Ellen DeGeneres laid traps around her house to torture staffers and fired them for fun, claims ex-employee
The controversies troubling Ellen DeGeneres do not appear to be going away soon since a former staffer of her has now come forward disclosing details about her behavior at home. The staffer who has chosen not to disclose their identity has revealed that being an employee of the TV host “was the worst” as she tortured the staff who were hired to do her household chores and took “pleasure firing people”.
Speaking to DailyMail.com, the ex-employee said: “My belief is that someone's real personality comes out at home. So after everything that has been said about her at work, you can imagine how terrible Ellen is going to be at home when her guard is down. Sometimes she would yell at us but it was more about the incredibly condescending tone she would use. She treated you like you were nothing. She was going to torture you and you were just going to sit there and listen to it because you were being paid. Ellen was the worst person that I've ever met in my life. She takes pleasure in firing people.”
The former staffer reportedly worked for Ellen for several months at one of the many lavish Los Angeles-area homes she shared with her wife Portia de Rossi in the past decade. The ex-worker said they were nicely paid and top assistants were apparently making up to $175K per year. But the lucrative deal came with a series of dreadful warnings.
“Ellen was a hero of mine. I thought she was an amazing person. But before I took the position, people were warning me not to take it. I was told that she had a very high turnover and that I should stay under the radar as much as possible, avoid as much direct contact with Ellen as possible. Working there was described as being more like a boot camp,” the worker said. “When I interviewed with Ellen and Portia I felt much better about the job. They were both charming, funny and perfectly lovely. I was a little bit nervous but it was well paid.”
However, they added that soon it became clear how rude Ellen was. “Ellen is terribly obsessive-compulsive and if anything is out of order in her environment she gets upset. There might be 20 to 30 things every day. We are talking about the finest, finest details here — a salt shaker out of place or a light switch left on. She wanted the coffee maker deep cleaned every day after complaining that there was too much or too little froth on her latte,” the source told DailyMail.com.
They continued: “The staff was getting better and better and making fewer mistakes but she couldn't help herself so she would lay traps. She would actually leave matchsticks around the house, behind cupboard doors, cushions or books to see if the staff was cleaning and moving things. One day the staff found around eight of them, all in weird places. The rest of the day became a race to find them all before she got home and fired someone.”
The former worker also divulged that not just the people who do her household chores, but her security detail and outside contractors also faced her bitterness. “When someone came to the house, for example to repair an appliance, she wouldn't hold back. It could be something as simple as the compressor on the refrigerator making too much noise. One of the top security firms in Hollywood terminated their contract with her. Some of the criticisms I heard were that she didn't like the way they walked. I'm not even kidding, she literally didn't like the way they walked. Also how they opened and closed doors,” the insider explained. “She had multiple dogs and cats and she didn't like the way they would walk through... The dogs loved Portia and would jump up when she came home. The animals would barely get up when Ellen walked in.”
The person added, “I have a friend who was on her show and told me a story about how Ellen pointed out a production assistant and said 'get rid of her, I don't like the way she looks at me.' I heard that story from two separate sources. It didn't surprise me in the slightest.”
The former employee said it was a “relief” when they were fired. “There were numerous people that she fired, rehired, then fired a second time. I heard about a manager who started on a particularly bad day and was fired in the first two hours. I would never cry in front of them but I was always stressed out and on the verge of tears. I remember going home sometimes thinking I just hated my life. You stick it out because quitting looks bad on your resume but everyone in Hollywood knows what's going on there. I missed the paycheck afterwards but felt a sense of relief that I never had to go back there,” they stated.