A long career and a happy one

---

Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times solicits questions from her readers. She posts them, asks her readers to send in responses, and then weaves the whole thing into a column two weeks later. 

A recent question went something like this: “I’m around thirty, and I’m very happy with what I’m doing. All my friends are looking for newer, higher-level positions, and are telling me that I’m crazy for wanting to stay put. Question: am I doing the wrong thing?”

This is an excellent question to put to someone like me, who’s been with his current employer since 1987, and has held his current position since 1999.

Answer: why not stay in your current job, if you’re happy?

But this is what will really happen if (like me) you stick with one job for the long haul:

For a while, while you’re new, you’ll see your contemporaries come and go. Some will stick around, but most will move on. (I’m assuming you’re under forty. If you’re over forty and starting a new job, probably you have different ideas. But read on.)

After about ten years, you’ll become part of the wallpaper: no one will notice you. You’re now a drone. No one will worry too much about offending you, because – why would they? You’re not gonna quit. (This can be a difficult phase. You will have the sense that people are looking down on you. And you know what? Some of them will look down on you. You are now, to use another Lucy Kellaway term, a “bumbler.”)

Then, around twenty years into your tenure, you will begin to notice that people are giving you a kind of peculiar respect. You’ve been there since forever, and everyone knows that. You can make things happen. You know who to talk to, and whom to call. You have faced a variety of crises, and not a single one of them came close to killing you.

Your personal appearance will be a little weathered, probably. But you will go on and on. Sto lat, as they say on your birthday in Poland: “a hundred years.”

And now, the last verse of a poem by Elinor Wylie (d. 1929):

In masks outrageous and austere

The years go by in single file;

But none has merited my fear,

And none has quite escaped my smile.

---

Everything is equally important

---

We had a two-day office retreat / meeting a few weeks ago. We listened to presentations, and lunched together (twice). I got to know some of my co-workers better. Most of them I respect more than I did before; one or two, not so much.

One exercise, however, was odd.

In a morning session, we were asked to come up with things that might improve our departmental performance. These were condensed (by a team in the back of the room, over the course of a few hours)  to twenty-four suggestions. At 3:00 pm that afternoon, we were given little electronic voting devices with five keys labeled “A” through “E,”  and asked to vote on the importance of each. “A” was very important; “E” was very unimportant.

We were supposed to be going home by 4pm.

By 3:15pm, we’d only gone through a few of them. So the moderators of the session speeded up the voting.

Result: almost everything got voted “very important” or “important.” Only one or two things rated “medium.” On the plus side: we were done by 3:55pm.

What does this mean?

One interpretation: everything’s important.

Another interpretation: the voting didn't mean anything. People were tired, or pushing whatever button they felt like.

Another interpretation: people were afraid to undervalue things, so they always voted high.

Yet another interpretation: most of the suggestions were pretty vague, or pretty universal – “We need better communication!”, for example – and how can you vote “Not very important” on something like that?

And one more: people wanted out of there, so they were voting high, with the unconscious assumption that if they liked everything, things would move more quickly.

How important do you think this exercise was?

Yes, I agree with you. It was very important.

But for a different reason than the planners of the retreat had intended.

---

Customer service done right, and done wrong

---

My Australian career idol, Attila Ovari, has posted several blogs recently about customer service. You can read one here, and the other here.

 

 

You’ve maybe read my various rants on the subject. The local grocery store is – not to exaggerate – about as service-oriented as a federal prison. My old bank (whose name rhymes with “Bitizens”) was even worse. They were generally indifferent, and occasionally genuinely rude.

 

 

So I quit them, and took my two dollars and seventeen cents, and opened an account at TD Bank, which only recently came to Rhode Island.

 

 

It was like the transition from black-and-white to color in “The Wizard of Oz.” The staff at TD Bank are friendly! They hold the door for me, and greet me! They give me free pens, and even dog biscuits! (Well, not for me. They’re dog-friendly, in any case.) The tellers and managers at the downtown Providence location, where I go maybe twice a week, are friendly and chatty without being oppressive or stupid.

 

 

Also, I should add, their fee structure is much more client-friendly than that at Bitizens. Before our trip to France, Partner did some checking and found that the dollar-to-Euro exchange rate (including fee) was much better at my bank than at his (he still banks at Bitizens!), so he had me change some money for him there. Then my friend Tab found out the same thing, and had me change some dollars to Canadian currency for him.

