, right? Where people are just doing things in public where you're go, how do you, what's wrong with your brain? Yeah. What is wrong with you? These people, they don't fold the the way a normal personality does, and then you've gotta work for them for another six months or a year before the company can fire them because they're so batshit crazy.

They don't care if the whole company knows they're the literal worst. It's wild.

[00:44:29] Gabriel Mizrahi: This experience solidified my decision to seek new opportunities and leave the stifling atmosphere. Helga created. Fortunately, a business restructuring in 2020 allowed me to transfer to a different department under a leader who truly inspired and challenged me.

Under her mentorship, I've thrived ascending through various roles over four years.

[00:44:47] Jordan Harbinger: Man, I'm so happy to hear that. Incredible what a good boss can do for a person. And on the other side, Gabriel, look how one toxic boss can get rid of essentially a whole department of talented people. No one wants to work with them.

It's like having a cancerous cell.

[00:45:01] Gabriel Mizrahi: Reflecting on all this, I recognize that Helga taught me invaluable lessons on how not to lead. Despite the hardship, I emerged with a clearer vision of the leader I aspire to be. One who supports challenges and respects their team leveraging intelligence as a tool for collective upliftment, not personal aggrandizement.

A hundred percent. Beautifully put. Yeah, I love that. That's what you took away from this experience. You are exactly the kind of person who should be a leader, in my opinion. I. So he wraps up Hope you've never worked for a Helga. Well, I work with a Jordan, so that's a close second.

[00:45:33] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Helga, most people don't realize this show is good because I hold daily shaming sessions at 4:45 AM where I chew out Gabriel and the rest of the team for not grasping my vision, which I'm too inept to understand anyway.

So Exactly. Doesn't stop me from cutting you down though, does it?

[00:45:48] Gabriel Mizrahi: Does it Gabe? No. Can confirm You don't get this level of quality without making your co-host suffer on a daily basis. The gel GA management method, I live by it. It wor, it works. Signed still appreciating the amazing delta between my new boss and Helga.

[00:46:03] Jordan Harbinger: Well, once again, I don't have much to add here. I mean, I did all the talking during the letter. I think our friend here put it brilliantly. It's a real

[00:46:08] Gabriel Mizrahi: gel move. That's right.

[00:46:09] Jordan Harbinger: Such a gel. Good move. You can be the smartest person in the world, but if you don't know how to inspire people, how to support them, how to be open to other ideas that you'd never come up with.

What good is that intelligence, if you're too insecure to let other people thrive, what is the point of being a leader? In my view, a hallmark of a good leader is not believing they're the only one who has the best ideas, or that they need to control every aspect of their department.

[00:46:32] Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah. Or that the whole point of their leadership is just their own enhancement and promotion.

[00:46:37] Jordan Harbinger: Exactly. Yeah. My other takeaway from the story is when a leader doesn't make things clearer, when they actively make things harder or more confusing or more complicated than they need to be, that is just a huge red flag. Good leaders, they don't add obstacles. They remove obstacles, and they don't leave their subordinates confused or disempowered.

They arm them with the information and responsibility they need to get things done. So any leader who Helga's stuff is just not a leader in my view. And you either gotta act despite them or give them some direct feedback so that they can get better or take it up with their superior or look for another job.

And sadly, looking for another job is often the only way to escape these kinds of people,

[00:47:17] Gabriel Mizrahi: especially if they have political capital in the company or like Helga, they've somehow engineered things to protect themselves. Then it's really hard to affect change. My big takeaway from all this, the one constant upside to having a terrible boss.

You are learning firsthand what not to do. When you're in a position to manage people. It's great.

[00:47:33] Jordan Harbinger: Yes. It's always the silver lining to these situations. It's hard to know how leadership impacts people until you've been one of the people impacted. Totally agree.

[00:47:42] Gabriel Mizrahi: But I will say it takes a certain kind of person to look at it that way.

[00:47:45] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I think you're right. Some people work under a Helga. They just get angry. They get demoralized or, or they're indifferent or whatever. And some people go, okay, I gotta do things differently. I, I gotta be the anti Helga, right? I wanna learn from this person. Mm-hmm. Learning from people who suck is kind of a superpower.

It does. Yeah. So I applaud our friend here for doing that. Like I said, he sounds awesome. I'm sure wherever he is now, he's crushing it and he's making a lot of people do their best work. So, kudos to you and well done on moving on and handling all of this in the right spirit. And now some brilliant ad copy crafted by yours truly, that I couldn't possibly outsource because nobody else here is smart enough to grasp my vision.

