2. Robin Cohn (& Grace Cohn)~ Grace was not as nasty as her husband, but she was a micro-manager from hell. Robin Cohn, however, came this close ( ) to making #1 on the list. The dot-com I had been working for went belly up before the stock options vested. Not paying a whole lot of attention to the cooling economy as the job market was still robust, I decided to take a position with City Hall Records (a music distribution company, not government related) rather than Pixar. In hindsight, Pixar would have been the better choice, but it was much, much furthur from home, and located in an urban area as well, just the type of place I was trying to avoid. Again, in hindsight, it would have been better for my romantic/social life, too. Since I had no desire to commute some 30 miles through one of the nastiest commute corridors in the country, and since I had no desire to move closer in, and since I had a job offer that combined my accounting experience and my love of music, I decided on City Hall Records. I even called a friend who knew a well known recording artist who worked there to get his opinion of the place. He should have told me to run as fast as possible away from CHR, but he didn’t. The time off benefits were a little on the low side (another missed clue), but I received an extra 3 week’s vacation time during my job negotiations, which offset the meager time off flag that had gone off. My very first day on the job, Robin Cohn viciously erupted and berated the woman I was to supervise in front of everyone in the office. ‘O-o-o-K-a-y… what did I get myself into here’, I thought. It just got worse from there. Within a few short weeks, RC had made my life such a miserable hell, that I decided to take those two weeks off that summer that I had already planned, and then find another job. Before you knew it, 911 hit and the bottom completely fell out of the job market. I wanted to quit so badly, but everyone said to keep your job and don’t quit until you have another one. This asshole caused me so much stress and misery, that I literally had to go and take a dump nearly once an hour. He instructions were difficult to understand, and even contradictory at times. Vendors with whom I had never spoken with would verbally take me out behind the woodshed! WTF did I ever do to you Mr. Vendor?! After the 2nd week off in August just before 911, they demoted me. Not fired, or laid off. Demoted. He didn’t want to pay any penalties for ending my employment, so he made my life as miserable as possible hoping that I would quit. Sorry, Cohn. Couldn’t do it. I had a kid to raise, ykwim? He finally blinked first. After nearly 18 months at ‘Shitty Hell Records’, I was told that I was going to be laid off sometime in the near future. That tactic didn’t work either. I was finally, mercifully let go, but several weeks later.
The irony of this whole episode is that I had finally come to terms with the fact that I had a shitty job in a shitty job market, and that a lot of people would have gladly traded places with me. I was just a day or two away from signing a lease on a house in Fairfax when I was informed of the impending lay off. Great. Now that I had accepted the job situation, found housemates, and a house…..this.
I believe that my predecessor in accounts payable decided to screw things up as much as possible to get back at Cohn for all the misery he caused her. I had waist deep shit to wade through. Accounts were severely fucked up, I mean big time! Since I had resigned myself to the fact I was stuck there, I made it my mission to get those accounts straightened up as much as possible, which I did. A/P was in much better shape when I left than when I started. Ask Judy.
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