 

 

Okay. Good customer service, and better rates, and lower fees.

 

 

So Partner comes out of Bitizens chuckling the other day. “The teller kept chatting me up,” he said. “He called me by my first name, which he got from my deposit slip. And then he said: ‘You might be getting a call later. They may want to ask you about my customer service.’”

 

 

We had a good laugh about that. So now Bitizens is worried about its customer service, and is trying to emulate my bank!

 

 

Except that, once again, they’ve got the formula wrong.

 

 

This is Partner speaking:

 

 

“I can hardly wait. I hope they call me. I’ll give the teller high marks for being very friendly and sociable. I will also tell them that, when we were in Connecticut last week, I was using an out-of-system ATM and accidentally hit the “Check My Balance” button. It gave me my balance, all right. It also charged me three dollars for the privilege.”

 

 

How much do you think that electronic transaction actually cost the banks in question? Some fraction of a penny?

 

 

Partner has vowed that, as soon as TD Bank opens up a bank in our neighborhood, he’s transferring his account.

 

 

Hear that, Bitizens?

 

 

(No, you probably don’t.)

---

 

 

A world of opportunity

---

While in France, we were stuck (of course) with French TV. This is not so bad: they have game shows, and variety shows, and talk shows, and comedies, and dramas.

 

 

 

Since neither my nor Partner’s French is completely fluent, however, we pretty much stuck to CNN.

 

 

 

The news was – odd. They do a strange mélange overseas: American stories (GIANT EYEBALL FOUND ON FLORIDA BEACH!) to global-interest stories (the saxophone industry in Taiwan, for example).

 

 

 

(I’m not kidding. They did a story on the saxophone industry in Taiwan. We saw it at least six times, on six different days.)

 

 

 

All this is fine. But what really captured my attention were the commercials.

 

 

 

No more commercials for The Scooter Store or the Jitterbug! These were commercials for countries.

 

 

 

For example: every ten minutes (it seemed), CNN / France showed an edited version of this video, which portrays “the unforgettable energy of freedom” in the nation of Georgia. Behold!:

 

 

 

 

 

 

(I like the music, and the dancing. I was not, however, aware that there were Georgian Ninjas.)

 

 

 

Speaking of former USSR republics, here’s Azerbaijan:

 

 

 

 

 

Lots of factories and oil wells and fast cars, and a decent-looking restaurant. Okay! I will definitely build my saccharin factory there!

 

 

 

Many other countries were represented. There was a Taiwanese ad with a nice-looking man doing Chinese calligraphy with a mop. There was Kazakhstan (not so memorable). There was Morocco (all factories and factory workers, but with a nice Moroccan-music background). There was Montenegro (part tourism, part business).

 

 

 

But I will leave you with my very favorite, for eastern Poland.

 

 

 

And I ask you: why haven’t you invested in eastern Poland?

 

 

 

---

 

 

Cattle dog leadership

---

A fellow in Australia named Attila Ovari began following my blog a while back. I thought his name was remarkable, and decided to give his blog a read in return.

 

 

He is a management consultant, and a husband and father, and involved in a hundred projects at once. He is very interesting, and you should give his blog a look.

 

 

He wrote a piece recently about something he called “cattle dog leadership,” which I liked very much.

 

 

In it, he tells a story about leading a bunch of people (in automobiles) to a destination. He’d given them directions in advance. To his surprise, instead of following him, they took the lead. They made mistakes a couple of times, but he paused when they did, and they came back to him, and then they resumed their course.

 

 

So: he was like a cattle dog, staying behind the herd, just giving them guidance when they got off course, but letting them figure out most of it by themselves.

 

 

It’s an interesting concept. I’m not much usually for management theory, but I like this, and I liked the way he described it, and I wondered about its applicability in the everyday work environment. Does it work? Can you let your staff just stray out into the wilderness (even with instructions), only giving them guidance when they get off-course?

 

 

Well, of course you can.

 

 

But it takes a full-time hard-working manager to do that.

 

 

And most managers aren’t full-time. (A number of them aren’t hard-working either, for that matter, but let’s not go there.) Most of the managers in my office are doing the same work (more or less) as their subordinates; the “management” portion is a (usually) unwelcome portion of their job.

