One of my relatives told me about her office politics last week. In her office, there was a 50+ years old uncle who is not even a director or any of the big C executives. He’s just a senior employee who has been with the company for 20 years, and a very good “shoe polisher” to the Aussie boss.

Whenever the Aussie boss is here, he will walk around the office like he’s very busy but when the boss is not around, he’ll just spend his time sleeping. He is actually in the Finance department and reports to the Regional Financial Controller (FC) but funnily, he scolds the FC more than the FC talks to him! What’s even funnier is, the FC does not dare to raise his voice against this guy. The FC will always say “He’s an old man, just let him be.”

That’s what my friend noticed when she first joined the company. She has been with the company for few months now and has just resigned. The old man also has the tendency to approach newcomers and scold them, just to make them leave. In the end, the entire company hates this guy because he scolds people for no reason. He just likes to show people who is the boss (even though officially, he’s not).

To give you a better idea of this guy – he has a small book (the 555 book we use in schools) which he uses to record the name of the people who have offended him, time and date included.

I really wonder, why is such an idiot still existing in the company? Shouldn’t he be out of job by now? Shouldn’t he be punished severely by the bosses?

The thing is, he is still there because the FC and the managing director of the regional office do not dare to punish him. In the end, the old man crosses the line and becomes more powerful than the bosses.

Frankly speaking, we do see and hear such story quite often. Some of these idiots are actually relatives of the big bosses, or have some connection one way or another. But either way, this is NOT how a company should work. The bosses are there for a reason – to manage the business and to manage the employees. If you have an employee who acts like a boss, without anyone controlling him, one can only wonder what will happen to the company.

Never ever let an employee becomes bigger than the bosses and the company. In this case, the bosses need to play their role – either control him or kick him off. It’s far too risky to have someone like this messing things around in the company.

Unless, the bosses themselves don’t care.