I’ve mentioned this story briefly in a couple of my past
columns, but the situation Oakland Raiders coach Lane Kiffin is
currently in is so similar, I figured it was time to go into
greater detail.
I once worked for a ceramics company while putting myself
through college. The owner was an 86-year-old man who was slight in
frame and fiery in tongue.
I’ve mentioned this story briefly in a couple of my past columns, but the situation Oakland Raiders coach Lane Kiffin is currently in is so similar, I figured it was time to go into greater detail.
I once worked for a ceramics company while putting myself through college. The owner was an 86-year-old man who was slight in frame and fiery in tongue.
The factory workers, who worked in an attached warehouse, made sure to scurry away when he walked in their vicinity, with the threat of verbal abuse ever-present. The white-collar workers were a cast of idiots, who also made sure to stay out of his way and get just enough done that the chances of being fired were remote. (I would like to think I wasn’t one of them.)
As far as I know, all but one office worker, and we’ll get to him in a second, was fired within a couple months of being hired.
Applying for a job as a mecretary (male secretary), my first interview was something out of a movie – a movie focused on a dysfunctional work setting that isn’t so much like “The Office” or “Office Space,” but more like “Dr. Strangelove.”
It was so disorienting, I felt like either laughing at how absurd everything was or running for the door, all at the same time. Unfortunately, I was a broke student who was a couple months behind on rent and needed a job regardless of how bad the prospects seemed.
Sitting with the owner and his right-hand man, in the right-hand man’s office, which had the pungent aroma of sour milk and halitosis, I knew immediately I was in the wrong place.
“Let me tell you what, Jeff, you young people have no God-damned respect anymore. No one wants to work. No one knows what the hell they’re doing. That’s why the Chinese are taking over the world.”
First, my name is Josh. I let it slide. He probably wouldn’t care or remember.
The owner then went on to use several racial slurs, with his right-hand man not batting an eye. The right-hand man displayed a sinister smile – lips curling at the sides of his mouth, while nodding – when the owner talked about how people refused to put in an honest day’s work.
“Now do you think you can handle that, or you just too f****** lazy?”
I looked at both men for a couple seconds each, shuddered inside, and replied, “When can I start?”
On my first day, I was told I needed to develop a new form that tracked productivity in the warehouse. It needed to be detailed and easy to read.
I made a draft and sent it to the right-hand man. He took it to the owner and I received a note from the boss simply saying, “No, damnit. Do it again.”
We then met for 45 minutes. The owner told me exactly how he wanted it before adding, “God damnit, if you can’t get this done, we’ll just have to find someone else who can. I’ll fire every mother-f****** in this place if that’s what it takes.” The right-hand man’s lips stopped curling and his head became still. Then he started shaking like a lonely baby before turning to the owner with puppy dog eyes to say, ‘Not me, right?’
I shrugged and went back to the drawing board.
I made five revisions that day, my first day, and left thinking, ‘What the hell have I gotten myself into?’
The next day the three of us had an hour-long meeting about correcting the form so it was just so. We met twice later in the day for the same reason.
Before leaving, I went to the right-hand man and said, “You know, it’s kind of ironic that I’m spending my entire day working on a productivity form.”
All I got was a blank stare. Questioning authority was not an avenue to self-preservation.
The meetings continued every day for the next three weeks. Each time the font was either too small or too big, had too much or too little detail, didn’t have the boxes arranged in the correct order, didn’t have the correct header at the top or footer at the bottom … there was always something wrong.
The final straw came when the owner – who I walked in on nodding off to sleep in his office repeatedly, in between being blamed for laziness, incompetence and/or allowing the Chinese to gain a foothold on the world’s economy – asked me to draft a prayer for America’s salvation. I was told I would need to go to local supermarkets and hand out the letter – after I finished revising the productivity report, of course.
I got halfway through typing up the letter when I realized I was in a no-win situation. It was somewhere in between hell and purgatory, each day droning on in the same way but getting slightly worse.
When I walked into his office to tell him I was quitting, he didn’t look surprised. He told me sometimes things just don’t just work out for a reason. I had a feeling this ritual of parting ways was as routine as our daily meetings.
This is where we get to Kiffin. I’m not calling Raiders owner Al Davis racist or senile, but there is no denying the man is so stuck in his ways he has lost touch with what made him and the Raiders a success so many moons ago.
The man made the organization an annual contender, similar to how the owner of the ceramics company had stayed afloat, turning profits for decades up until the turn of the century. But the current order of things is no longer consistent with what the two did to get to this point. Davis replaces coaches like rolls of toilet paper.
Kiffin took the job, knowing it smelled like a construction worker’s port-a-potty, because he needed a chance. He was desperate to make his mark in the NFL like I needed to pay rent. You do what you have to. But the warning signs were always there.
Davis called his head coach “Lance” in the very first press conference, letting everyone know that the coach and his name had no importance. It was only a matter of time until someone else filled his shoes, each new coach as accepting of the inevitable as the last.
It’s a vicious cycle that only spirals downward.
Completely unproductive.