 

 

Some of them are actually mentoring their subordinates. This is wonderful, but, as I said, very time-consuming.

 

 

Is there a happy medium?

 

 

I’m not sure.

 

 

Because those cattle dogs, you know, they work awfully hard.

 

 

---

 

“Fraud is the new business model”

---

I don’t like watching politics on television, even when I agree with the people I’m watching. It gives me a funny uncomfortable feeling in my stomach, and what with my whole kidney-stone situation, one more abdominal complaint is not what I need.

 

 

 

But Partner and I happened upon a good interview the other day: Bill Moyers (whom I respect immensely) interviewing Bernie Sanders, the Independent Senator from Vermont. (I capitalize “Independent” on purpose; that’s his political affiliation. He generally caucuses with the Democrats, but he’s very much his own person. He identifies himself with the Scandinavian Socialists, believing with them that the purpose of a government is to ensure quality of life for its citizens, including essential human services like health care and education.)

 

 

 

Bernie was passionate and brilliant in the interview, as he generally is. Along the way, he spoke of Wall Street and the various feeble attempts that have been made to regulate it, and said this: “Fraud is the new business model.”

 

 

 

Both Partner and I nearly leapt out of our chairs when he said this. It’s such a perfect description of the current situation in the business world. In a word: the wealthy are using every means necessary to maintain and increase their wealth. Taxes are not for them.  (They’re “job creators,” so we mustn’t rile them up.) They don’t like government regulation either, which naturally drives up their expenses. They are not keen on paying benefits for their employees either, nor are they in love with the minimum wage. 

 

 

 

It’s the regulation thing that drives me wild. Before the Bill Moyers program, we’d been watching a program about derivatives. These are elaborate exchanges of packages of debt, currencies, etc., so cunningly crafted and marketed that the buyers often don’t really know what they’re buying (and often the sellers aren’t quite sure what they’re selling.) The buying and selling of derivatives was one of the bombs that blew up in 2008, torpedoing the world economy.

 

 

 

One of the experts interviewed was a little defensive about this, however. I can’t quote him exactly, but I can paraphrase him: “I don’t think the sellers were entirely to blame for this. I blame the purchasers too. They needed to be more careful about what they bought. It’s an open market, after all; you can buy and sell what you want.”

 

 

 

So evidently you can sell fraudulent securities, so long as you can find a buyer. Or tainted meat, or poison baby formula. No one is forcing the buyers to purchase them, after all.

 

 

 

And that’s why government needs to be a policeman: because a significant number of businesspeople will not hesitate to use fraudulent means to make money. And that’s all kinds of business.

 

 

 

Sadly, Bernie Sanders is only a voice in the wilderness now.

 

 

 

I hope more and more people come to this realization.

 

 

 

Otherwise: well, go to Netflix and watch “Rollerball.” Because, America, that’s your bleak ol’ future right there.

---

 

Faking it

---

Back in 1981, I was offered a job up on Federal Hill in Providence. My new boss took me to a shadowy back room and showed me a machine that looked like a cross between an electric organ and a typewriter.  “Have you ever used one of these?” he asked.

 

 

“You bet,” I lied, my mouth dry.

 

 

I managed to figure it out. Within a few months, I was the only person in the place who really knew how to use the thing.

 

 

For a long time I felt guilty about this. Then, again and again in my personal life, I found myself faking expertise in a particular field. I still didn’t feel good about it, but at least I was becoming a more proficient liar.

 

 

Now I read this article by Luke Johnson in the Financial Times. He tells a story about taking a job as a DJ, when he had a big record collection but no experience. He figured it out. Lesson: many successful people begin their careers by faking expertise.  (Evidently there was even a British TV show about this: people taking on jobs/roles that they had no background for.)

 

 

When I was young, I used to be more or less terrified of adulthood, because I believed that I didn’t know the rules. Adults always seemed to know what to do; they seemed so natural. I tried to figure out the rules; I tried to learn the right things to do.

 

 

Now I realize it’s all about faking it

 

 

And what’s wrong with that?   Life isn’t a quiz; there’s no answer key. We just do the best we can.

 

 

What else are we doing in this life, from dawn to dusk and after, but faking our way through?

