Working for Assholes

Some unexpectedly kind thoughts about nightmare bosses.

I had planned to write a pleasant, charming little essay this week about my recent trip to my homeland, the East Coast. I had a great week in the beautiful Hudson Valley, with some exceptionally civilized, kind people – actors, artists, writers. The setting was like this:

This is what civilized looks like.

And then I read part of a book out loud to a friend, and now I want to write about something else. The book is by Pierre Marco White, Britain’s first three-star Michelin chef, and a .. uh … very difficult person, apparently. The book is called Devil in the Kitchen: Sex, Pain, Madness and the Making of a Great Chef. It’s the autobiography of perhaps the most gifted chef Britain has produced in a hundred years. The Hudson Valley piece can wait. Welcome to this week’s Substack.

Chef White, minus the knives, flame and boiling water.

Marco Pierre White is 6’3” and sounds like a complete nightmare. During the key years of his career, he seemed to be propelled by Marlboro Reds, espresso, and pure rage. He worked eighteen-hour days, cooked like an angel, and drove his staff mercilessly. He would abuse and eject customers who pissed him off, physically attack people, and was angry and demanding beyond belief pretty much all the time.

Here’s a sampling:

Gordon, Stephen and Tim shared a flat in Clapham, a couple of miles from Harveys, and I used to scream at them, “Did you bunch of cunts go home last night and conspire against me? ‘What stupid things can we do to wind up Marco?’ Is that what you all said to each other? Did you sit down together like a bunch of plotting cunts and say, ‘What can we do tomorrow that will really piss him off? What can we do to really irritate him?’ Did you, Gordon? Is that what you did, Stephen? Did you conspire against me, Tim?’ Because you are all being so fucking stupid today.”

Other times the bollockings included physical abuse. I might severely tug a chef ’s apron, or grab a chef by the scruff of the neck and administer a ten-second throttle, just to focus him. One night I lifted Lee Bunting and hung him by his apron on some hooks on the wall. The cooks never knew what to expect from me—and neither did I. A film crew arrived for the series Take Six Cooks and happened to walk into the kitchen as I was throwing bottles of sauce and oil at an underling. The producer had to duck down to avoid being hit by flying glass.

Yet … here it comes. The more I thought about this guy, the more I realized that the most rewarding professional experiences of my life had been while working for people like this. It was quite a revelation, but if I’m being honest with myself, it’s just plain true. That was where I did my best work, learned the most, and either pushed myself to the limit or was pushed. It’s a whole different reality out there.

My first example was the legendary Peter Arnell. Peter was the founder of an ad agency I wrote for, Arnell/Bickford Associates. He was the quintessential Jewish kid from Brooklyn who was absolutely in love with the glamour, the magic and the beauty of Manhattan. He was obsessed with photography and design, and created some of the most visually stunning work I have ever seen. Among other things, he branded Donna Karan and DKNY, and led the development of all kinds of other iconic brands, particularly in fashion. Other bright, shiny clients included Bank of America, Chanel, Condé Nast, and Tommy Hilfiger. I was present for a lot of these.

Peter Arnell, after and before.

Peter was also publicly written up as one of the worst, most abusive bosses in New York City, which is really saying something. He was described as a screamer, a thrower, an abuser, a dictator, and a giant megalomaniac. To give you a sense of how intense he is, at one point his weight ballooned up to over 400 pounds, and because he decided to, he dropped 250 of that. And has kept it off. This is a driven man, folks.

He is alleged to have, for instance, humiliated employees by forcing them to do push-ups in front of clients, or crouch under a desk. In a lawsuit brought by his former assistants, accusing him of “verbally abusing plaintiffs during “fits of rage” simply for being women, letting off strings of expletives and degrading them for the benefit of the male employees present. He would frequently use foul and abusive language to reduce office workers—particularly women—to tears for the way they took a message, phrased a question, or cleaned the top of his desk.”

I believe all of this. I knew him, and have no doubt he could act like a complete monster. But here’s the thing, which, in the end, is all that matters to me: he cared intensely about the work. All of his behavior was in the service of the work. And the work Peter did was so beautiful, so heartfelt, that it literally would make me cry.

I can remember standing in the office watching a video he’d shot for, of all things, Donna Karan Eyewear, and being so moved by what I saw that tears were running down my face. His love for fashion, photography, women, New York, and his longing for everything they stood for, was so powerful and transparent that it made his work transcendent. See for yourself. So much yearning, hope, and yes, love in these images. That also, I think, explained his behavior.

Indifferent or mediocre writing, or photography, or design, or client service drove him crazy. He couldn’t understand it. It infuriated him. I think on some level, it actually hurt him. And so, he acted out. Could he have behaved differently, better? Ideally, yes. But like so many creative, game-changing people, he couldn’t control himself well, I think.

Chet Baker — pre-heroin Beautiful Boy

The thing that made Chet Baker turn to heroin also made him play so beautifully he became a legend. I’ve heard “Everything Happens to Me” done by Sinatra, Billie Holiday and a beautiful jazz singer from Philly I unsuccessfully tried to date. But none of them brought to it the gentle sorrow and supernatural beauty Baker’s demons dished up for him. Same with Peter. He was propelled by needs and forces he couldn’t really control. I will always defend him – not that he knows or cares -- because unlike a lot of people in the advertising industry, he was an asshole for a good reason. I was lucky to have worked with him.

