Karen Hollander on Mike Rinder

Mike was very, very rude, would never be gracious toward a female, you know, would never open the door. He would always go in first. And I went to a number of sites where we would hold events and worked on the events with him and he would always walk in first and lie down and, you know, just take up all the space. And I finally told him, I said, you know you’re like a gorilla, you know, no offense to gorillas, but I said, you know, you are like a gorilla.

And would cut me off and, you know, attempt to make me feel stupid and call me names, vile, degrading names for women and I was stunned. I’d already been on staff for, I don’t know, 15 years. And no one had ever spoken to me like that, ever. Mike Rinder was the first.

I can tell you another example. I went—well, there was going to be a grand opening. This was during the 80s and he wanted my assistance in getting VIPs there. And, so I worked with him and he made it sound like he did all the work. And in my interacting with other people that were his juniors, I found out he had nothing to do with it, except showing up and taking the credit. When in fact, it was someone, a number of other people that worked on it and totally made that thing happen.

There are many a night that we had to stay up late because of him, because while he’s over there snoozing, either lying on the carpet or lying on the couch or whatever and, you know, when you have an event, it has a certain date it’s going to start and you, no matter what, you will have to be prepared. And so we would stay up late to try to get stuff done. And he’s over there snoring away. Mike’s sleep habits are legendary among our staff.

Which is something, what Mike did that—Mike would do this a lot. He would joke about people, say degrading remarks about them, demean them in some way, because he was extremely condescending.

I never recall him saying anything complimentary or supportive to anyone, never. I mean he didn’t have it in him to be like that, because he was so arrogant. He thought he was above everyone else and others were stupid or less.

Because there is a man who derives pleasure out of nullifying people, out of making them feel less, out of humiliating them, he gets pleasure out of it and it’s almost like times I would witness, it was nearly like salacious. He got, he got like a kick out of it. Yeah, he was sadistic.