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[00:51:34] Gabriel Mizrahi: Hi Jordan, a Gabe.

I worked as a therapist in an addiction treatment center that was run on nepotism and ridden with sexism and stunning racism. The owner was CEO and his son-in-law was COO. The CEO was in recovery, started this company and was heavily involved in the recovery community. The COO was handling operations, which basically meant handling finances.

The COO definitely showed signs of narcissistic personality disorder and was slightly paranoid. My first week. He said that he liked an open workplace and wanted me to be able to come to him for anything. What ensued was a lot of gaslighting, manipulation, and inappropriate comments. He would do weird things like touch the back of my coworker's leg with a cold water bottle, turn my other coworker's necklace around without asking and tell people that he wouldn't care if his wife went on a date with another guy.

Okay.

[00:52:28] Jordan Harbinger: That sounds a lot like the workplace from question one, to be honest. Wow.

[00:52:31] Gabriel Mizrahi: He also made the most egregious comment to our black female admin by saying, I could really go for some fried chicken and some chocolate milk while alone with her.

[00:52:40] Jordan Harbinger: Wow. That is uncomfortable. That's not just racist. That's a cartoonishly, dumb and racist.

Where did that come from? You have to be so misattuned to even think about making that joke.

[00:52:51] Gabriel Mizrahi: One day they fired another coworker on the spot without having closure with clients, which is unethical. They found out she was looking into starting her own company and their response was, we need allies, not enemies, man.

[00:53:03] Jordan Harbinger: The narcissism is

[00:53:03] Gabriel Mizrahi: strong today. Gabe. Very strong. Yeah. Narcy vibes top to bottom.

[00:53:07] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:53:08] Gabriel Mizrahi: As soon as this happened, I realized my job was not safe. That is a smart thing to notice, way to connect those dots forward. That's hard to do. Also, we were paid as 10 99 contractors when really we should have been W2 employees as we had required hours to be there.

When I asked for a raise, I was told I needed to justify it, but I already knew I was making the least with more experience than my counterpart. Also, we were paid with written checks. Shady. Hmm. The coworker they fired, then started her own practice, and I rented office space from her to see clients on the side, which was always previously encouraged.

I also got an invitation to go see a treatment center in another state. I said I was going and COO sunny Boy was not okay with it. Despite the company being all about networking.

[00:53:52] Jordan Harbinger: Ah, yes. We're all about networking unless you're networking within our industry. After we created a toxic environment that tracks,

[00:53:59] Gabriel Mizrahi: as I was about to get on the plane, I got a call from my admin and she said, he knows, he knows you're renting office space from her, and he's pissed.

You need to get out. Oh, snap. I was never so anxious in all my life. I knew what I needed to do. When I got back from this trip, I confronted him and said, I know you know about my side job and who I'm renting from. He said that he didn't see how we could continue our working relationship when I'm working with people who are only sharing their warped side of a story and painting him as the bad guy.

[00:54:26] Jordan Harbinger: Again, this is like Dr. Romney 1 0 1.

[00:54:28] Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah. It's so cartoonishly narcissistic as well. Yeah, silly. He then asked, do you trust me? No. I said, then this is you quitting. I said, this is you firing me. Damn

[00:54:40] Jordan Harbinger: strong play there. Good for you. He would love nothing more than to be like, oh, she resigns so she doesn't get unemployment.

Yeah,

[00:54:45] Gabriel Mizrahi: exactly. He withheld my last paycheck. Of course. I showed up to the office demanding it and he never gave it to me. I took them to small claims court and that got their attention. I asked for $400 more than my normal pay, which was minuscule in hindsight. Later I started working for another small company that also had a strange culture, to say the least.

My one male coworker there was well respected in the field and he and I were fairly close. The admin from the previous company came with me to this one. One day, a few hours after a virtual team meeting, she sent me a photo of the business's Facebook page where an outraged client had posted my coworker's mugshot.

He had been arrested that same day for soliciting prostitution.

[00:55:27] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, that is so embarrassing.

[00:55:29] Gabriel Mizrahi: So embarrassing. Ugh. On your company's Facebook page and you Oh wow. Can't delete it, I guess, man, he and the tip stealing chef from question two must must've been out getting wasted.

[00:55:40] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's right. Then these people are therapists, right?

[00:55:43] Gabriel Mizrahi: Well, it's funny you say that because she goes on to say, can't make this stuff up. The mental health field is something else.

