They call me 'Growler'. I don't like you. Let's discuss your pay cut

Depends on your definition of growler I guess.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Growler

Corey is aware this was probably not his finest moment.

Unfortunately it's the sort of moment you regret the day you walk into a meeting for the job/deal of your dreams, and find Growler sitting behind the desk...

I wouldn't trust Growler further than I could kick him. The only way I would have agreed to help in the sale of the kit was after Growler signed a contract that I would receive a hefty commission on any sale. Otherwise I would probably suggested him to go and suck a neutron star.

Doffs hat to the late, great Douglas Adams

Never burn your bridges

But also never willingly reconnect with Growler types.

I ran my own business for a while in a non-IT sector, and one customer to whom I'd offered a very favourable rate still managed to screw the price down. At the time I didn't have a lot of other work coming in and eventually became so discouraged that I wound up the company, having passed them on to another business that could do their work (at much higher rates). For some years afterward they kept trying to get in contact about some more work, and I kept managing to not be available. Had I been more commercially oriented then it might have turned out differently, but as it was I preferred to close the door and just walk away permanently.

I may have the most evil story

I worked for a company that I left in 2004

My immediate line manager was an utter arsehole. Incompetent, a liar, and surprisingly a male misandrist.

He did things like lie to managers in other depts about people applying for jobs internally from his team, alter holiday forms to remove dates and encourage every one to snitch on everyone else for the tiniest of things. he once convened a meeting to discuss exactly why a member of his team was seen eating a packet of crisps from the vending machine, whilst waiting for the kettle to boil when they were making cups of tea for themselves and others on their team... That level of petty, arrogance is hard to tolerate. So I quit and left them in the lurch because he threw a strop and demanded I be removed the same day... I laughed because I'd given them 2 months notice and they had to pay for the full 2 months of garden leave. :)

But the story goes back about 6 months earlier.

I'd become friendly with a girl in another dept... one thing led to another and for a couple of months we had a bit of a fling. I knew she'd been seeing some married guy but had broken it off because he refused to leave his wife.

Well... guess who that married man was.... add adulterer to his list of wankerish accomplishments.

After the xmas break, I came back to find he'd actually left his wife and was now shacked up with this girl

On the day I left... which was also the same day I handed in my notice. he came up to me in the lobby and held out his hand with the smuggest smirk on his face and wished me good luck.

I gripped his hand... pulled him a little closer and said... Thanks... oh, and sorry I fucked your mistress

His grip went limp... his smirk vanished... his face went purple... and that was the moment he decided to take a swing at me and only managed to brush my shoulder... in front of about 10-12 people.

I turned to the reception staff stood 10ft away and said, would you mind calling the police to report an assault.

He quickly disappeared off home... HR tried to placate me (and failed)... and as I pointed out... I don't work there any more.

Last I heard he'd been fired and one of the best snitches got promoted to his role... a few months later I was contacted to see if I'd be willing to go back as they were having trouble retaining staff. But I was in a new job with a 50% pay increase

The company still exists... but it had to sell the big shiny HQ it built and now exists as a tiny fraction of it's former self.

There was this one guy...

... who had a tell -- a tight little smile that meant he was about to f*** someone over.

At a certain large press agency, the head of news was known to be a very unpleasant, shouty man with a perpetually red face. How he didn't have a coronary from excessive anger is a miracle, especially after he got on the wrong side of one colleague.

The agency had moved it's headquarters to a place near Leeds, but still had a London office since so many things occur only in the capital. On the top floor of the building are several apartments - a tax dodge when the office was built - and used by execs when they visit from headquarters.

Whenever shouty man was due to visit, his PA would let it be known to my colleague, who would then indulge in a hefty lunch, take an enormous dump in the apartment toilet and not flush the chain. Eventually an email was sent out saying cameras would be fitted in the hallway of the apartments, but the revenge dumps continued since building services - who also hated shouty man - let us know the cameras were fake.

used to have 2 OPs managers. one left for a better position, the one that remained was terrible.

FIRST meeting with the client company without the other Operations manager controlling her (client was a very large UK satellite broadcaster), she cracked a joke about the CEO banging his new celebrity wife and because he was so old, him crumbling into dust.

The meeting was chaired by the guys SON. 100 million pound contract terminated due to the 'disparagement' clause........

Obviously I’m missing something

Nope, sorry guys, you’re going to have to help be out here!

I’ve read the article three times now and am still wondering where the issue is!

Now ‘Growler’ might or might not be a complete arse, or, as the new guy, he was just doing the usual ‘jockeying for position in a negotiation’? Fine, I’ve dealt with both and can rapidly can tell the two apart and if the latter, think, he’s just doing his job, yes, behaving like a complete moron, true, doesn't work on me but still....