---

 

New glasses

---

A couple of weeks ago, I took off my glasses at work to make a dramatic gesture, and the temple snapped off in my hand. This is the second time these particular frames have broken in just a few months, so I bounced right off to my funny little optician to get them fixed.


He is a silly little bunny. His prices are good, but he is not much of a businessman. Also, intellectually, he does not seem to be the most fully-inflated beach ball at the pool party. “They’ll be ready by Wednesday” usually means “Check back on Friday.” He gets dithery and confused easily. Every time I go to him, I swear I’ll never go to him again. Then he posts a new price list, and I think: Wow! That’s cheap! And I go back to him.


Anyway: “No problem,” he said. “I’ll order new frames for you.”  (This was on a Saturday.) “Check back on Wednesday.” (Translation: “Stop by next Saturday.”)


During the week, I made do with old pairs of glasses. My prescription changes dramatically from year to year; evidently my eyeballs mutate at random. Some of my old glasses are good for distance vision, some for close-up. I found I was reading the newspaper by taking off my (old) glasses altogether and holding it up to my eyeball, like a jeweler examining a precious stone.


Another week passed. I went to see Funny Optician. He spun in circles, excusing himself for not having fixed my glasses yet. It was the manufacturer’s fault; they hadn’t sent the replacement frames. He didn’t know what the problem was. (Did I mention that he has a high whiny voice with a really seriously advanced Rhode Island accent?) Come back Monday, maybe Tuesday.


I checked in on Monday. I found a sign that said CLOSED MONDAY.


Now I was ready to kill him.


I took the day off on Wednesday and went to see him again, carrying a polo mallet. Again he spun in circles. Then, suddenly, he circled back. “Hey!” he wheezed. “What about plastic?”


“What?” I said.


“Instead of metal frames,” he said. “Maybe they’d wear better for you. I could do those right now. These are tortoise. You don’t want tortoise. Are these brown or black? Can you tell? I got black here somewhere. Wait a minute –“


As he was jabbering, I thought: I need something new. I just turned fifty-five. I’ve been wearing metal frames for decades now. Maybe a little hipster action will be good for me. Also, he’s probably right; plastic will probably wear better than metal.


I left a few minutes later with a nice pair of plastic frames. I’d forgotten how intense! my most recently-updated prescription was; as I stepped out onto the street, I think I could see the past and future simultaneously.


Everyone says I look younger now.


So: my funny little optician has (inadvertently) given me the best fifty-fifth birthday present of all.

---

Verizon FIOS

---

We got an email about a month ago from our landlords, informing us that there would be a Verizon FIOS meet-and-greet in our apartment courtyard at the end of May.

 

 

Our longtime internet / phone / TV carrier (which began with C and ended with OX) had excellent customer service, but had been getting progressively more expensive over the past few years. So, we thought, why not go have some punch and pie, and hear what the nice FIOS man has to say?

 

 

As it turned out, we were pretty much the only people who turned up at the meet-and-greet. (I had a very small Italian cold-cuts sandwich.) It was hosted by a cute young salesman, who talked us into switching from C + OX to FIOS. (He also offered us a whole boatload of gift cards, which very much sweetened the deal for Partner and me. We love gift cards.)

 

 

The actual conversion happened about a week ago. Poor Partner: he was home alone when the Verizon installer came. It took the installer forty-five minutes to find the place where the cabling enters our apartment. (It was in my clothes closet, incidentally.) Then it took another four hours for the installer to set everything up.

 

 

Then it took us another three hours in the evening after the installer left to get everything up and working.

 

 

The process wasn’t perfect, but then: what is? I got the master account working, and then started creating email accounts. I bogged down for a while, but finally figured it out.

 

 

Conclusions:

 

 

·       The FIOS network is faster (slightly).

·       The TV service (especially in HD) is clearer and has less interference.

·       We get more features (like caller ID and voice mail) for less money (at least for the next two years).

·       I vaguely recollect that, ten years ago when we went from ATT to C+OX, we went through the same kind of hell week.

 

 

More than a week has passed. I’m getting pretty much the same amount of email I was getting before; everyone has found me, even some of the spammers. I’m getting used to typing my much longer (but very descriptive) email address. And did I mention how much faster the Net is?

 

 

Shop around, kids. Shop around.

 

 

There’s gift cards in them thar hills.