[00:55:49] Jordan Harbinger: It sure is. I guess prostitution is one of those crimes that cuts across all professions, even podcasting or So I've heard

[00:55:55] Gabriel Mizrahi: universally beloved. Yes. Even people with master's degrees can be drawn to it toot, I guess so.

She wraps up this madness was one for the books. I'm in my own private practice now and I'm thriving. Signed still reeling from the revealing and unappealing things. These touchy feely people were concealing when they claim to be healing.

[00:56:15] Jordan Harbinger: You know Gabe, when I hear about backstabbing at a regressive brokerage firm or criminal behavior in a restaurant kitchen, or even nudity on the graveyard shift at a supermarket, I'm like, okay, that's wild.

But I could see that that happens. But when you hear about therapists, people whose whole purpose is helping people. When you hear about clinicians bullying their staff and soliciting sex workers.

[00:56:36] Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah. It's like, what the actual fuck.

[00:56:39] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It's just so hard to wrap my head around that, but maybe I'm being naive.

I know therapists are human beings too. Of course. So maybe the mental health world is just as dysfunctional as any other industry, but it, I guess it just shocks me. It seems like it shouldn't happen.

[00:56:50] Gabriel Mizrahi: It shocks me as well, because their training involves or should involve, anyway, a lot of introspection.

Self-work along the way. Like if you go through grad school to become a therapist, right, and you find yourself, I don't know, cheating on your partner or for queing sex workers or railing lines during the day, or whatever it is.

[00:57:08] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Wouldn't you wanna address that? That's what I'm saying. Yes.

[00:57:10] Gabriel Mizrahi: You'd think so.

But then I wonder maybe those dysfunctional behaviors are what draw a lot of people to this field.

[00:57:15] Jordan Harbinger: Like, you know how much I pay someone to just sit there and listen to me while I do lines and walk around my neighborhood? I should get into that business. Yeah. Then they just don't fix the problem. Look that I understand you gotta have some of it in you in order to wanna devote your life to it.

But how are you gonna treat a patient for an addiction? Or a struggling marriage and then leave your office and go hire a sex worker or do recreational drugs and not feel like a total hypocrite. I mean, that's feedback Friday territory,

[00:57:40] Gabriel Mizrahi: right? That's what I can't wrap my head around. I don't know. I can't either.

It's a good question. Also, we also don't know the whole story. We don't know if he had a true sex addiction or whether this was a pattern. I mean, look, maybe he got busted on some weird one-off thing. Who, who knows?

[00:57:53] Jordan Harbinger: Okay, maybe I'm being a little unfair, but also, eh, what are the odds of that? It's your first prostitute.

[00:57:58] Gabriel Mizrahi: You get busted. If he got busted his one and only time hiring a sex worker, that would be really bad luck. Really

[00:58:03] Jordan Harbinger: bad luck. So I'm speculating, obviously, but I'm guessing that was not the only time he did that. And I, look, I have very few issues. With sex work, as long as everybody's safe and consenting and all that stuff, which is obviously a complicated topic.

What I find problematic is the idea that a therapist who maybe slash probably has a habit of frequent frequenting sex workers get it right, is then trying to treat patients for addiction, right, and dysfunctional behavior. Maybe I'm just a total boy scout in a square and, and everybody be dysfunctional AF and hire in sex workers.

I don't know though,

[00:58:35] Gabriel Mizrahi: maybe our friend here can enlighten us. Also, these people work in the addiction treatment world and I am starting to wonder if that part of the mental health industry is just, I. A touch more dysfunctional than the others. I'm thinking about the letter we took last week from the guy who wanted to work in the recovery world and remember he had a clinic dangle a job opportunity in front of him so they could they, they could just keep running his insurance and then, right.

Like when they turned it down, this guy still in our

[00:58:57] Jordan Harbinger: facility. Yep. Yeah. I think he thinks he's gonna get a job, but they're like, no, no, no. We're

[00:59:00] Gabriel Mizrahi: billing Medicaid. And then they kicked him out when they couldn't make money off of him, so. Right. Is this part of that industry just kind of shady? Who knows, man?

[00:59:07] Jordan Harbinger: Well, Gabe, you know that my mom's brother, the one I've talked about on the show a few times. Mm-hmm. He was supposedly an addiction counselor. He was also a lifelong heroin addict.

[00:59:16] Gabriel Mizrahi: I didn't know that. He never told me that. Really?

[00:59:18] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. He is just, you know, and he was an addiction counselor at least after getting outta prison.

