Here is your soup sir...

Have you ever met someone for the first time and immediately disliked them? It happened to me just recently. Normally I try to avoid jumping to conclusions about people, but after spending only half an hour in a meeting with this person I not only figured out that I didn't like the person, but also *why* I didn't like them.

It all boiled down to one key thing: this person didn't ask people to complete certain tasks or reach certain milestones, he told them what they were going to achieve. Putting it that way it almost sounds prolific. It's not. Consider the following statement:

Mr. Hotshot- "Bill, I'd like you to complete that report by next Friday."

Sounds pretty normal huh? But consider what I heard at a recent meeting:

Mr. Hotshot - "Bill, you're going to have that report in my hands by next Friday."

And it didn't end with a single statement. You might think that Bill is a know-nothing slacker and might be deserving of this 'special' treatment, but I soon realized that was the way this person dealt with everybody in the room:

"Lucy, you're going to call the supplier and make arrangements to get a quote for next Wednesday."

"Jordan, you're going to run the numbers and call me tomorrow with the result."

Now all this would be fine if you were reading a summary of meeting minutes, but this was the actual dialog during the course of the meeting. Is there are a term for these people? And don't tell me 'Results Oriented', I was thinking more like 'Type A Prick'.

I've always scratched my head after dealing with characters like this. Do they honestly think that somehow people will work harder or better when they're treated like this?

I wonder how many times waiters have spit in his soup? ;)