Brian Snyder/Reuters
- Ray Dalio once ordered a probe into urine on the men's room floor, a new book says.
- Dalio reportedly asked staff to take notes on who entered the bathroom and how clean they left it.
- Bridgewater said Dalio did complain about restroom tidiness, but the book passage is "exaggerated" and "false."
Billionaire hedge fund manager Ray Dalio, known for his exhaustive list of employee standards called The Principles, once ordered an investigation into who had left urine on the men's room floor, according to a new book out Tuesday from New York Times finance reporter Rob Copeland.
In "The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend," Copeland wrote that Dalio once excused himself from a meeting to use the restroom and he found pee on the floor. Frustrated, he reportedly commissioned an investigation.
"It was a true circus," Copeland wrote in the book. "Dalio himself hauled in the head of facilities for questioning."
Dozens of staff were tasked with standing guard outside of the restroom in shifts to monitor everyone's comings-and-goings, mop the floors after each person, and note how clean the employee left the bathroom. Bridgewater even brought in new urinals and added stickers as targets, the book said, and later reviewed their exact placement.
"If people can't aim their fucking pee, they can't work here," Dalio said, according to the book.
The book doesn't detail what came of the investigation, but Copeland wrote that "such was the unmistakable badness of it all that everything was filmed and a case was made for all to learn from."
Dalio, in a statement posted to LinkedIn, said that "The Fund" is "another one of those sensational and inaccurate tabloid books written to sell books to people who like gossip," and that "Bridgewater obviously is not and was not" as Copeland described it.
A Bridgewater spokesperson called the book passage "exaggerated to a ridiculous degree and totally false."
"Yes, Mr. Dalio did once complain about the tidiness of the restrooms, after which there was a running joke about keeping them clean," the spokesperson said. "But the specifics of what happened are false."
The anecdote is one of several in the book that paints a picture of an exacting, ruthless man behind the world's largest hedge fund. The book described Dalio's insistence that staff adhere to the rules he laid out in a 90-page handout, titled The Principles, that was given to all new hires and on which all staff were tested. "The Fund" also said that Dalio had a habit of scolding staff in front of their peers and circulating recordings of the sessions throughout the company.