Dream Company, Nightmare Boss — Part II - What Happened in 2014

The first week at my new job went as expected: everyone was busy finishing up ongoing projects, and I was mostly ignored. That's what happens when you join a video game company in early June 2014 during E3. I waited for guidance, perusing files and documents seeking to learn and absorb whatever I could find.

My main colleagues were Cindy* and four people on the Creative Services team in the main office. Cindy worked a similar role to my own and was in the same satellite office as Greg Everage and me. She was a spirited young woman around my age with a love of food, adventure, and creativity. Although she didn't have passion for the company or video games, she had passion for life. Cindy was one of those people that got along with everyone, and if you didn't get along with her, that was on you.

After a couple weeks of no tasks and no guidance, I requested some training or reading while everyone was preoccupied. Cindy and Greg each stated that there was nothing—no training documents, no processes, no guidelines, no...plan. Strange. I worked in the corporate world for several years at that point, and each time there was training and onboarding support. Left with no options, I trusted Greg and Cindy, hoping they would eventually provide clarity about how to fulfill the job duties I was responsible for.

As it turned out, the only training I would receive from Greg was being CC’ed on emails—hundreds of them. In fact, Greg's school of training was to forward or CC me on every email he received, and for me to ensure ANY and ALL (his words) of my received emails included him.

My daily routine was reading through a flood of conversations. In our nearly daily morning meetings, I asked for context regarding the long email threads and was told “it will make sense eventually” and "you just have to dive in."

Strangely, I was not allowed to talk to employees about work-related topics without Greg being present. If I had a conversation with someone in passing about a project, I would tell Greg what was discussed, and I'd be reprimanded for not bringing him into the conversation...as it happened. After enough lectures from Greg, I opted to stop colleagues from talking to me about anything work-related and would either escort them to Greg or suggest they reach out to him directly. (More on this later.) 

Along with no onboarding to my job, I was given strange administrative tasks from Greg:

• Greg would come to my desk and dictate to me. His directive was to type out what he’d say, send to him for review, and he would either send the email from his own account, or I'd send the email stating they were on his behalf. 
• He would send me lists of meetings and appointments to set up for him. Some of these meetings were to pitch the team's services to other teams and departments. My role was to sit silently and take notes for him. He would show off his personal demo reel, asking that the individual consider using the men on his team for "any and all of your creative needs." If I ever spoke during those meetings, he reminded me that my role was to "be a quiet fly on the wall."
• I scanned, cleaned up, organized, and printed documents for him. 
• I would often read though emails for him, highlighting important items for him to focus on.
• Greg used me as a conduit for communicating with the four guys in our main office. For example, he'd suddenly come to my desk and ask what Jon was working on. It was like an oral pop quiz. If I didn't know off the top of my head, he would criticize me for not being "on top of things at all times." 
• I did maintain a project tracker that indicated what everyone was working on and what the status was, but Greg wanted verbal updates. To appease him, I'd call each colleague in the morning, ask if they had any updates beyond what was in the project tracker, and then verbally relay the updates to Greg.
• After about a week of this, the team grew tired of the daily check-ins. They understood it was Greg's demand; but still, I was the messenger, and it was an annoyance taking away time from actual work.
• In my next meeting with Greg, I recommended we have informal 5-minute team meetings every morning in lieu of individual calls. Each person can briefly summarize what they're working on that day to be more efficient.
• Greg refused my solution: "You need to know what they do every day by getting on the horn [picking up the phone and calling them], and you need to share that info with me. You need to be all over them and this...for me."

Sure, none of that sounds that strange if you're an admin or an assistant. But I was not hired for that purpose, and that was all that I did. I was Greg's assistant. I felt confused and frustrated. The tasks were drastically off-script from what was described in the job listing, but I was committed to making it work. I moved from Chicago to the Bay Area for my dream...company.

[Reminder: the job description]

He had me turn off the camera for certain meetings so he could nap while I took notes for him

From a Skype conversation with Greg: "i am putting something [together] for Ben right now and half listening so take good notes for me"

Up next: Till the Breaking Point in 2014

*All third parties have changed names