Before I bid adieu to Micro, the control freak who has had an impact on so many lives, here is somebody else’s horror story. I took the liberty of telling the story in his voice, because he has shared it with me several times.
I took a job in a management position with a growing firm, after being enticed to apply for the job by an old Amy buddy I’ll call Ken. We had been together in basic training—two kids from the same rural part of Pennsylvania away from home for the first time. We got to be pretty close in those few weeks, protecting each other’s back and all, but we took different courses for Uncle Sam before returning to civilian life. Looking back on our time together, he, being a little older, took care of me and I, the more physical and personable of the two of us, reciprocated by running interference when needed.
The control freak starts out as an ally and protector, but he'll end up hogging all the glory and credit.
I regarded him as a good friend and ally during a stressful time of my life, but, looking back now, I realize he was playing me, an obedient and loyal minion unknowingly under his control.
Years later, I had a college degree, thanks to the GI Bill, was married with a small child and embarked on a career path when I received this call out of the blue. It was Ken. Seems his father owned a thriving business conglomerate, which included a lengthening chain of convenience stores, along with being the area’s most dominant fuel oil distributor. Ken, not yet thirty, was charged with managing the convenience stores. In fact, he claimed it was his concept back at a time when this kind of retail enterprise was a rarity—especially combined with self-service gas pumps now so common on our landscape. In fact, it was years before the convenience of actually using your credit card at the pump.
I was working in the business office of a large financial institution at the time, slightly above entry level and hoping to make it to mid-management in a few years. Ken was offering me a management position, directly under him, and confided that a job interview was a mere formality, necessary only because he wanted me to get a close-up look at the operation before making up my mind.
He was all excited about what a team we would be. It seemed to me I was being given the opportunity of a lifetime, My specialty was marketing, and there would be plenty of that in the position being offered. Plus I got to move back to the area in which I grew up and where most of my family, as well as my wife’s, still lived. The salary was impressive, as was my level of responsibility, and I quickly accepted the offer.
It was the beginning of a nightmare that would be almost impossible to escape over several decades, especially once I became accustomed to an income I never expected to reach so soon.
Ken may have been the boss’s son, but he seemed obsessed with impressing his father with what, as it turned out, were limited skills. He needed someone he could trust to make him look good, and that turned out to be me. The kicker was that Ken wanted all the credit for any accomplishments derived from our alliance.
It seemed I had full rein, at first, to help build the business into something that seemed ripe to reach regional proportions. And so it would. My ideas were greeted with enthusiasm, and I hardly noticed at first that they became his. It wasn’t long before he was literally looking over my shoulder and taking over many of my duties, as if he were the only one with the competence to handle them. He would lecture me on how to do fundamental things, many of them my own innovations. It became impossible to have an intelligent conversation about the business because he was constantly interrupting or dismissing whatever ideas I was able to impart.
The excitement of the challenge was no longer there, because I had been reduced to his flunky. He took credit for everything I did and would make critical, even demeaning, comments about me or my capabilities in front of our employees and even customers. It became so bad that I wanted to get out. There was no direction I could go but down and any career move of substance would require me to leave the area—something that would have been devastating to my wife and children.
Despite a growing mean-spiritedness toward me, he became overly interested in my personal and family life and was constantly offering me unsolicited advice that sometimes bordered on the inappropriate. He was a perfectionist who never admitted to any mistakes. Anything negative was blamed on me and that meant critiques, memos and lectures to further undermine my self-esteem while securing his own carefully constructed image. I was able to rationalize working with Ken by believing that, despite his actions and comments, he valued my talents and friendship.
That changed one day on the heels of some particularly patronizing comments about how to do something I had done many times before. I responded by pointing out that his behavior was unprofessional at times and that I felt I deserved to be treated with respect.
“Respect has nothing to do with it,” he sneered. “This is about business.”
That’s when I knew that “team” he envisioned us to be was really all about him. I had become his enabler, and he had got what he wanted out of me. The system was in place—thanks in good part to my efforts— and he didn’t even need me now. I was expendable and, with no bargaining power left, I was literally at his mercy.
I suffered mightily for years—holding on until my kids got through college and my wife was earning a good salary and benefits as a high school guidance counselor. The most liberating day of my life came when I handed in my resignation to Ken. My old friend and ally had little to say, other than he had been seriously considering firing me anyway. I had not received any raises for years, and he hinted that that this was intentional, with the desired result of encouraging me to resign. Of course, he had no regrets because all the failures belonged to me, not him.
I’m on my own now, making nowhere near the money I did with Ken, but it sure feels good to believe in myself again.
The control freak thrives on being with a weak partner—one who eventually surrenders his or her authority, whether it is a romantic or business relationship. The passive partner will often be perceived by others as weak. Any assurances or promises he makes to others can’t be trusted, thanks to the other being in control, and this further undermines his standing with others.
Control freaks like to build empires, whether it is in a corporate setting or the small staff at the local insurance agency. Their tools are misdirection and manipulation and too many good, caring people become their enablers.
