Oh Boy: Former Olby Staffer Speaks Out About A "Walking Hostile Work Environment"

I have a policy of not linking Gawker, but I suspend that when they talk about a coming story about our distracted, diversion-seeking president having a case of clinical depression, or when a former employee unloads on Herr Olbermanngruppefuhrer.

Some choice allegations. Allegedly, these are allegations, which have been alleged, by an allegor. Allegedly. Because who knows, it's Gawker.

-Keith is the walking definition of a hostile work environment. Countdown had a 75% staff turnover rate in the time I was there — high even for the cable news business. Keith had people he liked, and people he didn't like, and there was no rhyme or reason to it. When he didn't like someone, he'd berate them and belittle their work until they left the show. Then he'd do the same to the next person on his shit list. When someone he liked moved on, he'd take it out on the rest of us....

-If someone he didn't like left, he'd tell them how useless/incompetent/stupid he thought they were, instead of handling it like an adult and just being quietly glad they were gone. Then he's put someone new on his s list.

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-He has terrible fashion sense and ill-fitting suits. [Ed. note: absolutely true, see the attached pic for but one example of his well-chronicled bad suit fit affliction]

Okay, sure. Now at first I thought this criticism was kind of gay. Who cares. I'll tell you who doesn't care -- me, because I dress like crap and don't care. And so I guess this makes me... like him more?

However, it's the reason for the lack of fashion concern that intrigues me:

And yet, no one was allowed to talk to him about this and remedy the problem because he was "traumatized" (the exact word from our EP) by a shopping incident in his childhood when his mother made him try on wool suits in the summer and he got hot.

These aren't necessarily the two best examples; they're just the first two. There is plenty of meat left back at the link ("It's not about her, it's about me" and his Super Sniffer).

My speculation was that Keith's latest temper-tantrum was over a trivial point. Now I'm guessing on this, but I guessed that maybe Current wanted him to host and produce the Iowa caucus coverage, but wanted it a Current branded show (hosted by Olbermann), rather than a Countdown-branded show.

Just a guess. I don't know.

But given his lunacy about branding and "It's not about her, it's about me," that theory does seem consistent with his ego.

Via Jammie Wearing Fool.

posted by Ace at 04:35 PM

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