Once he became the, I don't know. Although now that I think he was such a bullshitter, I don't think any of us know for sure that any of that was true.

[00:59:29] Gabriel Mizrahi: Oh, okay. So maybe total lie, but also maybe he was fully on heroin while just coaching people. That's crazy. A hundred percent. Anyway, I'm curious if anyone listening right now knows the answer to this.

If our friend here who wrote in knows, is there more bonker stuff happening in the addiction treatment industry than in the larger mental health field? Or are we just self-selecting for crazy ish because it's feedback Friday? I'm genuinely curious.

[00:59:50] Jordan Harbinger: Anyway, my takeaway from this is even professionals who are held to higher standards can act a fool.

And when that happens, you either gotta call it out or you gotta get the hell out. The advantage to working in licensed professions, like mental health medicine, law industries that have clear ethical standards is that you can report an ethics violation and the relevant bodies will investigate like this thing about firing a clinician without giving their patients closure.

That's an ethics violation. I've heard that before. It's something you could let the board of psychology or whatever it is in your state know, and they should take action. It doesn't mean they'll necessarily strip the person in their license, but they should at least look into it and maybe notify the person that that's not cool, and in fields where people's lives and mental health are in the balance.

That is so important.

[01:00:30] Gabriel Mizrahi: It's so important. Those boards are doing a crucial job in that respect. My other takeaway from the story is that being territorial with your employees never pays

[01:00:39] Jordan Harbinger: off. I completely agree.

[01:00:40] Gabriel Mizrahi: The moment you as a boss are getting uneasy about your employees, I don't know, getting to know other people in the field or developing perfectly legitimate side hustles or whatever it is, that's a moment to go, okay, why am I so uneasy about this?

Is this actually unethical and competitive to me, or am I trying to control my staff because I'm insecure? Yep. There's that insecurity again. Yeah, I mean, the thing is leaders like this are playing the short game. They're not playing the long game, right? They're thinking I need to keep people under my thumb and make sure they never leave me, because if they leave me, then I lose.

Instead of going, yeah, it's possible that some of our clinicians might eventually go to other centers, or they might move into private practice or go into another specialty, but then our network grows, right? If we give them freedom, if we part ways with a lot of goodwill, maybe we refer patients back and forth, or maybe we collaborate on new initiatives or we share resources, we can all win.

I just don't understand why more people don't take that view even a little bit.

[01:01:34] Jordan Harbinger: Totally. But the thing with narcissistic leaders and insecure bosses and just petty people in general, they can't play that bigger game. They only see the world through a very narrow prism. And that prism is, what does this mean for me?

How do I look out for number one,

[01:01:49] Gabriel Mizrahi: if they're even thinking that consciously about it?

[01:01:51] Jordan Harbinger: Right? I think a lot of these folks are just gaping wounds of insecurity and neediness, and every little bump in the road is a catastrophe. Every degree of freedom is a risk or a potential risk, which is why they develop these very rigid ideas like, oh, we need allies, not enemies,

[01:02:05] Gabriel Mizrahi: when really what they're saying is anyone who wants something different from what I want is threatening to me.

[01:02:09] Jordan Harbinger: Bingo. Yeah.

[01:02:10] Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah.

[01:02:10] Jordan Harbinger: And is there for the enemy and doesn't deserve our curiosity or our support. And by the way, that black and white thinking, it's also kind of a hallmark of narcissism, I think. And also of just dysfunctional personalities in general.

[01:02:22] Gabriel Mizrahi: Look, I do get it to some degree. You obviously want to retain your employees.

You don't want turnover to be super high. You have to protect your staff. But it seems to me that there are two ways to do that. You either go full North Korea and you try to control them. Right? Right. Which never works. Which never works, which just produces the opposite response. Or you create an environment where people do have the liberty to make moves or speak up when they're unhappy or influence the organization and then they probably stick around much longer because you know the workplace is healthy and supportive and high functioning and they have a stake in it.

[01:02:52] Jordan Harbinger: The analogy to countries is actually kind of a good one. It's the exact same thing. 'cause in both cases, if you're gonna control people, you need them to fear you. But the difference is in a free market economy anyway, people could just peace out if they feel controlled and threatened and they will eventually if they have any sort of other better opportunities.

Anyway, I'm sorry you dealt with these A-holes. They sound like awful leaders. We didn't even touch on the rampant sexism and racism at this place, which is absurd.

