In late 2017, or, “The Beginning of the End,” as I not-at-all melodramatically think of it, I had this guy working for me that I’ll call “Richard Eastman.” Like all tall, lanky dudes, he was strong and could work all day. He had one small handicap, though. He liked to blow up his employers’ trucks.
I was thinking about this guy the other day in contemplation for this week’s theoretical theme, “Getting over one’s own BS: the first prerequisite to getting anything done.” (This cumbersome abomination is a working title which, as I’m about to hit “publish” is now evidently the actual theme.) Mr. Eastman was a guy given over, wholly, to his own BS. He had a certain vision of himself that, shall we say, was a bit loftier than reality merited.
Eastman was different than the other brawlers and future-cons who worked for me. He started out with a great attitude and kept it right up until the end. He was driven. Positive. He was the very icon of a man voraciously consuming the same diet of self-improvement literature I was addicted to. He had a hard-luck story, as so many of the guys did, but he was motivated to climb out of his own crater, get his girl back, and get back to winning.
If I’d been writing this thing back then, I might have interviewed him.
His attitude was refreshing. Most of the guys who came through the company just needed a job. That was fine. I’ve been there more often than not myself. Some of the guys were clearly just stopping by on their way to bigger and better things. It was rare for guys to land at MTB and want to help with the Great Project. Eastman was one of them, or so he said repeatedly and, for a time, demonstrated. I was happy to have his help, killing myself, as I was, trying to do everything on my own.
My concerns about him started on Day 1. He was an Olympic-level butt-kisser. I would take new guys out for on-the-job training, hopefully instilling the boss’ vision for things before they were totally immersed in the daily crew cab bitch fest. I gave him a little bit about the history of MTB, my philosophy of the work, how to stay sane during hour upon hour of monotonous grunt work, and, of course, how to do the job without breaking customers’ stuff.
In the first hour of OJT, he praised everything I did or said. He constantly interrupted me to tell me how he was going to embody these things. He got it, after all. He’d been looking for such an awesome opportunity for years.
Here’s a memo to all the eager beavers looking for rapid advancement - the velocity of your career’s trajectory is inversely proportional to the duration of your lips on management’s behind.
He gave me plenty of reasons to cut him loose in the couple of months he was with us, but the final blow happened when he almost crashed an 18-foot moving truck in the process of threatening his crew leader. Whatever sparked the incident is irrelevant, and it was undoubtedly small and bizarre. To a narcissist or a sociopath, any threat to his ego is a grievous wound. They’re not so much aggressive as they are unburdened by the web of social contracts that keep us from slaughtering everyone who irritates us in some way. So, whatever it was, Mr. Eastman grabbed the wheel of the truck, yanked it to the right, and bounced the 15,000-pound box truck into a parking lot. He was lucky - they all were lucky - that he hadn’t hit another car, biker, or even just the curb.
From there, he screamed in the crew leader’s face.
That crew leader called me from the job and said, “Either this guy goes or I do.” Since that particular crew leaders was easily one of my most valuable guys (clean cut, driver’s license, hard worker, etc.), it was an easy request to comply with.
I called my friends at Bookstore Movers, the company Eastman had worked for until he came over to us. It’s a call I should have made before I hired the guy, but we were always desperate for drivers.
“Fire that guy immediately,” “Josh” told me. “You are in danger.”
Eastman had poured sugar into their trucks’ gas tanks, among other things. He’d tried to fight almost everyone on their crew, and had threatened to blow up their office. They’d named a rule after him: all of their trucks had to be fit into their garage, no matter how much Tetris that required, at the end of the day, no matter what. Leaving the trucks in the yard, unsecured, meant exposing them to sabotage. They called it “The Eastman Rule.”
Josh told me a few other things:
“Do not provoke him.”
He was “prone to action.”
“He has no conscience.”
I fired the psycho that day. I had to do it via text because he’d asked to be dropped off somewhere else. He knew what was coming and he wasn’t answering his phone.
Later, we figured out that a new candidate we were trying to get in for an interview was Richard Eastman. He had created a whole online identity as a means of “spying” on the company so he could monitor what people were saying about him. When I fired Eastman, I turned to this new candidate to urge him to come on board. “A position opened up.” But as the text conversations dragged on and on, and then became odd and even a little aggressive, the truth came out. I finally told “the candidate” that identity theft was a crime, and that was the end of it, thankfully.
Still, I carried a handgun and kept an eye on the security cameras for the remainder of the company’s operations.
For me, Eastman is a “guardrail.” If I ever find myself thinking that I “deserve” something, or that certain qualities or talents I may have aren’t getting the appreciation they should, I think, “Richard Eastman.” He was a man (a boy, really) who had zero doubts about his magnificence. He was beyond ego, conscience or, apparently, remorse. In other words, he checked all the boxes for the definition of a narcissistic sociopath. He was completely detached from reality, but as the soul abhors a vacuum as much as nature does, he replaced with reality with the closest thing: himself.
Always be on guard against that. That’s my “Eastman Rule.”
On another note, which I’m sure is tenuously related, although I can’t seem to tie the knot here, I’m thinking about what I’m doing here. A lot. It’s turning into a bit of a slog because I’m the main topic, which I’m increasingly uncomfortable with. And returning to, or attempting to return to, the stories of the business years and squeezing lessons out of them feels like going backward. The farther I get from that time, the more cringey it seems.
I naturally gravitate toward topics/ideas that I “consume” regularly. Unfortunately, lately, that seems to be fare from the protein-rich gym cafe of #Money and #Motivation Twitter, which I then try and fail not to regurgitate here.
In other words, is this an advice column for potential entrepreneurs? Is it a confessional diary? Is it how I process the painful BS going on in my personal life? If it’s any of these, it’s inadequate at best.
So, bear with me as I do a little course-correcting and try to find that Golden Mean where it’s enjoyable again, and maybe even helpful. One thing I have to do starting RFN is cut back on production. I’ve been trying to hit three posts per week, and, surprise surprise, that’s not a recipe for excellent content. On “dry” days it becomes a sophistry mill because I just have to hit that deadline.
That guy over there in the corner, writhing on the floor and holding his groin? Yeah, that’s the guy who told me I needed to just “man up” and hit my deadlines.
I have some stories to tell, but the current model is unsustainable, particularly with other (paid) projects “excuse-me’ing” at my bedside all night long. This is still the centerpiece of a larger plan, but as I said, please bear with me as I take a break for quality and training purposes.
Rise Above Today is a reader-supported project. It’s totally free for now, but if you upgraded to a $5 paid subscription, I wouldn’t fight you over it. Thanks for reading!
I wish I had time to tell you me and my brother's Geek Squad stories of onsite work. Imagine your old employee, and then stepping in their home without a weapon. Good times!
FWIW, I looooove the old moving business stories. The pain for you is inversely proportional to the awesomeness for the reader.