Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar is considering a presidential run which, according to quite a few people who used to work for her, is most emphatically not a good idea.
Amy Klobuchar has laid the grounds for a presidential run on an image of “Minnesota nice.”
But behind the doors of her Washington, DC, office, the Minnesota Democrat ran a workplace controlled by fear, anger, and shame, according to interviews with eight former staffers, one that many employees found intolerably cruel. She demeaned and berated her staff almost daily, subjecting them to bouts of explosive rage and regular humiliation within the office, according to interviews and dozens of emails reviewed by BuzzFeed News.
That anger regularly left employees in tears, four former staffers said. She yelled, threw papers, and sometimes even hurled objects; one aide was accidentally hit with a flying binder, according to someone who saw it happen, though the staffer said the senator did not intend to hit anyone with the binder when she threw it.
“I cried. I cried, like, all the time,” said one former staffer.
In the emails seen by BuzzFeed, often sent between 1 and 4 in the morning, Klobuchar regularly berated employees, often in all capital letters, over minor mistakes, misunderstandings, and misplaced commas. Klobuchar, in the emails, which were mostly sent over the past few years, referred to her staff’s work as “the worst in ... years,” and “the worst in my life.”
When staffers made mistakes, the emails show, she reamed them out — and sometimes, emails show, threatened to fire them — over threads that included many of their colleagues.
4 comments:
Misplaced commas. Emails sent in the middle of the night. Does she drink?
She sounds like a complete control freak. I've worked for people like that and it's not much fun. Anything that goes wrong can set them off. I've gotten screamed at myself a few times over the years.
There have been many surveys taken of why people quit their jobs, and one of the top reasons is having a boss that's a jerk, or with whom one simply doesn't get along. Stress and workload are other top reasons. Sounds like these people hit the trifecta.
What was "in it" for these people? I'd have been out the door so fast heads would've spun. Did none of these people think of quitting? Were there no other jobs available?
If you want to climb the influence ladder in Washington you have to work in Congress. Other jobs in DC tend to be of the hotel and restaurant variety.
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