CONTEST: funniest real estate story

Most of us have that one boss or co-worker that pops to mind when you hear the term

You haven’t really lived until you have worked with the clinically insane. Most of us have that one client, boss or co-worker that pops to mind when you hear the term “certifiable lunatic.” It’s time to share! Simply tell me your favorite real estate office story in the comments of this blog and I will pick a winner and feature it on RSS Pieces next Friday.

Now, for your reading pleasure: my favorite story about the most insane boss I have ever worked for:

The setting:

Back in 1999, I was recruited to work for a now defunct Goodrich, Michigan based tech firm called Smart-Aim, which was seeking Venture Funding for a mall-based kiosk and free Internet community offering. My job was to help craft the business plan and shop it around with the company’s eccentric CEO, Garry. The company eventually received a $20 million investment which Garry promptly squandered.

The cast of characters:

Garry: Let me tell you about Garry. Garry was a native Swede that weighed nearly 700 lbs, got around on a motorized scooter with off-road wheels, ate jam from a jar with his bare hands and had outfitted his enormous office with both a hospital bed and a hot tub. The word eccentric doesn’t even begin to describe this man.

Chef Bob: Chef Bob was Garry’s 80-year-old personal chef that had been recruited to man the kitchen at the corporate headquarters with his army of assistants and pastry chefs. Chef Bob has a penchant for electric violin and an irrepressible lust for life having recently traded in his trusty Chevrolet for a snazzy red sports car.

Employee that shall remain nameless (ETSRN): ETSRN was Garry’s driver that also coded on the side (quite badly) and did maintenance work around the corporate facility. ETSRN was one of those people that said he could do just about anything but in actuality was completely unskilled and screwed up just about everything he touched.

The plot:

Chef Bob shows Garry his brand new sports car. Garry decides he should do something special for his elderly chef for all his years of faithful food service and directs ETSRN to install a remote car starter in Chef Bob’s sports car to shelter the aging chef from those frigid Michigan mornings. Unfortunately, ETSRN is not a mechanic and during the install does not properly hook up the gear shifter and the parking brake to the sensors. So, needless to say, when Chef Bob starts his shiny new sports car in his Garage one morning it runs him right over. Garry’s gift to Chef Bob was 6 months of pampering by nurses feeding him chicken broth and lime jello as he recovered form 3 broken ribs and a shattered hip.

I have about a million stories from Smart-AIM but I think that one just about says everything.

So, tell me your story…

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Posted on November 16, 2006 08:40:08

Comment from: Vince [Visitor]

I also worked for Smart-Aim from September 1998 to March 1999. What this person says about the insanity of Garry is absolutely true. True also is the ineptness of ETSRN...this guy actually drove from Goodrich to the kiosk I was maintain in Waldorf MD by way of Emerald City, which I believe was in NJ to bring us a computer. We had a broken computer in our kiosk, so rather than sending a new one, or perhaps refurbishing on they may have had at the home office, via FEDEX or UPS, Garry has ETSRN drive to the Emerald City kiosk, rip a computer out of the kiosk there and bring it to us...nevermind the fact that this left Emerald City with a non-functioning kiosk. The previous poster will have to confirm or deny this bit, but from my brief contact with ETSRN, I ascertained that he was either a cocaine or amphetamine junky.

Garry was a real piece of work...we had 3 "salespeople" in our mall team, one of whom just happened to be a 20 yr old, statuesque blonde with not a whol lot going on upstairs and a high school education. They had a sales team meeting in the corporate office, and when Garry saw this girl, he sent her back to be the Manager of our team making 25% more than what I was making as the Network Administrator simply because she was hot. She had NO clue what she was supposed to do except stand by the kiosk and look hot. It was crazy.

Getting paid on time was always an adventure and a fight...sometimes we would just be getting paid for the previous pay period as it was coming time to get paid for the next pay period...I even had one of my two weeks late paychecks bounce once. In addition to being crazy as a loon, Garry was also a jerk of a boss with spurious business ethics.

Permalink June 11, 2008 12:18:00