A reader from Michigan writes…
In college, I found an Internship with a small local company. The owner had spent many years plundering money from small government and educational entities near the college that I attended. He really soaked the .com era for all that it was worth and then some, and managed to lose it all. I came in at the beginning of the downfall.
In fear of losing it all, he tried to reach out into new branches of IT related work. He decided that he wanted his company to jump from networking and tech support into the software market. So he hired me and two other students from a local university.
From the very start, he tried to get us to sign a poorly worded version of a non-compete statement that was so vague that it would have left us college students with no other choice but to move out of state to find work. He tried to get us to sign the document repeatedly. Finally when he gave us an ultimatum, we all quit. Keep in mind his genius software was only half done and the customer had already paid for it in full (and he had already squandered all the money). He got so mad that he threw a box of blank CD’s through a ceiling tile and stormed off into another room where his seccond in command chewed him out for letting us go.
Shortly thereafter, he begged us to return to work and offered us anything to come back. We left the meeting room, discussed the matter and came back for a 50% pay raise. We all knew the writing was on the wall, and he folded the department shortly thereafter.
Later that year, I ran into the seccond in command. He started his own company that was doing great. Without the dead weight of his previous boss he was thriving. He informed me that our previous employer had folded the company. He also informed me that our previous employer was seeking treatment for bi-polar disorder.
What do you think? Does being bi-polar explain everything? Or do we have a guy here who’s just a huckster in disguise, and is now scamming himself?
