Marion Pouw on Mike Rinder

How I knew Mike Rinder is when he came to the UK in 1973 with his family. His family, I’ve known them a long time, are very warm and caring people and he is the complete and utter opposite of them.

One time when his mother, she was elderly, she was like in her 70s and she came and she was obviously—would come down from—all the way from Australia, and I obviously saw her because hey, it was like having a second mom, you know? And she asked me the next day, “Hey, I haven’t seen Mike.” And I said, “Okay.” And she said, “I was, I’m a little upset.” You know, she was upset. And the fact is that she was actually crying because she had been there for a whole day and he had never stopped by to see her. So I went and found Mike and I said, “Look, you know, I just ran into Barbara. Because she really wants to see you, can you please go up and see her?” “I can’t go. I’ve got this to do and that.” I said, “Come on, man, there’s no reason why you just can’t go down and see her. There’s not—you, it’ll take you 10 minutes and it would mean the world to her if you did that.” “I’m not going. I can’t go.” And he was literally—pushed back the entire time and I was like, “Oh my God.” You know, this person is just like—were actually upset. So I ended up going to the store and bought a box of chocolates. I bought a note card. I brought it down to him. I said, “Sign this card. Write her a nice little message. So at least she’d know you give two hoots about her.” So she got this from Mike and then she was all happy ’cause at least he thought about her. But it just shows you like, he didn’t care.

He had this ability to make you feel little, otherwise he would negate you. He would, you know, find ways and means to make you feel like you were stupid, that you were incompetent. I was in a position that I was like above him, like senior to him but also on the same level as him and we were doing a project together. And he was doing the writing and the editing and I was actually assembling and actually doing part of the typing. And he was sitting about four feet across from me and at that time, instead of giving me the paper to do the fix-ups and whatever, he would toss them on the floor. So I had to walk around the desk and go pick them up from the floor, and I said, “Hey, Mike, can you just not throw this on the floor?” He literally swore at me and said, “You’re f—ing working for me.” And if it were any other circumstance, I would just—walked away. But obviously, I wanted to get the project done, we needed to get it done. So I carried on. But you know what? He just kept on doing it. I mean, this is someone he’s known for a long time and yet this is how he considered he could have a working relationship with me.

I worked with him, you know, on events and these events happened five times a year. So that’s really the main interaction I had with him in a job capacity. So we’d be sitting in the—I’d be sitting in the conference room and he’d be sitting at the table and he’d be writing ’cause he was supposed to write the speech. So I would then take that speech—he would give the speech to me, the page he wrote, and I would start typing it and then I turn around and he’s like—literally snoozing at the table.

One of the things we have to do at one of these events was put the research packs together. And we would give them to Mike. And the thing is he was so lazy, and because half the time he was asleep on the job, he won’t even read the stuff that we presented. So he would write a speech that was missing some of the major things that were in the research packs. And his first answer is to lie and throw the researchers under a bus. That was his work ethic.

He was dishonest and he was the first one to sort of point the finger elsewhere when he himself was the one that was too lazy to actually look and do the work and read what was presented to him. There wasn’t any recognition of guilt, you know what I mean, because Mike was above that all. He was an arrogant individual. I mean, others made mistakes and he certainly made sure they knew about it. I mean, I certainly experienced that, but he himself could not even introspect and even look and see what he did wrong. That was not part of his demeanor.