I was forced to work with a workplace psychopath for a decade or so. Most of the time, it had little effect, because my day-to-day work was something he knew little about and I was largely left to my own devices. However, there were a few times when we interacted. We edited a book some years ago, and as I was an experienced editor, I did most of the work compiling the volume. He wrote the two page foreword. When the volume was nearing completion, I compiled a mock-up of the front cover with the title, a random photograph of one of the most photogenic of the fossils in the volume, and the editorship listed with my name first and his name second. He was not happy and stated that his name should be first in the editorship. I replied, forcefully, that his name should be second because I did most of the work. He backed off and the editorship remained as I had insisted. Some years later, we edited another volume, and I presume he realised that any attempt to have his name first would be futile as, again, I had done most of the work.
The worst travesty perpetrated by this psychopath probably needs a bit of background. Every year, the organisation for which we both worked, published a paper detailing government gazettal of areas for bidding by companies. One year, it was his job to write this paper and organise the production of the detailed figures. He apparently found it too onerous to do this by himself, so he got a colleague of mine to write it and organise the figures with the drafting section. When she finished writing the paper and had the figures compiled, she gave it to him. He presumably read it and made minor alterations. The reason I suspect the revisions were minor, was because he found writing difficult or tedious as he writes very few published papers by himself. He usually co-opts another person to do most of the work, while he provides some of the information, and gets his name on the publication, usually as a junior author. Scientists often write joint papers, sometimes with quite a few authors, and the order of authorship is largely determined by the amount of work done by each of the authors, with the person doing the most being the lead, or senior author.
I walked past the office of my colleague one day and noticed she was in tears, so I stuck my head in her door and asked what was wrong. She told me that the paper she had written and for which she organised the figures, had been published, and it had a single author; the psychopath. Her name was nowhere to be seen. She wasn’t even mentioned in the acknowledgements! This made me see red, so I decided to do something about it.
I wrote a letter to the deputy CEO of the organisation. The reason I wrote to him and not the CEO was that the latter was mostly concerned with interacting with other organisations, while it was the deputy who largely ran the show. At the head of the letter, I stated it was ‘private and confidential’ such that if the word got out to the psychopath and he tried to persecute me in any way, I would at least have some legal recourse. The letter explained everything about this publication travesty. I subsequently heard from a source inside management that he had been read the riot act and lost his bonus for that year (reputedly about $20,000). Another source told me that the psychopath came out of the CEO’s office as white as a sheet. If I had done what the psychopath did, I would almost certainly have been sacked. That seemingly doesn’t apply if you are in management. Some years later, the psychopath was awarded the Public Service Medal. So much for the awards system.
