There was the boss I had when I was an Engineer in a plant on a three shift rotating basis. Our boss at the time put out a day shift job as a carrot to all of the shift engineers.
Barney, our boss, would approach each employee about with issues, complaints, and comments that other engineers, foreman, and union folks would make about us. Many times these concerns were told to Barney in confidence. Barney ended up pitting half the engineers against the other half by doing this. Barney would also keep a notebook of every cross word or conflict that he had had with other people so he could "laundry list" these people or management if required.
This situation happened 6-7 years ago. I understand that Barney took a promotion in another area. A couple a friends of mine mentioned that they took part in having Barney drummed out of their area. Anyone who talks about him would like to run him over with their car. Essentially this individual was paranoid and used Machiavellian practices of divide and conquer.
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