Hans Smith on Mike Rinder

I worked in an administrative position with Mike Rinder for a period of a couple years. Mike Rinder would definitely communicate as if though the other women working in the office weren’t very smart, that they were “not very intelligent” was the wording he would use. Also there was one time when it was Christmastime, and his wife at the time was doing the Christmas cards, which obviously come from both and he was “too busy” to do such a thing. So, she put together you know, a stack of Christmas cards and wrote to various people. He just needs to write his name. They were on his desk for days. So finally I got him to sit down and he was going to sign these Christmas cards. And then he opened a few of the cards, started signing them. And then one of the cards, he looked at it and, referring to his wife, he said, “She’s very stupid” or, “She’s so dumb” or something like this. His statement that she was dumb was along with all the other girls in the office, they were all dumb. Like his wife’s dumb, they’re dumb, they’re just so dumb, do you get what I’m saying? So, that was kind of how Mike Rinder was like, his attitude towards other people.

Mike Rinder’s workspace was unkempt, untidy, papers everywhere. And it was extremely difficult to get him to answer communication, to handle anything that came to him. And his piles of papers around his desk, usually magazines piled in a disorderly pile.

So in early 2000s, I was working in the same office as Mike Rinder, and my position was to basically get the projects executed within the organization. And one of these things was a project that was assigned to Mike Rinder, which he had not answered up on. He needed to answer up on a specific subject. So I went to him at his desk to ask him to answer up on this. It was very bizarre because I was speaking how I’m speaking now, like, “Okay, so listen, you need to answer up.” Like, just a normal—and I asked him and he said, “Go away.” And I asked him again and then he lunged out of his desk and punched me in the chest here. And I had a name tag at the time, you know, you have these like positions of what your position, name and position is. And he punched me so hard that the tag broke in half. And I kind of flew. And it was bizarre because it was like the last thing I was expecting. And then another staff member who was working there got up and was like, “Mike, what the, what are you doing? You’ve lost your mind.” Literally, like he lost his mind, like he went completely psychotic.

And you know, I’ve been working for the Church for 30 years. I’ve worked in eight or nine different countries and I’ve dealt with hundreds and hundreds of staff members all over the world, thousands actually, to be honest. I’ve never, ever physically been attacked, punched, nothing by anyone, except him that time.

To describe Mike Rinder in one simple statement, I would say he’s vicious.