Maddie Hooper on Mike Rinder

My name is Maddie Hooper. I’ve been a Church staff member for 39 years and I had the, I, opportunity, or I worked with Mike Rinder, 4 years as his assistant or executive secretary so to speak.

But the basic and one of the things I helped him with is like, he had communications to answer, or orders to respond to and things to get done on particular things. And he wouldn’t do it. They’d—I’d propose answers as part of my job, like okay, let’s answer this and okay, I make sure this got done. And I’d put it on his desk and it would just pile up. And I’d update it and say, “Okay, I updated this.” “Oh, yeah, yeah. I’ll get to it.” And he wouldn’t.

So the orders wouldn’t get done or he’d hand them out to someone else and forget about it or he’d tell me to get something done, which really wasn’t under the purview of my hat, you know. And he’d say, “Well, I have no one else to get it done, so you have to do it.” And it’s like, you know.

I would sort of get the blame because I wasn’t handling the communication but it was communication to him from like senior people and he—they just literally stacked up on the desk.

So, and then he would fall asleep frequently at his desk, like more often than not he’d go like and pretend that he was reading. And, you know, he wasn’t, he was sleeping.

And I remember one time there was some, I know there was like the whole organization, we had a situation to handle, you know, and everyone was there working and stuff and then Mike was in the middle of the room like that, sleeping.

You know, when you’re an executive, you’re like, “Let's go. Let's get things done. Let’s be enthusiastic.” And he was like, “ugh,” type of thing and he wasn’t very like, “Let’s get it done. Let’s, let’s roll.” It was like ripping people up and going, you know, down himself on like, it’s, I, you know, it's almost like he hated people.

I saw him violent with several staff. I remember one staff member who was, he was crouching down, he was straightening something up and I’m not even sure what he’d done that Mike didn’t like, but Mike held him down by the shoulders and kicked him in the rear.

Overall, it was very unpleasant to work with him and he was also very, you know, he would put you down, like not, you know, like well, that was dumb or that was stupid or, you know, and you’re blah, you know, just uncomfortable.

I would say the best description I could give of Mike Rinder in one word is anti-social.