Unfortunately, I have had to deal with some lame human resources people during my PR career, but I think Maurice Lemons, who worked for Lulu when I joined the Yilmaz Agency, was by far the worst. It’s not even close.
It wasn’t just because Maurice was generally incompetent, and sometimes simple requests like office supplies or computer repair were ignored or took numerous requests to get responded to.
Maurice had a bad, standoffish attitude and it always felt like you were putting him out if you asked for anything even the most simple requests. It was even worse for me working in the L.A. office as I couldn’t just walk over and confront him. He could easily ignore my calls or emails as he did and I would eventually have to go to Lulu or Miriam to force him to do his fucking job.
I only met Maurice once in person when I visited the Chicago office shortly after joining the agency. He was a thin Caucasian man in his late forties. In person, Maurice was as I expected, as he was unfriendly and didn’t have too much to say. He was especially skittish around Lulu even though he was a complete fuck up at his job.
Honestly, working for Lulu was undoubtedly a factor in Maurice’s lousy job performance, as she hardly inspired her employees. Frankly, Maurice just didn’t care. Shockingly, neither did Lulu. She attacked the rest of the office over every little mistake, but she looked the other way when it came to Maurice’s glaring incompetence and absenteeism. Maurice missed at least a couple of days of the week saying he was too sick to work. This was probably true as Lulu told me he was battling cancer. Actually, Lulu was afraid to fire him because of his cancer diagnosis.
Let me be clear — I have great sympathy with anyone fighting cancer and other life-changing diseases. Work is not more important than our lives no matter what Lulu and other bosses I worked for believe. And this why all of us at the agency cut Maurice slack for almost two years, although it was apparent, he had completed checked out of his job.
I asked Lulu why couldn’t Maurice take a few months off with salary to fight his cancer full time. Although Maurice showed up for work, he struggled to pretend that he cared anymore. You couldn’t blame him even if it was unprofessional, but professionalism was pretty much non-existent at Lulu’s agency anyway.
We could have brought in a temp to fill his position as he focused on his health. That would have been the right thing to do for everyone involved, but Lulu never considered it. I think she was worried about paying Maurice a salary while he wasn’t there. She would rather have him tough it out and neglect his job duties not to mention his health. Profits over people. No surprise there.
Lulu’s hypocrisy of letting Maurice getting away with taking a paycheck for a lousy work performance undercut her management authority with the rest of us. It was like she has two sets of rules, one for Maurice and one for the rest of us. Our staff got no leeway from her if our performance was not up to her standards. She even fired some competent people while Maurice was still there, which only further damaged what was left of our agency morale.
Maurice was an overall lousy HR person, but as a travel planner, he was a complete fucking disaster. Not sure why Lulu and Miriam didn’t realize it earlier as he screwed up their travel plans, too.
Maurice’s first travel planning fuckup for me happened on the way back my first visit to the Chicago office.
Lulu was on the warpath after our sports app client requested we put together a social media plan and we were behind schedule in delivering it to her. Lulu was unhappy with the first draft developed by our social media manager and she wanted me to rewrite it. She insisted that we get it to our client the next morning. Lulu didn’t tell me this until I was about to leave for the airport. I told her I would work on it during my plane flight home and get her an updated copy. Only one problem. That idiot Maurice booked probably the worst airline in the business for my return trip (probably Lulu being cheap, too) and they didn’t have Wi-Fi on the flight so I couldn’t work on the report until I got home later that night. I was so fucking pissed.
Even worse, when I landed I was bombarded with questions and requests from Lulu and other clients. Then on my drive home from LAX, the 405 was partially shut down and I had to take a time-consuming detour and didn’t get home until after 10 p.m. I was tired, hungry (I hadn’t eaten except lame airline snacks) and I had to rewrite the report and work past midnight and didn’t get to bed until close to 3 a.m. So I was exhausted and angry when I got back into the L.A. office the next morning. I called Miriam at the Chicago office and blasted Maurice for his booking me on a flight with no Wi-Fi. Of course, Maurice didn’t take my criticism too well and became even colder toward me than he already was.
Despite my bringing up Maurice’s lame performance, nothing changed.
A few months later, during a trade show trip to Denver for our e-commerce company client, Maurice’s travel planning incompetence struck again. He booked me in an awful hotel many miles from downtown Denver where the show was being held. At least, the hotel had Wi-Fi but it didn’t work very well. Also, it was embarrassing when I walked back from dinner with my client and found out they were staying at a nice hotel right across from the convention center where the show was being held. They asked me why I hadn’t done the same and I had to admit I didn’t know. It was so embarrassing and made our agency look cheap to our client. Both flights to and from Denver were also budget flights without Wi-Fi so I couldn’t get any work done. When I got back to the office, I drafted a long email to Miriam and Lulu and basically told them that I would handle all of my future travel plans and not Maurice. That didn’t go down well with Maurice either, but I didn’t care as Maurice didn’t care enough to set up simple travel plans without fucking it up.
However, it wasn’t until Maurice fucked up one of Lulu’s business trip plans to New York and she missed an important flight and meeting that it all finally came to a head. He had also failed to remind Lulu about some important business taxes that needed to be paid after forgetting to relay the notes from her accountant. So Lulu got hit with a nasty tax penalty as a result.
At last, Maurice was fired soon after for his overall horrible job performance, but it was too little, too late. Lulu’s credibility had been damaged with the rest of her staff.
As far I know, Maurice never sued Lulu. Despite his struggle with cancer, Maurice still had no viable case as he stopped performing his job in any kind of competent way long ago.
Sadly, the HR troubles at the Yilmaz Agency only continued. Lulu hired an African American woman named Bryanna Taylor to take over as HR manager at our agency. She seemed nice enough and was responsive to requests. However, something happened during the Chicago office’s move to new offices. Lulu was unhappy with how Bryanna had handled the move logistics and fired her soon after. It was abrupt and shocking as she had waited years to get rid of that loser Maurice.
Finally, in my last year at Yilmaz Agency, we got a competent HR person named Judy Davis, who actually started out as a temp. Just hiring a temp like Judy or trying out several people, could have shown Lulu and Miriam right away how lame Maurice was and maybe they wouldn’t have spent so many years supporting this fool.
I still can’t wonder if the clueless wonder, Maurice, is somewhere inflicting his terrible work performance on another company. I mean when the HR is bad at a company, things can only get worse.
Admittedly, Lulu brought the bad out in everyone, but I can’t even blame her for Maurice’s lame job performance.
Life in Public Relations Hell 