Henning Benndorf on Mike Rinder

Mike was a very arrogant person. He would not care what you were doing. He would basically, you know, just walk past you. He wouldn’t even look at you, he wouldn’t say hi, he wouldn’t say, “How you doing?” It would be just Mike’s world, basically, and you’re not in it and I’m, don’t want to be in it, but nevertheless it was, it was very arrogant. And then when he would say something, he would make the person feel like they were worthless.

And when we’re talking about working with, I think that there was no working with Mike. It was more working despite Mike, ’cause I never saw Mike work. I always saw him sitting, sleeping at a table or at a desk. I never saw him working, ever. He would go through papers or whatever, but then to what end? I don’t know.

One time we were meeting in the conference room. The conference room was right in the central area of the events area. And like, right in the center, was this conference room. And we were sitting there like, there was a large meeting. And I noticed that we were, you know, we were all there, except Mike wasn’t there. So I was like looking across the table, he’s not there. Okay, good. And then somebody opens the door to an adjacent room next door, called his name and there’s no response. And he’s obviously sleeping, and that to me described exactly what Mike was like working with. Like here we are working on his speech, he is off in the room next door, he is taking a nap while we’re working. It’s obviously, you know, last-minute, too. It’s, we’re, you know, we’re up against the clock to get his speech prepared for him.

There was one time when he had—a speech had been written for him and he was asked point-blank, “Did you read this speech?” And he said, “Yeah, I did. Yeah.” And we all knew he hadn’t read it. But nevertheless, he was saying yes to something that he hadn’t done. So, the point is that anybody would be totally fine when, “Okay, fine. So take a couple minutes and read the speech.” You know? But no, instead he had to say, “Yes, I’ve read it.” You know? Like, acting like, as if he cared when he didn’t.

People really did not like him, like didn’t want to hang out with him because he was just a person that just was a dislikable—he was a dislikable person and that’s my experience with Mike.