'YOU HAVE MEDDLED WITH THE PRIMAL FORCES OF NATURE!' Utah CEO Delivers Whiniest Rant Since Trump's Last Rally

NOW BUY HIM SOMETHING FOR BOSS'S DAY.

There are bad bosses. Yr Wonkette once had a boss so terrible that twenty years later, even a mild earthquake anywhere in Southern California makes us fervently hope that her house buckled and went sliding down the Burbank hillside where it had been anchored by blonde hair dye and pure bile.

So we think she would have gotten along great with James Clarke, the CEO of Clearlink, a Utah-based company that does something or other with growing digital brands, who knows, this stuff all sounds like standard corporate gobbledygook to us.

But Clarke, as is standard for corporate CEOs who spend too much of their time up their own assholes, takes his gobbledygook very seriously. And it disappoints him that the peons who work for him are more concerned with trivialities like their families and their quality of life than they are about helping James Clarke buy another vacation home.

So he partly rescinded the work-from-home policy the company has had since the pandemic started three years ago, ordering anyone who lives within 50 miles of headquarters to start coming into the office four days a week. Since this will upset the routines people have established particularly with regard to work-life balance and childcare, and since just a few months ago Clarke had said he had no plans to bring his employees back to the office, some of his workers were not thrilled.

What is a CEO to do when faced with employees resistant to upheaval? Obviously he unloads on the ungrateful freeloaders in an all-hands video call, clips of which someone leaked to Vice so that everyone who feels unappreciated by terrible bosses can be triggered into upping their blood pressure medication :

 [Clarke], who is forcing employees to return to the office, celebrated the sacrifice of a worker who had to sell the family dog as a result of his decisions. He also questioned the motives of those who disagreed, accusing some of quiet quitting, and waxed skeptical on the compatibility of working full time with serving as a primary caregiver to children. 

Yeah, everyone go hire nannies with the increased salary that James Clarke is not paying you. Or move to Iowa and let your kids go right from school to the swing shift in a meat-packing plant, thus relieving you of the terrible burden of finding after-school care or driving them to soccer practice.

 All he was asking, he said, is that people come into the office and give their “blood, sweat, and tears” to the company. “I challenge any of you to outwork me, but you won’t,” he added. 

Again, this company does digital branding gobbledygook, it’s not trying to solve climate change or cure cancer or even develop some super-cool technology that can tell us where we put our keys.

 In hopes of rallying the troops, Clarke took the time to pay special attention to one employee who had sold the family dog as a result of his decision, describing it as an example of the “sacrifices that are being made” and saying it broke his heart as someone who, he claimed, has been at the “head of the humanization of pets movement.” 

Someone get that dog a lawyer so he can sue this jackass for emotional abandonment.

The last three years have seen enormous upheaval in the way this country's workers work. To some extent, we’re even sympathetic to some of the challenges of managing employees in far-flung locales, or to the fear some bosses have that their workers are more productive in an office because there is no substitute for in-person interaction. It’s an argument, at least.

But Clarke, last seen turning into a giant man-eating snake at the end of Season 3 of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," had more on his mind in his rant, which seemed to be much more an observance of Festivus than a rah-rah session to rally the troops:

 He also leveled accusations at his own employees that seemed to have been building up inside him since he returned to the company, criticizing what he described as too many people’s “natural” willingness to “backbite or murmur or find fault or criticize.” He brought up “nonsense” questions and a lack of general “respect”; referred to some of his own employees as “critics or pundits” with no real answers; and proclaimed that diversity, equity, and inclusion “can only exist where you can respect and even revere the person who directly opposes your view or those of your chosen community.” 

Peons, you will revere your CEO, even if your view is the direct opposite of his position that being an enormous dickhead is good for company morale.

 “In these town halls, I alone have been compared to a convicted Wall Street felon. I’ve been criticized for my faith, where I went to college and it wasn’t at all about Harvard or Oxford, two universities of which I'm an alum, but were also founded and operated under the Judeo-Christian ethic,” he said. “The prejudice, contention, hypocrisy and unfairness of these statements made by many who remain at Clearlink were made by none who knew me.” 

Buddy, you’re the boss. Your employees are often not going to like you. The content writer trying to raise a family in Utah on $68,000 a year and who now has to find a new childcare option and spend a couple of hours a day in the car has much bigger concerns than you being upset no one respects your Judeo-Christian ethics.

 “I took it and I listened and I was kind and I responded with kindness, but no more,” he said. “You have misinterpreted my kindness for weakness. You have continued to do so, and it will stop.” 

Well, who wouldn’t want to work for a boss who talks like a school shooter’s manifesto? Good luck, Clearlink employees. We suggest unionizing.

[ Vice ]

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