[01:03:16] Gabriel Mizrahi: Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Honestly, in the middle of all that, it's so gross. Yeah, it's

[01:03:19] Jordan Harbinger: unconscionable. I'm glad you saw the light and you started your own practice and that you're thriving now.

That is super exciting. Well done.

[01:03:25] Gabriel Mizrahi: Alright, next up. Hey Jordan and Gabe. I worked for a contractor for a few months as an office admin. He was a walking Italian American stereotype and he embraced it. He carried himself like he was Tony Soprano, but he was more of a Michael Scott mixed with Tony Soprano.

It was nauseating. What a mashup. Yeah, so just like a swaggering nin come poop. Interesting. A gentle moron in a shiny sharkskin suit. Mm-hmm.

[01:03:52] Jordan Harbinger: That's what she said. Hey. Oh,

[01:03:54] Gabriel Mizrahi: hilarious. So she goes, on hindsight is 2020, but there were red flags from the start in my 20 minute interview with him. I learned about his dead parents when, where, and how they died.

How he lost almost a million dollars because of a former quote unquote rogue employee, how he was moving from the very nice office we were having the interview in to his buddy shop 20 minutes away. I thought it was weird. He was sharing so much when we just met, but I chalked it up to him being an open person and honestly, I was desperate to leave my other job.

[01:04:25] Jordan Harbinger: Mm. Yeah, so two interesting things here already. First, oversharing like that, again, bit of a red flag, even if it is kind of innocent. Dolores vibes, 100% strong Dolores vibes at a minimum. This kind of thing shows a lack of discernment and lack of boundaries, in my opinion. Second, the whole, oh, my RO employee made me lose a million dollars thing.

That's also weird because A, something seriously wrong must have happened for you to lose a million dollars. A million dollars as a contractor. Huge. And B, where were you in all that? What does that say about you to say? Nothing of the fact that it's totally unnecessary to be sharing that with a new hire.

[01:04:59] Gabriel Mizrahi: There's another interesting thing in here about being desperate to leave a job and how that can sometimes blind you to these red flags. Mm-hmm. It can make you wanna brush them off a little too much.

[01:05:07] Jordan Harbinger: Yep. Desperation, even just eagerness, it can really mess with your judgment. There have been tons of studies about this.

It's one of the things that can make people fall for scams too. When you wanna believe something, your mind will help tell that story. It'll discount a lot of the concerning facts along the way. It's something I always have to keep in mind when I'm evaluating an opportunity. You have to correct for that bias when you're excited about something, whether it's a job or an asset or a person, especially a person,

[01:05:32] Gabriel Mizrahi: right?

Yeah. 'cause you can start to get sucked into the narrative that the person is wanting to, you wanna buy into the story that it's great because you have good reasons to get outta the old story. So he goes on, within the first week, I heard four different versions of the story of his parents' deaths.

[01:05:48] Jordan Harbinger: Uh, okay.

So not only is he oversharing, he's telling everyone a different story. So he's a liar.

[01:05:53] Gabriel Mizrahi: I realized he didn't have 80 employees like he said in the interview, but just five poor schmucks on his payroll. Wow. One of which was me.

[01:06:01] Jordan Harbinger: Oh my

[01:06:01] Gabriel Mizrahi: God. Three of us worked in a 10 by six space. Tony was in the office 10 hours a week max, and would spend that time with his feet up on his desk, talking on speaker with his golf buddies.

He also had extreme rage issues. One time he went from having a calm, normal conversation with an elderly lady about some repair she needed to screaming red-faced and telling her to go eff herself in less than 30 seconds. He would refer to his employees as retarded toddlers when they would make a mistake or ask a quote unquote stupid question.

He blamed everything that was going wrong on everyone else. He could do no wrong. He was always right. He constantly spoke about loyalty and devotion to his company, that he needed people who would die for his company.

[01:06:44] Jordan Harbinger: Oh my God. You're

[01:06:45] Gabriel Mizrahi: doing bathroom renos on like two bedroom houses? What are you talking about?

[01:06:48] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. What? What are you talking about again? The narcissism and the, you're either with us or against us thing. I'm starting to think the moment you hear a boss say this kind of thing, just start dusting off. Yield. Old resume. Geez.

[01:07:00] Gabriel Mizrahi: One time we were talking about ghost stories and he took out a little vial of holy water and started splashing it on himself.

Mid-conversation. He then stood up and kissed the cross of this rosary that was on his wall. I was raised Catholic, so I'm used to some woowoo things, but this was so random. It was hard to contain my laughter.

