Yes, But It Was A Very Manly Pink Car...

As a manager, it’s not that hard to piss people off.  You can piss them off without even trying.  In fact, you can piss them off without even knowing.  I remember a time, as a manager in a hotel in the Rockies when I had the entire housekeeping team ready to quit because of one passing comment that I made without two seconds of thought.  I was helping out because we were understaffed and very busy, and I, instead of sitting in my cushy office was out in the rooms, making beds and cleaning toilets.  I imagined that I would be revered by the housekeepers as one of the suits who wasn’t afraid to get into the trenches.  I’m sure it was going pretty well, and my rep was being appropriately elevated until I uttered those five fateful words…”well, this isn’t rocket science”.  

Typically in this hotel, to get any kind of work-related announcement circulated, it required a meeting, followed by a memo, followed by nine emails, and then a letter attached to paycheques, and at that, only 50% of people read it, and only half of them paid attention to it.  My five words spread like wild-fire.  It took about 8 seconds for every single housekeeper, including those who weren’t working to hear that I had completely slagged the profession of hotel housekeeper and that I didn’t respect them or the work they did.   I’m fairly certain that word of my disrespect even spread outside the property in this close-knit mountain resort town because I was getting more side-ways looks than usual at the Safeway.

I had to have a meeting with the executive housekeeper and her supervisors to explain myself, and to this day I’m certain that if she wouldn’t have smoothed things over (read:  pleaded with her team) that we would have been replacing the entire housekeeping staff.  In that resort town, it was, and I’m sure still is, an employee’s market.  They hold all the power.

I mention this because it puts me in mind of another situation where I clearly pissed somebody off.  It occurred under very different circumstances and generated a significantly different reaction.

By this time, I was a director responsible for a department of about 75 people in a company of about 1400 nationally.  I returned to my office in the middle of the afternoon on one very normal day.  I saw the flashing light of death on my telephone signaling waiting voicemail, so I listened.  I had to listen to it 3 times to make sure I really heard what I thought I heard.  Then I had to get somebody else to listen to it.  I had received my first death threat as a manager.  In fact, it was my first death threat as a person.

Another fateful five words…"You are going to die."  No hello, no goodbye, no reason, no nothing.  A very simple “You are going to die”.  Not even a timeline.  It would have been very handy to know when this was going to occur.

I thought getting a death threat represented some kind of right of passage for a manager, and one that was not to be taken too seriously, but others felt differently.  The person I asked to listen insisted that I call our corporate security for guidance.  Our corporate security gurus demanded that I call the police.  They also suggested that I move my car around the parking lot so it would be harder to track my comings and goings from the building.  To their credit, they had no idea that I drove a fushia-coloured Dodge Shadow, (surprisingly the only one in the parking garage), so it wasn’t exactly ‘Where’s Waldo’ when it came to knowing where I was.

Following directions, I called the regional police service, and it was apparently a fairly busy Thursday afternoon.   The somewhat pre-occupied duty officer took my story, advised that it would be three or four hours before an officer could get to me to take an official report, and to hold tight.  She also advised that I should lock my door and if anyone I didn’t recognize came to the door, that I shouldn’t answer.  I didn’t think it was too wise to interrupt her to remind her that it was probably actually someone who knew me that wanted me dead.

Then I waited.  And waited.   My lovely wife was also waiting, at home, and in those days, she didn’t exactly have the patience of Job when it came to my tardy arrival from work.  I can remember many occasions where I was greeted with a less than welcoming, “Look girls, your Daddy does remember where he lives…”  In order to head off certain grief at home, I decided that waiting another three hours for an officer to arrive was not in the cards.   So I called back the duty officer, told her I wouldn’t be waiting, and she informed me to be careful, and to call them if anyone tried to kill me.  I let the people at work who knew about the situation know that I was leaving (oddly nobody offered to walk me to my car), and I left for home, without incident.

Corporate security was insistent that I get this on the police record, so when I was back at work a few days later, I called the cops and they sent over their most junior, most disinterested officer to take my report.  The officer arrived in my office, asked about two questions and told me to call back if anyone tried to kill me.  He stood up and was making for the door when I asked him if he even wanted to listen to the message.  Our security people had made a copy from the voicemail system and emailed it to me (remember that if you’re ever planning to make a death threat on company voicemail).  He sighed and said, “Oh ya, I should”…so I played it for him.  

 Click here to hear the voicemail message

He got interested fast, and I’ll never forget his reaction…”Wow, cool…that sounds like it’s out of that movie Saw where the killer records a message for his victim.  Don’t worry, it’s probably just some crackpot.”  As he was walking out the door, I asked him what happened to those victims in the movie, and he said, “Oh, within a couple of days they’re dead.”  And he kept walking.

So notwithstanding the officer’s incredible ‘bedside manner’, I’m still very much alive, and that was my first and so far only death threat.  We never did officially pin it on anyone, but I’m pretty sure it was from a guy I had fired about a year before who I not-so-affectionately refer to as Porn Boy.  We’ll talk more about him later.