I had a summer internship for a local tech start up that showed a lot of promise. The CEO was a prominent member of the community and had a long list of companies he had started and sold for several million each. There were no signs that this would be any different, and being one of a team of four, including the CEO, if the venture took off as planned I felt as though I would be set for life. Well, as much as one could be set pocketing their quarter share of a few million, the best offer while I was there for the company was ($115million) and I realistically had about a 10% stake in the company.
Anyways, the CEO was never around, he only showed up once a month or so to take us 3 employees out to lunch and talk business. He was great, but totally absent. His son was my direct boss, he was 20, with two kids and had been a troubled youth. His resume consisted of sandwich maker and vape shop clerk before his father started this tech company to "give him" so he could be all set to raise his kids comfortably.
My job was to run their social media campaigns, write aviation articles, and meet with potential clients to give them sales demos of our software. We had a programmer who diligently wrote out program over in some far off corner because he wanted to hyper-focus, kudos. Since I was an intern I didn't have my own office and was kind of under the wing of this no-experience trust fund degenerate who wouldn't listen to a single word of marketing advice that I gave him. Sandwich guy wouldn't listen to me, the guy with an MBA and a concentration in digital marketing.
So anyways, he shows up every day drunk, but isn't allowed to drink. When his fiance comes to drop off the babies he pushes all the cans over to my side of the table to make it look like I'm drinking to "cover him bro." All well, every day for 4 hours his babies cried and ran around the office, interrupted client meetings, and were a general distraction because his unemployed fiance wanted some "her time" to go home 4 houses down from the office and play a few hours of videogames while we worked.
That was always beyond me, I'm all for stay at home mums, totally- but we are working on a potentially multi-million dollar product...please just watch the kids.
I digress. the son was kind of a racist entitled dude, and I'm mixed and tend to rock an afro when able. He told me time and time again to cut my hair or I would be gone, and as an intern I simply objected stating that my hair wasn't out of line at all, was well kept and I could always slick it back. But to him I looked like a "monkey."
I had a meeting out of state one day so the CEO and myself took one of his private planes and flew out, which was AWESOME by the way, I got to fly a plane! And mind you, I got along with the CEO swimmingly. Halfway through the flight he looks at me and says, "So, I hear you think I'm racist." We are 3,000 feet in the air in a 4 person plane, on coms, and I'm being asked if I think my CEO is racist. What do.
The rest of the flight was a painful telling of the sheer lack of work his son does, the limitations his drunkenness brings to the company, the issues of us effectively being a daycare causes, problems with budget deficits and where the money is going (beer), and that fact that we spend our morning SCRUM meeting playing Magic the Gathering (I love MTG!) instead of planning is whats slowing the company down.
We get back, and I get called to the CEO's house for dinner. His son is there and I have to re-tell literally everything that happened in the plane, and hey! It seems as though they are on my side, the son is sorry, blah blah blah.
I got in the next day and was fired by the son, the CEO didn't know for 3 weeks until he came in for lunch and realized I was gone. He called me asking me to come back and he needed me on the team.
I obviously refused.
edit: I keep in touch with our old programmer who still works there, not a single article has been written, new client has been obtained, and hardly any work has been done. The multi-million dollar offers have been withdrawn and hes looking for other employment. Lesson; no matter how much money you have, if your son has never even shown enough responsibility to clean a damned dishwasher, don't put him in charge of a company and expect results.