---

 

Customer service: the flip side

---

I have written before about bad customer service.  In my young-and-foolish days I used to put up with it, thinking that I was a poor humble sap and that the cashiers and tellers were treating me badly because I somehow deserved it.  As I’ve aged, however, I’ve gotten smarter and crankier.  I have actually made a couple of customer-service people burst into flames when I focus my anger onto them.

 

 

A TD Bank recently opened in downtown Providence.  I was curious, and went in for some casual transactions.  They have lollipops! They have dog biscuits! They open the door for you!  They’re almost invariably cheerful!  (I’ve seen one of the tellers looking a little melancholy once or twice, but she didn’t take out her bad feeling on me, and I felt sympathetic for her.)

 

 

So I decided to join the TD revolution.

 

 

I could not have done better.  The folks at my old bank (whose name begins with a CITI and ends with a ZENS) were snarky and unpleasant when I closed out my account. The customer-service representative (a football-hero type, beefy and bluff) tried to talk me out of my decision, until I pointed out to him that he’d kept me waiting for several minutes while he chatted and flirted with a couple of the bank’s other employees.  At this point he became rather chilly with me. 

 

 

I am deliriously happy with TD Bank.  They’re cheaper, for one thing; their fees are much lower than those at my previous bank.  And the staff are cheerful, and they actually make a point of being helpful.  If I see someone in the bank wearing a nametag, I can actually ask him/her a question, and he/she will actually answer it, fully and helpfully, with a smile. 

 

 

I think my head might explode with joy. 

 

 

Now: if they opened up a few more branches in Rhode Island – preferably up here on the East Side of Providence – my life would be complete.

 

 

(Can this be true? Can the world actually be getting better?)

 

 

(I doubt it.)

 

 

(But I’ll take whatever I can get.)

---

 

 

Steve Jobs was a jerk, and other lessons in business administration

---

Partner’s work friend Rose recently turned me on to a very interesting blog about work.

 

 

(Yes, I know, this is a dull topic. But if you work in an office environment for a living, keep reading.  You may benefit from this.)

 

 

The blogger’s name is Bob Sutton.  He writes about work: office life, office dynamics, good bosses, bad bosses, communications issues.  He writes about them with great immediacy, and he uses vividly concrete examples that any office worker can understand.

 

 

One recent entry concerns the whole Steve-Jobs-Was-God phenomenon, and how it has muddied the waters re effective management and general good business behavior.

 

 

Jobs, by all accounts, was a genius.  He ramrodded Apple, once a small company, into a big company, a huge company, one of the most innovative companies in the world.  His products are everywhere.  They are light and simple and elegant. 

 

 

Also, Steve Jobs was an asshole.  Reportedly, during his final illness, he went through dozens of nurses before finding a few he liked.  He was a screamer.  He was no fun to be around.

 

 

Here’s a question: if you want to be a visionary business magnate like Steve Jobs, how do you do it?

 

 

Answer: by acting like him.  And if that means acting badly, well, go for it.

 

 

Sutton describes a conference at which he mentioned Steve Jobs, and a huge argument broke out among the attendees: was it necessary to act like a jerk to be successful? Steve Jobs did it, and it worked.  Maybe being a jerk is the secret to success!

 

 

Sutton theorizes that people are projecting their own preferences onto Jobs and his legacy.  If they’re jerks, they feel validated when they discover that Jobs was a jerk.  If they’re not jerks, they’re worried that they might be more successful if they were less pleasant.  And so forth.

 

 

And this is the world of “management theory.”

 

 

Here’s the thing: in my world view, jerk bosses get poked with pitchforks in the world to come.  Life is short, and we are all mild sweet tender creatures, and we need to be kind to each other. 

 

 

If there’s a heaven, I doubt that Steve Jobs is being rewarded there right now for his business success. 

 

 

So: try not to be a jerk. Please.

---

 

Rocking the boat

 

---

I was never one to rock the boat. 

 

 

 

So you order a bran muffin, and they give you blueberry.  Does it matter?  Don’t you like blueberry muffins?  (Well, not as much as bran muffins.  Besides, as I said recently, we all need the fiber.)  If you complained, how long would it take the waitress to rectify her mistake?  And would she spit on your bran muffin while “correcting her error”?

 

 

But sometimes it’s good, and refreshing, to blow one’s stack.

