Jessica Recalls Aaron Smith-Levin as Loud, Disruptive and Dominating

Former colleague Jessica relates that, far from inspiring respect, Smith-Levin dominated with threats—to the point that she avoided him at all cost.

TRANSCRIPT:

You know, when you’ve come into a new area and you’re excited and like, you hope that the boss is going to like, like you and that kind of thing? So that didn’t happen.

Aaron basically—it went from like, me not really knowing about him or just being like, “Oh, wow, this is awesome,” to me being afraid of him. And it, it switched very specifically because I had a few friends who were working already within that division, under him. And um, you know, one of them was pretty upset one day and told me, like what had happened with him.

And, just being like very mean and, like, dominating towards the whole group and using like, threats and force to get whatever it is he wanted to get done, done. And she didn’t like the environment at all. Prior to him arriving, she was always happy, always having fun, always doing well and that kind of drastically changed at that point.

I witnessed Aaron getting into, like, like a very loud verbal altercation with my brother one time. I was—my brother was in his office, which only certain authorized people were allowed to enter, and I was, I don’t know, probably, like, 25 feet away and I observed Aaron like bolting towards the door and then knocking very, very loudly. And then my brother opened the door and he [Aaron] slammed the door open and tried to shove himself into the room. But again, he didn’t have the authority to go into the room, but he shoved anyway past—and he was in there and it was just this like, screaming match.

It took about three or four people to get Aaron to leave the room because they had to physically force him out of the room to remove whatever was going on from the area.

And so it scared me just with the amount of force he used and the communication. And from that point forward, I hoped to never have a conversation with him or run into him or anything like that.

Basically don’t to cross paths with him. I would do everything basically in my power to only talk to my direct boss. And anytime he did come into my area, I just, I really wouldn’t look at him or anything. Like, I would just hope that he would just leave.

He was causing turbulence within my group and where I worked and he was loud and he fought against the people that I worked for and I worked with and he invoked fear in my friends and myself.

And I’ve worked here for years and I have never seen somebody in my organization be so loud and so disruptive as Aaron was.