[01:07:19] Jordan Harbinger: Wow. That's a great detail. I mean, look, he's allowed to believe whatever he believes. I'm not gonna mock him for that, but there's something objectively hilarious about Michael Scott, Tony Sopranos screaming at old ladies on the phone to go themselves and calling his staff retarded toddlers, and then turning around and splashing himself with holy water in the office.

'cause somebody's talking about ghost stories,

[01:07:38] Gabriel Mizrahi: but I feel like this guy in Dolores would actually hit it off.

[01:07:42] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, she's a mob wife type. He's a mob type wannabe. Exactly. She's missing some teeth. He's missing some brain cells. It might just work. How

[01:07:49] Gabriel Mizrahi: great would it be if we could introduce the villains in feedback Friday letters?

Oh my gosh. To one another. Just see if they hit it off.

[01:07:55] Jordan Harbinger: Yep. We could get the chef from question two into the treatment center from two letters ago. See if they can help him kick his addiction to gambling and blow. I think he might be onto something here.

[01:08:03] Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah. Then they write into feedback Friday and the villains become the heroes.

Oh, I would love this. This would be so fun.

[01:08:08] Jordan Harbinger: Do you need more email in that inbox though? How great. But how great would that be? Dear Jordan and Gabe, A few months ago, I met a woman in a pink pants suit who was missing four molars. Sorry,

[01:08:16] Gabriel Mizrahi: molars. Molars. Molars. Yeah, exactly. She loved hot dogs. The problem is she also loves wordle.

Right? Which is a real bummer. I'm more of an online poker guy. Exactly. How are we gonna make it work? So she goes on. He would make promises of promotions and raises. He filled my head with dreams that were never gonna come true. I stuck around for as long as I did because he was very complimentary of my work and seemed genuinely happy with what I was doing for him.

Recognition that I never got at any other job. One day he accused me and another employee of conspiring against him, then twisted my words right in front of me. Minutes after I finished talking, that's when I started planning my escape. I applied to a few places and got an interview, and then an offer of almost double my salary at a huge company.

Nice. Well done. I put in my notice in front of the HR lady because I was afraid that Tony would explode.

[01:09:07] Jordan Harbinger: I'm shocked. There's an HR lady at this company, I'm not gonna lie. There's five people and one of 'em is hr.

[01:09:12] Gabriel Mizrahi: Exactly. But he didn't explode. Instead he said okay and left for the rest of the day. The next day, he ignored me all morning.

I had to ask him the same question three times before he would even acknowledge me. At the end of the day when it was just me and him, he asked if we could talk. He then went into this whole thing about how he loved me like a daughter, and he panicked when I quit because he didn't know how he would go forward without me.

He had had the company for 17 years at this point. I was there for four months.

[01:09:42] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, no.

[01:09:42] Gabriel Mizrahi: Side note, I don't know what's more disturbing, if that was just a tactic to pull on her heartstrings or if he actually meant that. I'm sure it's a tactic. Come on. Or he's like so unstable and like sensitive. That I don't know.

I don't know what this guy, I explained that I was uncomfortable working for him. I listed the various things he said to customers and to employees and said, I knew one day he would turn on me. Wow, that takes courage. I don't know if I would've done that. I would've just quit and gotten outta there. He kept cutting me off saying, I just don't understand him and I shouldn't make assumptions about him.

I decided I was not gonna stick out my two weeks. The next morning I wrote up an email reiterating everything I said to him that he didn't listen to and sent it to him, and HR left my keys and company card on his desk and bounced forever. I blocked his number because I was afraid of him calling and ripping me a new one for a week Afterwards, I kept getting calls from an unknown number that would drop every time I picked up.

It was such a strange and stressful experience that I can laugh about it now, but it truly was an awful four months. I still read that email sometimes and pat myself on the back for having the balls to send it. Signed still looking for the holy water to cleanse me of the only offer where I was both the sworn enemy and the golden daughter.

[01:10:53] Jordan Harbinger: Well I like that one, Gabe. That one was clean. Thank you. Got some double internal rhymes in there too. Oh, you'd like that. Appreciate it. I did not see Holy Water in Golden Daughter come really channeling your inner

[01:11:02] Gabriel Mizrahi: Eminem today. Do you really like it or you just gassing me up the way this guy gased up our friend for months?

Yeah. Uh,

[01:11:08] Jordan Harbinger: damnit you saw it through my manipulation. I know. How dare you call me. You're like a son to me, Gabriel.