Now since ‘Corey' apparently managed to negotiate really good contract terms, "That was the most money I have ever been paid – we're talking Premier League footballer money”, it sort of hints that ‘Growler; wasn’t as good a manager as he thought - excellent, someone to latch on to, to nurture, no?

Of course its all went wrong, as was the case with the dot-com bubble, but ‘Corey’ had a chance to cash in some more, no?

It was a bit of a gamble, he turns up at the meeting, at worse he gets nothing. loses the cost of his time and travelling expenses, on the other hand maybe he would get a payout from ‘Growler’, even better he impresses the new people and scores a ’short-term’ support contract for the system. Alas he threw his toys out of the pram and got nothing!

Sorry Corey but twat!

Karma does exist

I worked for a contractor after leaving uniformed service and that same non-DOD service hired a complete ass of a man to manage their data center on our base in NYC. No one in the contracting team wanted to work for this guy, so we rotated 2 members of our small team onto the DC support team to "do time" under this guy. Over the next 2 years of his reign, many of us nearly quit because the experience was so awful, but during my sentence, I was there when he alerted base security to remove an engineer from the DC because he spoke while repairing a server. Our unit commander was unaware of the "intruder" until security arrived at the DC and that was the last straw. He directed his warrant officer to reclaim the DC manager's keys, at which point the manager started yelling "I know what you're trying to do, you're trying to get rid of me" and that screaming fit sealed his own fate. He was put on administrative leave due to instability and we were all informed to keep an eye out should he somehow make it onto the base. I never saw him again, but loved telling the story of his departure and that karma does exist.

Etymology

Wasn't the original teddy-bear on which Pooh Bear was based called 'Growler'?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/04/real-winnie-the-pooh-revealed-to-have-been-growler

"Previously unseen pictures show that EH Shepard’s iconic images were modelled on his own son’s toy bear – not AA Milne’s"

there's a known type of disorder

Some time ago I was a manager at a semiconductor company. They hired a product manager and sales manager who was a glib classic sociopathic liar. Could not open this mouth without lying. And was a bullying type. And loved to dominate everyone, pushy tremendous narcissist ego. He destroyed the company by lying to Motorola about non-existent products and we lost our prime customer. After the collapse he then leaped around Silicon Valley to a string of other companies, treating them all the same way, ruining some of them too, eventually gaining a horrendous reputation. Unable to get a job anywhere, he went back to India where he turned to real estate, selling fraudulent projects to investors. (After that cooling off period he came back the US to con even more companies.) Currently, his LinkedIn profile is an amazing pack of lies. He spun EVERY failure as a success and made up positions. His driving quality is that he knows how to boss and manipulate people, with a lie-driven reality distortion field to match Steve Jobs fame.

From experience with him I learned a valuable lesson in not ever letting myself get bullied or conned. Now I spot them on their first try and hold them off while I make other plans.

Defining Growler

With all the mix of definitions of Growler and military/beer stories herein I am surprised that this alternative definition hasn't been mentioned yet. It invariably generates chuckles from British military personnel, I suppose. With or without beer.

Posted this a couple of months ago, but it fits here as well

When I was a student, I needed a part time job to earn some cash. I got a job as a shelf stacker in my local Sainsburys.

It was a crap job anyway, paid crap wages, but it was work.

We got the stock in what they called "outers". A "outer" was a cardboard tray, usually with 24 cans or bottles of whatever the product was. wrapped in plastic.. We had to load 40 outers every half an hour to reach target. If I didn't work in an old store, with shelves half the size of the modern ones, this would not be a particular problem. As it was, for most products, we had to remove the packaging, and put the product on the shelf directly, arranging them some the labels were at the front. We also had to tidy up existing products. In an apparent effort to minimise time wasting, we were not allowed to talk, unless it was work related, or we were on a break. Even though I was in my mid 20s, I used to go home aching, barely able to move and needing a shower at the end of every shift.

We only hit the target on one occasion I am aware of.

One day, one of my colleagues actually did hit the target, and he went to the boss, expecting at least a "Well done". What he got was "Why are you telling me this? You could be stacking shelves and working on your next 40 outers.

Then, Blockbuster opened up a store near me. I applied for the job, and got it. While the job itself wasn't great, I enjoyed working there. I had a good team.

Anyhow, the minute I heard I got the Blockbuster job, I walked straight in to Sainsbury's, found my manager, walked him to the busiest part of the store, told him he could stick the shelf stacking job up his arse, and walked out.

Thankfully, for the current staff, that store has long since been refitted, and has full size shelfs now.

Had a new head of dept introduce himself to the team. He said his name and followed it up with "there's only one F in Graf"

Suffice to say it wasn't long before he proved that there's only one effing Graf

He may have had a forename, but like another idiot known as 'Super Youth', but no-one remembered what it it was

(apparently SY got his moniker after being awarded 'most improved apprentice' despite the fact that everyone he met would take an instant dislike to him... it saved time)