Another example from long ago was Larry Levine. Larry was VP of Sales at a startup I worked at. He had been brought up by two parents who, I believe, were both Holocaust survivors, so to say he was intense was an understatement. And for a while, he aimed that intensity at me. It wasn’t pleasant.

Larry would require every salesperson to have fifteen face-to-face meetings with potential customers every week. This is an insanely high number, and almost impossible to hit, because you have to arrange those meetings, which means sending out hundreds of emails and making hundreds of cold calls every week, which takes a tremendous amount of time. And for a while, he had me record those calls, send him tapes, and he’d then critique them. He was merciless. He told me I sucked in dozens of different ways. I’d mail off tapes and absolutely dread the phone call from Larry I knew was coming.

But like Peter, he cared intensely about the work, and he wanted to see me succeed. He also knew what that would take, understood that kind words and gentle encouragement weren’t going to encourage the kind of intensity and drive that was needed, and so, up my ass went his foot. It worked. I got very good at cold calls. And one of my most cherished memories is beginning to really crush my sales quota and getting a big, fat commission check with “Go, baby, go!” written across the back by our controller.

Being an asshole, or working with one, is a tricky business. There are lots of people who behave like shits because they enjoy hurting other people, or for political reasons, or for no reason at all. Larry’s predecessor was simply a mindless bully, in my opinion. He picked out people he didn’t like, for whatever reason, and went after them. I’ve also worked with people who were liars, or manipulators because they were fundamentally lazy. Big corporations in particular seem to reward game-playing and ball-hiding, which can be incredibly toxic and destructive.

But within those companies you will often find people who are assholes for the right reason. Steve Jobs, I think, was one. I worked at Apple for three years, and there was both a culture and a system of rules that enforced careful, professional, sensitive behavior. It was an enormous, mature organization by then, part of the commercial infrastructure of the entire world. So, for example, I rarely, if ever, saw anyone criticized in public – criticism took the form of slightly muted praise. Real abuse would have meant instant discipline. My team, in particular, was always restrained and civil.

However, Jobs was apparently a different matter. Apple at the inception was a whole different kettle of fish and chips. I never met or worked with him, but I have talked to many people who did, and read about him. And the overriding impression I get is of someone who was relentlessly demanding, cruel, vindictive and petty. And who respected people who counterattacked. Jobs was absolutely possessed by the goal of building the best fucking computers on the planet in the world, and could not tolerate anything less. Many people I’ve talked to who dealt with him feel, in retrospect, that they were doing the best work of their lives.

One of the biggest regrets of my professional life is that I never worked for him. I wish I had. I would have needed decades of therapy, but as I understand it, like Peter Arnell, Jobs was constantly driving towards excellence – at least – and perfection at most. I’d take that deal.

Why is this a good thing? Because if you’re going to surpass what the prevailing rules tell you is possible, you need to behave differently. You need to operate by an entirely different set of rules, or no rules at all. Most people can’t do this. They have husbands, children, want vacations and dry cleaning and some kind of stable, normal life. But for people who, for whatever reason, need more than that, all of those normal things have to be replaced by a willingness to do whatever produces results. If something works, the fact that it really upsets people isn’t very important. Hence, they become assholes, and they work for or with them. But most importantly, they’re not like you, whoever you are. They’re just different.

Mr. Dennis

One of my favorite assholes is the late Felix Dennis, who made a pile of dough publishing magazines like The Week and Maxim, and then became England’s best-selling poet. He actually wrote a poem about being an asshole, entitled “The Bearded Dwarf”, as that was his nickname. He credibly claimed to have spent a hundred million pounds on hookers and drugs. When he talks in his poem about decks stacked with blood and gold, and flogging men, he’s not really kidding. When he died, his entire estate was used to set up a foundation that did one thing: planted a gigantic forest of native British trees. I kind of love that.

Assholery also operates like a kind of interpersonal Sorting Hat. The people who are capable of tolerating it have a level of resilience and drive that allow them to see stuff other people perceive as a game-ender as more of a minor distraction. If I remember right, when Bill Gates (who I suspect is an asshole) sold the first DOS operating system to IBM way back when Microsoft was being launched, he didn’t even have it. No big deal -- he went out and got it. Only an asshole could sell one of the world’s biggest technology companies something that didn’t yet exist. Working for someone like that is going to be unbelievably hard, but man, will you make stuff happen.

Which, I guess, is the entire point. Obviously there are people who are assholes for its own sake. But for others, the ones you may wish you worked for, or with, bad behavior is a means to a vital end, which is what redeems it. Or at least demands some careful rethinking.

Dealing with an asshole is like getting hit in the side of the head. Things are fine, peaceful, calm, normal. Then, suddenly, you’re sitting on the floor holding your head, ears ringing, startled, upset, scared. The natural reaction is to get angry, or to become afraid. But what if you got curious? What if you tried to think through why what just happened, happened?

If you do, you can arrive at the idea of a fascinating dynamic, like something out of the Great Gatsby. Assholes – and I realize this is ridiculously romantic, and possibly silly – are people who perhaps have replaced the comfortable, familiar, warm world with a dream or a drive or a need that that owns them, instead of the other way around.

And when you enjoy a magnificent meal, or use a beautifully designed laptop that operates flawlessly, or see an ad or a film that moves you to tears, that may be where it came from. In the eternal tug-of-war between someone’s vision and their comfort, the vision won. And so, by extension, do we. And so, next time you encounter someone awful, look beneath the surface. They might have a really good reason.