I don’t want to be mean. I almost never want to be mean. It’s one of those things that’s quite hard for me because, ultimately, I think I’m quite good at being rude. But it’s not healthy and it’s usually not helpful. Plus, I have both legit religious reasons and some basic human ones for wanting to avoid being a dick to people.
Maybe I should have been one of those writers in Victorian England firing off epistolary jabs I knew would only be consumed after I was dead. The Internet was not my time while also, unfortunately, being exactly my time.
To quote Taylor Swift: if you say it in the street it’s a knockout, but if you say it in a tweet it’s a cop-out. I know some of the biggest online jerks in the automotive space and most of them, maybe all of them, back down in person.
I say all of this because out of nowhere David surprised me with an old post in Slack:
Ok, here’s the linked video:
The guest is Robert “Bob the Builder” Nardelli, the former head of Chrysler LLC and of Home Depot. I won’t get into the content of what he said above because it’s not really important, because nothing Bob Nardelli says will ever be important.
It’s funny when someone, especially a close friend and colleague, says something is one of your most memorable pieces. The pieces I remember are rarely the pieces other people remember and I had, at that moment, no idea what he was talking about, though I did remember I had very little respect for Bob Nardelli.
Thankfully, Mercedes popped in:
Here’s the link to the piece, triggered apparently by something Nardelli wrote on LinkedIn in 2015! Here’s a sample:
You’re a shill, Bob Nardelli. A figurehead for a fucked up company and a fucked up system. You’re not even an empty suit, because I assume the shit would have to go somewhere. You are, then, a suit filled with shit.
Huh.
There is a fear I have that someone is going to come up to me and remind me of something I said that I absolutely don’t remember. Not something nice. Something mean. And I’d have it coming, honestly. If I said something mean about your company 10 years ago (rarely was I mean to individuals like this) it’s not entirely unfair to confront me. I should have to defend myself and what I said. I’ll probably apologize. But I won’t apologize to Nardelli and, clearly, I still have some feelings:
Definitely ask Adrian for dating advice.
One day we will maybe tell the story of how David ended up with an incredible person, but David is so sick that he’s not even on Slack, which has to be really sick (he’ll be fine, his incredible girlfriend is maybe one of the reasons why David is able to accept the concept that he is allowed to rest). It’s his story to tell, not mine.
I know plenty of nice people who would get a real kick out of you, Adrian! My friends are way tougher than you think and way less normal. Trust me.
Spot on!
I had a ringside view to his hash-job at Home Depot from my time at college in Atlanta. We had a business case on how he ruined the culture at Home Depot, which in turn led to bad business. The founders had to come back and kick his butt out to save the company. Fast forward one year and Bernie Marcus (one of the founders) was a special guest at our graduation ceremony and spoke to us on how culture was biggest asset on any business’s balance sheet…right before Bob “Kick me in the Nards” Nardelli was hired by Cerberus.
Nardelli was one of the few guys no one had a positive thing to say about.
For better or worse, negativity sells. A couple of YouTubers I follow have talked about how it dismays them that their hyper-negative videos get all the clicks and they’ve gotten a reputation as takedown artists, despite having made many more positive videos. And you know what? To quote a different Taylor Swift song: “It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem, it’s me.” Because I’ve watched some of those negative videos multiple times. It just never gets old watching people rip on the Cats movie, alright? 😛
I feel like I used to be a lot meaner when I wrote for Jalopnik. There’s a lot of meh out there, but not all of it is really worth my energy. Sometimes the best insult is simply never mentioning the meh, too.
That guy absolutely deserved it, though. Quality rant.
“he’ll be extremely responsive to any lifestyle suggestions you may have. For god’s sake have suggestions” – One of the best lines I’ve read in ages. Thank you Adrian.
I read the whole piece, up to and including this concluding paragraph, and, given the subject, it seemed like restrained, responsible and factual business reporting to me.
Happened to me once. I apparently left a voice mail for the IT department (who had left me working my job without a PC to do it with for a month, and the loaner from another department was about to be repossessed.) and cussed up a storm about how they needed to get me a PC immediately or explain to my boss how I wasn’t going to be able to do my job until they did.
I had zero memory of leaving that voice mail or what I allegedly said, but I had that nagging feeling that I might have actually done it. The IT guy who eventually showed up did a masterful impression of me saying whatever it was that I might or might not have said and it was eerily accurate.
Went back and read the article. I mean, damn man.
Matt, having met you at the Chicago reader meet-up last summer, where you were nothing but incredibly nice, I have no trouble believing you can be a real insult ninja … a true killer.
And I mean that in the nicest way possible.
