Before I got to know anyone at Monster, I couldn't stand the organization. They're an indirect competitor of ours but that wasn't it. It was the arrogance and the terrible stories that our clients would tell us about their condescending, sleazy, customer service. Then I met Neal Bruce at meetings of the International Association of Employment Web Sites and other recruiting conferences and I began to appreciate that not everyone who worked there was a scum bucket. In fact, most probably weren't. I actually found myself defending them and asking people to consider that Monster didn't deserve its bad reputation but got it from being Goliath in a world dominated by David-wannabees.

But today my attitude took a big u-turn. I was at the Minnesota Recruiters Unconference at the Best Buy world headquarters in Richfield, Minnesota. Josh Kahn, Paul DeBettignies, and I had the idea for this organization two years ago over two burritos and a bowl at Chipotle. Paul has by far been the driving force since then and thankfully so because he's done a masterful job. But all of Paul's great karma couldn't offset the disgusting performance of one of Monster's employees at the conference.