The death of Steve Jobs brought forth a spate of worshipful obits, didn’t it? I honestly had no idea. I mean, rest in peace and so forth, but as a businessman, he was - hmm – brilliant but a little monomaniacal. But I heard people quoting the most inane Jobisms, and odd little reminiscences – his (very substanceless) Zen meditations, his quick temper . . .
I am seeing, under all of this, a creepy renascence of the Victorian figure of the Captain of Industry. For one thing, there’s that repugnant CBS show “Undercover Boss,” in which CEOs dress up in bad wigs and goatees and take front-line jobs in their own stores; it always turns into a Cinderella story, and the boss turns out to be Just A Guy After All, and Not So Bad. He hands out gifts and bonuses and so forth at the end of the show, and pledges Never To Forget The Little People Again.
Phooey. I bet.
I never said CEOs were bad. I simply assume that they are, like the rest of us, greedy and venal. The main differences between CEOs and the rest of us is that they have gotten their hands on some boodle, and have now shifted their focus to hanging on to what they’ve got.
They have also generally convinced themselves that they are somehow magical high priests of the material world. There are large segments of the media (CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, even my beloved Financial Times) which constantly assure CEOs that they are very smart.
The FT interviews a famous person every week over lunch; they even include the menu and the bill. A few weeks ago, it was the pianist Mitsuko Uchida, who had some insightful things to say. The following week, however, it was the CEO of J. Crew, a nonentity named Mickey Drexler, who was incredibly full of himself, running around being very cute, telling everyone very loudly that he knew everything. (He predicted that the restaurant's best-selling pizza would be margarita, and was delighted with himself when he turned out to be right; then he ranked the most popular cookies: chocolate chip, right? Then oatmeal. Maybe oatmeal raisin. Then sugar.)
Genius, right?
The FT often asks CEO questions like: “Describe your work ethic in ten words.” You can imagine the answers; I won’t reproduce them here. But the column often also asks them: Do you deserve your salary?
And, do you know, every single one of them so far has said “yes.”
No demurral at all; no “Well, I hope so.”
Aarggh!
As Archy the Cockroach said almost a hundred years ago: "Yours for red rum, ruin, revolt, and rapine."
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