[01:11:13] Gabriel Mizrahi: This place can't run without you. Pardon me? While I type up an email CC'd Jen on it. Dear Gel and Jen, we have two employees and one of them is hr.

[01:11:20] Jordan Harbinger: Anyway, great job on getting out of this place, writing up that letter.

You should be proud of that. It's scary to stand up to a boss like this, even if he is kind of Michael Scottish. I'm actually impressed. It only took you four months to realize you had to get out. Kudos to you for that.

[01:11:34] Gabriel Mizrahi: It's funny. This also reminds me of one of the letters we took on our last Bad Bosses episode.

The guy who ran a luxury car garage, and then he brought that young woman onto the team and basically love bombed her until she came on full time. You remember?

[01:11:46] Jordan Harbinger: Ah, yeah. At which point he turned on her and she couldn't do

[01:11:48] Gabriel Mizrahi: anything. Right. Yep. Interestingly, that guy also said he viewed that listener like a daughter and was like, come on board, join us.

I want you to be part of this company for a long, long time.

[01:11:58] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I remember that. So again, there's either something about these listeners or these bosses that triggers some father daughter template or personalities like this. Use the whole, I think of you as a daughter thing to keep them in their orbit because they have zero shame.

[01:12:11] Gabriel Mizrahi: Exactly. That's what I was getting at earlier, like what's happening here? Maybe it's both, but even if they do feel fatherly toward them. That's even more reason to treat somebody well, right?

[01:12:20] Jordan Harbinger: Well, right. So that's what makes me think it's bullshit. So if you really think of me as a daughter, maybe don't manipulate me and cut me down all the time, bro.

[01:12:27] Gabriel Mizrahi: The other thing I find fascinating about the story, and it's connected to the thing I mentioned earlier about how being desperate to leave one situation can desensitize you to red flags.

[01:12:36] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[01:12:37] Gabriel Mizrahi: She said she stuck around for as long as I did because he was very complimentary of my work and seemed genuinely happy with what I was doing for him.

[01:12:44] Jordan Harbinger: Right. Recognition. She said she never got at any other job.

[01:12:46] Gabriel Mizrahi: Exactly. Which I can totally understand. Being validated at work is powerful. Right. And it's important, but if you're starved for validation or you're unusually susceptible to flattery, and those compliments do not align with how you're being actually treated at work, that can keep you stuck in a bad situation because it can feel so good to be praised.

[01:13:06] Jordan Harbinger: Yes. That's another thing to keep an eye on. I'm with you. Being validated appropriately at work, that's a form of value that's necessary. It's a form of psychic compensation to steal a term. Scott Galloway used in our interview, oh man, I love that term when he used that. That was a good one. Yeah, it's a good one.

But if a boss is showering you with compliments in order to avoid paying you what you are worth, or if they're praising you one day and then being cruel to you the next day, that's a different thing. Then you gotta wonder if the validation is even genuine, or if it's just another tactic,

[01:13:33] Gabriel Mizrahi: or even if it is genuine, you gotta ask if it's coming from somebody who's not treating you in a way that reflects their supposedly high esteem.

Mm-hmm. Like, okay, you like me. You're thrilled with my work. Wonderful. But then why are you screaming at me? Or Why are you accusing me of conspiring against you? Or, yeah, not giving me a raise, or whatever it is.

[01:13:50] Jordan Harbinger: When there's a disconnect between those two things, that's another good signal to pay attention to.

But that's a good point. Desperation can really seduce you into a questionable job and an imbalanced need for validation can keep you stuck in that job too. So the other big thing that jumped out at me about this one was when Tony Scott accused her, you mentioned this, of another employee conspiring against him, that paranoia that everyone's out to get me mentality.

Those qualities, man, they just scream, run to me.

[01:14:16] Gabriel Mizrahi: Yes. I also find it so creepy that this guy called her nonstop for a week. Yeah. From a private number after she blocked him. Ugh. So creepy, stressful.

[01:14:24] Jordan Harbinger: Also like why Just take the L dude, she quit. Time to bamboozle someone else, or finally sign up for therapy.

Better help and figure out why your business is plagued by so much drama. Hint, it's you. Anyway, I'm thrilled you got out of there so quickly. I'm even more thrilled that you got an offer of almost double your salary at a huge company. I think that's fantastic. I'm sure that speaks to just how valuable you are, and I love that you have that email to look back on.

That document is a testament to your confidence, your ability to protect yourself and your courage, and standing up to an objectively frightening personality. Now that you know what to look for and what pressure points you have that might have made you susceptible to a personality like this in the first place, I doubt you'll end up working for somebody like him again.

