Jeff Baker | Former Colleague of Mike Rinder

Jeff Baker says Mike Rinder was notorious for sleeping at all the wrong times—earning the nickname “Rip Van Rinder.

TRANSCRIPT:

Mike Rinder was into himself. He wasn’t about helping other people. He was about him, actually, and that’s not what a Scientologist is. It’s a person who helps other people improve conditions in life, themselves and other people. And Mike was about himself.

He was demeaning to people. He kind of looked down at them. He didn’t work with them, he didn’t work as a professional with them. He was a bit slighting, if you will, especially if something wasn’t quite right. He wouldn’t work to make it right, he would just comment that it wasn’t or make somebody look bad because it was not right. And this was a typical thing for him.

I observed many times when something would mess up—you know, things don’t always go exactly as planned—and if they didn’t go as planned, his reaction to it wasn’t to jump in and help, or get it sorted out, it was kind of like to laugh at it. In fact he would laugh at it, at somebody’s folly in messing something up. And he was not a team member to get something done.

Mike Rinder would go to events and he was supposed to be there to talk about something that was his hat, that was his function. But because Mike Rinder never actually did anything, he would always come off like a wooden doll or a robot. He didn’t speak from conviction or from the heart, because he wasn’t doing the activity that he was talking about. And you’ve seen when a speaker is convicted about something that they do, they know all about it, and it’s theirs. It shows in their speech. They’re not “doing a “speech,” they’re telling you something that really means something to them. Mike Rinder, when he’d get up, was like a wooden doll, because Mike Rinder never did what he was talking about. He was only talking about it. He was supposed to be doing something about it, but he never was. And that was the problem.

There were several times I observed personally, being in the room with him, while everyone is frantically working away to wrap up this video for our next event, and he’s actually on the couch, in the edit bay, sleeping—while the whole event evolution is going on. Everyone else frantic, Mike sleeping. And that is actually commonly something that I would observe many times. We would have to wake him up to look at the video or even work on it. So that was kind of his attitude. He had a very lax attitude towards getting something done. And he certainly was not a hands-on person. He was a look-at and tell other people something to do, while he lounged on the couch, basically. And that is kind of typically what would happen.

I never saw him care personally for another individual. Mike mostly cared about himself. He was a bit into himself. In fact, not a bit, a lot into himself. And he wasn’t a team member. He was almost an “addition” to the evolution that was going on. And sometimes a sleeping addition.