by Higgenbotham » Sat Sep 05, 2026 10:59 pm
Psychopathic control systems are pretty easy to screw with because they're run by stupid psychopaths. If you're preferentially screening for psychopathy as most psychopathic control systems are, then a fair number of stupid people slide through. It was around the year 2000 that I working in one that had 4 layers of management in that local area: Director at the top, Manager below her, Supervisor below her, then technical employees like engineers and geologists at the bottom. I was an engineer.
The Director at the top was screwing with me through her chain of command and I figured out that it was her who was doing it. Behind closed doors I told my Supervisor that I hated her and it was personal. I made it appear convincing. I never let on to any fellow employees that I was speaking like this. To them, I was a really cordial and loyal coworker.
The organization had just come out with a stupid Violence in the Workplace Policy. The purpose of these kinds of things is to give management a tool to torture people they don't like.
So now my Supervisor had a problem. He had an employee who was saying things that appeared violent according to this stupid policy and he had to assume I was saying similar things to other people. If the Director found out somehow that I was saying these things and he hadn't told her he would be fired. So he had to go up the chain to his Manager and tell her who then told the Director (I am pretty sure of this).
I had a coworker next to me and one across the hall. The next thing that happened was the one across the hall came to me privately and said the Manager had come to him and asked if I had ever said anything volent toward the Director. I would describe him as empathically shocked. I did something like shake my head and say, wow, that is really crazy; these people must be nuts. Then same thing with the one next to me.
Next, I was talking on the phone to an engineer who had been a Supervisor at one time. I was a long conversation. We heard a loud click. He told me immediately that he knew what that was because he had been in management. He said HR just recorded our phone conversation.
Next, the maintenance man in the building reported to the head of HR. He told me he had gone into her office and she had been reading my email on her computer. They still couldn't find anything.
Next, I was sitting in my living room one day and saw Ameritech pull up to my apartment building. Most people still had copper lines at that time. He opened the box for all the phones which was on the outside of the building, did something, then closed the box and drove away. After that, I noticed my phone line sounded different. I was fortunate to have an old friend who loved to talk. I started calling him and discussed in general terms as you would to a friend in casual conversation all the illegal and rumored illegal things the management structure was doing in that place. In a couple weeks, Ameritech drove up again and opened the box, did something, and left and now my phone line sounded crystal clear again.
The Director was fired and Manager was retired after that. But we're talking years after that, not days or weeks. I quit the place long before she was fired. They were doing pretty much what the psychopathic control system wanted them to do, which is psychopathic from top to bottom if you want to call the Supervisor the bottom, but the kinds of things they were doing are supposed to be kept secret for decades and they weren't properly keeping a lid on things.
Psychopathic control systems are pretty easy to screw with because they're run by stupid psychopaths. If you're preferentially screening for psychopathy as most psychopathic control systems are, then a fair number of stupid people slide through. It was around the year 2000 that I working in one that had 4 layers of management in that local area: Director at the top, Manager below her, Supervisor below her, then technical employees like engineers and geologists at the bottom. I was an engineer.
The Director at the top was screwing with me through her chain of command and I figured out that it was her who was doing it. Behind closed doors I told my Supervisor that I hated her and it was personal. I made it appear convincing. I never let on to any fellow employees that I was speaking like this. To them, I was a really cordial and loyal coworker.
The organization had just come out with a stupid Violence in the Workplace Policy. The purpose of these kinds of things is to give management a tool to torture people they don't like.
So now my Supervisor had a problem. He had an employee who was saying things that appeared violent according to this stupid policy and he had to assume I was saying similar things to other people. If the Director found out somehow that I was saying these things and he hadn't told her he would be fired. So he had to go up the chain to his Manager and tell her who then told the Director (I am pretty sure of this).
I had a coworker next to me and one across the hall. The next thing that happened was the one across the hall came to me privately and said the Manager had come to him and asked if I had ever said anything volent toward the Director. I would describe him as empathically shocked. I did something like shake my head and say, wow, that is really crazy; these people must be nuts. Then same thing with the one next to me.
Next, I was talking on the phone to an engineer who had been a Supervisor at one time. I was a long conversation. We heard a loud click. He told me immediately that he knew what that was because he had been in management. He said HR just recorded our phone conversation.
Next, the maintenance man in the building reported to the head of HR. He told me he had gone into her office and she had been reading my email on her computer. They still couldn't find anything.
Next, I was sitting in my living room one day and saw Ameritech pull up to my apartment building. Most people still had copper lines at that time. He opened the box for all the phones which was on the outside of the building, did something, then closed the box and drove away. After that, I noticed my phone line sounded different. I was fortunate to have an old friend who loved to talk. I started calling him and discussed in general terms as you would to a friend in casual conversation all the illegal and rumored illegal things the management structure was doing in that place. In a couple weeks, Ameritech drove up again and opened the box, did something, and left and now my phone line sounded crystal clear again.
The Director was fired and Manager was retired after that. But we're talking years after that, not days or weeks. I quit the place long before she was fired. They were doing pretty much what the psychopathic control system wanted them to do, which is psychopathic from top to bottom if you want to call the Supervisor the bottom, but the kinds of things they were doing are supposed to be kept secret for decades and they weren't properly keeping a lid on things.