But listen, if you still have his email address, shoot that out over to Gabe. It sounds like he wants to play matchmaker for Dolores with the help of our friend from question one and you know he's gonna make that happen.

[01:15:12] Gabriel Mizrahi: All four of us can parent trap these to into a relation. Is that parent trapping? No.

Is that, I guess not because they were never together. Right? But I still like the metaphor.

[01:15:20] Jordan Harbinger: The metaphor being that we're all the kids of these two nut jobs and we just wanna get the family back together so everybody can be happy and dysfunctional together.

[01:15:26] Gabriel Mizrahi: That's a normal thing to want, right? There's nothing weird about that.

[01:15:29] Jordan Harbinger: No, that's nothing to look at here. I want to thank all of you for suffering through these horrible jobs and putting up with these ridiculous bosses so we could learn from your stories this week. I know this episode was a little lighter than our usual fair. But I think there were some really valuable lessons in there,

[01:15:42] Gabriel Mizrahi: like, don't hire coked up chefs or janitors, or you will see some workplace nudity.

That's what I'm taking away.

[01:15:47] Jordan Harbinger: To be fair, if you're not hiring coked up chefs, you're gonna have a hard time hiring chefs. I think that like

[01:15:52] Gabriel Mizrahi: eliminates like half 50% of the

[01:15:53] Jordan Harbinger: chefs you are going, the, the, the pool of applicants is going to be significantly diminished. I was gonna say, beware the narcissists and uplift people rather than cut them down, but Sure.

Yeah. Let's go with yours, Gabe. Don't hire Cokehead or you will see Homer Simpson in his tidy whitey and or a dumpster fire of a chef robbing your safe at 2:00 AM after getting a hand Shandy in the parking lot. And on that note, go enjoy your own auditory hand Shandy by going back and check out Victor Vevo and our Skeptical Sunday.

If you haven't done so yet, the best things that have happened in my life and business have come through my network. That's the circle of people that I know, like, and trust. I'm teaching you how to build the same thing for yourself in our six minute networking course. The course is free. I don't need your credit card number.

There's nothing for sale. It's not schmoozy or gross, and you can find it on the Thinkific platform@sixminutenetworking.com. The drills really take a couple minutes a day, dig that well before your thirsty people. Build relationships before you need 'em. Once again, six minute networking.com. Show notes and transcripts are on the website, advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show all at Jordan harbinger.com/deals.

I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn, Gabe's over on Instagram, Gabriel Mizrahi, or on Twitter at Gabe Mizrahi. This show is created in association with PodcastOne. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, of course, Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own, and I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer.

Do your own research before implementing things you hear on the show. Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use the advice we gave here today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time.

Here's a sample of my interview with Guy Raz who hosts NPRs How I Built This. He shares his number one secret to getting a great interview, how asking difficult questions during the interview serves both the overall story and the guest being grilled. And it's kind of nice to just riff with somebody else in the business.

[01:17:47] Clip: Here's a quick bite. I came to NPR as a 22-year-old intern. I was very lucky, you know, I really wanted to be an overseas reporter and the stars were sort of aligned in the right way where, um, I got the job and I was totally terrified. You know, I was sent to Berlin to be the correspondent for NPR. Don't mess this up.

Oh yeah. And by the way, you're going to Bosnia tomorrow. And that, that was how I began overseas as a foreign correspondent bearing witness to historical events. Being somewhere where they're unfolding in front of your eyes in real time is thrilling. It's absolutely extraordinary and fascinating. I mean, imagine if you were standing at the Berlin Wall on November 9th, 1989.

Yeah, it's an extraordinary feeling to be in these places, and I was able to witness history unfold in front of my eyes many, many times. There's really a secret to interviewing people. This is my secret. If you really want to get a good interview from somebody, you need to honor their story. You need to honor them.

If they're coming to talk to you, and the way you honor them is you learn a lot about them. You spend the time you do the work, and if you do that, there's a better than 50% chance that they will appreciate that and respect that. I mean, those wow moments, they're real. Because what I do in an interview is I completely leave the world that I'm in.

I completely leave the surroundings, everything, all the chaos, the noise, you know, Trump and politics, and I just leave it. It's out. It's all the noise. Covid iss gone. It's like when you see a movie, I am just in that person's world

[01:19:26] Jordan Harbinger: for more, including the one teachable quality all entrepreneurs seem to have in common.

Check out episode 4 0 4 of the Jordan Harbinger Show with Guy Raz.