Matt, I still hold a fiery hatred for Chris Christie. That dumb turkey leg shut all the NJ state parks, including Island Beach State Park over 4th of July weekend in 2017. Then the sad excuse for an overinflated volleyball was at the Governors beach house in Island Beach State Park that weekend. Keeping all the normal vacationers from going there, while sitting privately on the beach. Get bent Chris Christie.
Why do they beach themselves?
*rimshot*
It would be easy to lure the Chris Christie into a trap. A box of Krispy Kremes is the perfect bait for that thing. You’ll have to move quickly, because the Chris Christie will inhale that entire box in about 30 seconds.
It may have been acceptable back when Joan Rivers was the occasional guest host of Meet the Press, but fat jokes aren’t cool these days. and I say that even though I like to think I’m not a ¾-height replica of the former governor and ongoing bastard who didn’t leap out to oppose the former president until it was clear he had no other path to potential influence within his party. Also, no matter what reason y’all may have for drawing the parallel, likening Chris Christie to them is a very cruel thing to do to our cetacean friends.
Dear Adrian, Helter Skelter was a pioneering metal tune.
Matt, Jeesh, tell us how you really feel. 😀 I gotta go back and read that piece.
It inspired Charles Manson, after all.
Thank you! I almost put that in there, but decided to wait for someone else to point that out. 😀
I should state that I’m not some rabid Beatles fan and that I am just amused with that absoluteness of Adrian’s take on the Beatles. It reminds me of when I would dis The Dead, for whom I have since developed deep respect. I used to think of Ringo as most replaceable member of the band, but have realized he was the ideal drummer for the group and a true musician. Adrian may never come around to such thinking, but that won’t stop me from needling him in a hopefully good-natured way.
I’m not a fan of the Beatles either. Now Black Sabbath and Ozzy, OTOH…
Did Matt and Jason give DT’s date the hint to wear Rust-o-leum, DT’s favorite scent?
…I wanna hear about this stolen pickle xD
I just wanna ride my motorsickle
A Honda Hawk, right? 😉
David, Jason, myself, the lady who would become David’s girlfriend, and another lady went on this group dinner date thing at a Jewish deli. It was a great time and I got to watch my bosses get a bit loose with alcohol.
On our way out, Jason saw a pan full of pickles and snatched one on the way out. The whole restaurant banned us on the spot. Apparently, they don’t remember what Jason even looks like, so the ban hasn’t worked. lol
We love this place, thankfully they don’t remember Jason.
This has been around for a while* but it’s relevant, I think:
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboards-and-other-anomalies
The text reads “Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total F*ckwad”.
* 20 freakin’ years!?!? That can’t be right.
What I wouldn’t do for a new Unreal Tournament game. Kind of shocking with all these other F2P FPS games, there isn’t one already. Or that it’s not a mode in Fortnite.
> * 20 freakin’ years!?!? That can’t be right.
It’s the G.I.F.T. that keeps on giving.
I have friends at Home Depot. From what I know about Nardelli, Matt nailed it.
That guy who ran Chrysler for like a couple months about 16 years ago, right after they were sold, and right before they went bankrupt and sold most of their assets to a government-backed SPAC?
Yeah, that’s the guy with the extensive indusry resume to be commenting in the current state of things in 2024. I’m pretty sure I’ve bought German bread with a longer shelf life than his whole tenure at Chrysler
Right. Besides, one really should expect harshness, when the olfactory offering is nothing more than acrid smoke, puffed in billowing superfluity, atop a cloudy, nearly opaque, mirror.
> billowing superfluity
Stealing this
Sickening this is the ass hat is probably living like a king from the golden parachute he got for the privilege of mussing everything up so quickly.
*thing….fricken autospell, return henceforth to the hell thouest cameth from
Be careful when calling forth demons to drag something back into Hell. I recommend sitting in a protective circle of white salt so that they can not grab you along with the autospell.
Best to use Michigan DOT Road Salt in the shape of a Pentastar and burnt offerings of American rust. Contact David Tracy immediately if the ritual goes awry; you may need a Coolant/Ion/Spectral Flush.
I am laughing so hard right now. My dumb ass just realized there is this little wheel thing by the text box I can click on and fix my spelling and send this AI shit that thinks it knows more than me back to the hell it was derived from. BTY, has anyone, I mean anyone, ever used David Tracy’s name in the same sentence without the dreaded rust word involved? I’m asking for a friend…..
He didn’t help, but the company was already a desiccated husk when Daimler shuffled it off, and the economy collapsing like 10 months later wasn’t a huge boost, either. Cerberus really didn’t own Chrysler for long enough to do much of note with them, besides approving some interior refreshes.
Really, its pretty hard to see any scenario where Chrysler, as Daimler had left them by 2007, was going to be in any shape to weather 2008/2009 outside of bankruptcy. Had they been left to their own devices from 1998 onward without a “merger of equals”, sure, but not after 9 years of mismanagement then straight into a Great Recession.