by ionwake | 2025-06-02 10:50:13+00:00
I worked as a small elite unit in a world leading airline, team of about 5 poeple that went down to basically 1 ( after I was finally labelled as "difficult to work with" - ( I actually was always quiet calm friendly used to working in critical teams and worked basically close to 12 hour days.

Eventually a deadline was missed and "someone had to be blamed".

Having worked in countless companies I was ready for this and calm, basically fine with it, just kept working hard.

But I always remember of this one "middle manager" product lead or something, was constantly interrupting people, sitting with them, walking through what they were doing, following them, and eventually made a private accusation that I was "insulting other members of the team". ( I was basically silo'd knew no one, and also knew better than to criticise anyone). Stay with me...

I got chewed out by a seemingly random , mild mannered usually polite manager who never had a problem with me, infront of a few people ( I didnt say anything - instinctively I just knew this mean I was about to be let go, nothing I would say would help, and tensions were high due to deadlines ), accused of being troublesome etc. I calmly said I didnt know what he was stating, he calmed down and left.

Then I was "released from my contract".

As a consultant I don't get upset by these things, I am fine with it, I work as hard as I can and when the contract is over I leave.

However I will never forget how the one man, who never actually did any work, who interrupted everyone, and who made these accusations, was basically doing everything he could do "seem like he had a job".

He was infact, not quite the "hardworking and stupid". My only amendment that perhaps he was a special version of this, the "hardworking and unethical".

Only ever saw that once in nearly 2 decades of working but Im sure there were many more I didnt pick up on,

He stayed on, causing trouble, disrupting etc, and I always realised its because he kept a close profile to his superior, who had no eyes on the ground, and blindly trusted him due to an overload of work.

EDIT > Sorry I want to emphasise the main take away in my rant, is that the polite quiet well meaning, happy, working, well adjusted polite english gentleman behind me who was in management was suddenly shouting at me in front of others because he felt shocked at the accusation that I was a bad person, obviously which mean I deserved a dressing down, stood up and just starting shouting at me. This was a calm, relatively intelligent person, with his things in order, not affiliated with my project. Yet he just assumed an email chain from management around him, possibly with a very accusatory snippet from the trouble maker, was enough to convince him to act unprofessional and give me the dressing down. If anyone would have got into trouble or sued, it would have been this well meaning "smart" individual. That was my other main point.

In the end, there were no moves I could have made, but it was incredibly surprising how many poeple were easily manipulated into being unprofessional etc because of false information coming from their tier / one tier up. Whole narratives painted. It was quite interesting. Eventually that individual must have been let go, but what a desperate, unethical way to live.