 

 

I ordered some cheese pizzas for an office party a while back. People were bringing their kids, so we wanted the pizza cut into child-sized pieces.  See?  Simple.  I even dug out a previous order and read it over the phone to the catering lady.  And when we picked it up –

 

 

Well, hm. 

 

 

They had it ready an hour early, so it had an extra-long time to cool down. 

 

 

They cut it in Jurassic Park-sized slices.

 

 

I ordered four pizzas; they gave me five.  In eight boxes.  Figure that out.

 

 

Last year they charged me $12 per pizza; this year, $25 apiece.  No explanation for the price increase.

 

 

I lost it at the catering lady.  I mostly lost it because she had the nerve to tell me I was getting an excellent deal.

 

 

I had to explain to her that, if I order a thing and get something else, it is not a good deal.  It is, in fact, a crappy deal.

 

 

I get all quotational when I get mad.  I found myself saying, apropos the botched order, “It is wrong from beginning to end.”  I will give you, dear reader, a gigantic slice of ice-cold cheese pizza if you know what work of literature that line comes from.  (No Googling, please!)

 

 

So you see?  I do rock the boat from time to time.

 

 

I’m sure it was very ineffective; I’m sure that catering lady will botch someone else’s order tomorrow. (I saw her in the store a while back. It took me a moment to recognize her, but she recognized me all right; she ran away from my vicinity like a cobra from a mongoose.)

 

 

I like being angry from time to time.  It's like that Chimney Sweeping Log that's advertised on TV.  Anger burns all the soot off my soul, and I feel much cleaner and clearer afterward, and far more serene.

 

 

Until someone messes up my pizza order again.

 

 

And then: KABOOM!

 

 

Fubar

---

I read the most delightful article a while back in a publication called “ChinaWatch,” which seems to be a sort of Chinese Chamber of Commerce thing.  It’s full of cheerful articles about Chinese industry and the Chinese economy, always upbeat, never negative.  I have the latest issue right here, and let’s see, we have articles about the Chinese lavender industry, the local market for jade, a pass between China and Kazakhstan which has become very internationalized, green energy in China, solar energy in China, soccer teams in China –

 

 

But here.  Just wait.

 

 

Here’s an article about a nice young Irishman named Manus McMahon, who set up a Western-style bar in Urumqi, one of the larger cities in the Xinjiang region of western China.  They serve imported beers and pizza, and are (according to the article) very successful, although (inexplicably) the building is being torn down, and Mister McMahon is moving on to Central America to establish another Irish-style pub.  (You think that’s strange?  So do I.)

 

 

Anyway, the Urumqi bar is named “Fubar.”

 

 

“Fu,” in Chinese, denotes fortune and good luck.  “Fu Bar,” get it?

 

 

Well, no.

 

 

Seriously.  Do you know what “fubar” means in Standard English?  (See here if you don’t.)

 

 

So: someone was having a nice little joke when they named the place.

 

 

(Postscript: I mentioned this to one of my student employees, Jennifer, who has studied and worked in China over the past few years.  She looked startled.  “I’ve been to that bar!” she said.  “Not in Urumqi, but in Beijing!”)

 

 

("They had pizza?" I asked numbly?)

 

 

("Yeah," she said.  "Pizza and beer.)

 

 

(Omigod.  It’s a franchise operation.)

 

 

(Oh, kids, how small the world is.)

---

 

CEOs are not like the rest of us

---

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."

 

---

 

Herman Cain

---

So I notice Herman Cain seems to be embroiled in a bit of a controversy lately.

 

 

There is really nothing like watching a CEO flounder like a lungfish out of his local pond and into real life.

 

 

CEOs are not like the rest of us.  They are a strange and rare breed, like unicorns.  They breathe a purer thinner air, full of self-approbation and the praise of underlings.  They can do no wrong.  Their decisions are always right.  Their jokes are always funny.

 

 

This is why they get so blinky and irritable when you get them out into the light of day.  Without their flunkies and minions to support them, they get downright cranky.  I’m thinking Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling.  I’m thinking of Steve Jobs, rest his soul, whenever it was pointed out that an Apple product was less than perfect.  I’m thinking of Raj Rajaratnam snarling at the press.  I’m thinking of Jamie Dimon being nasty to the governor of the Bank of Canada only a month or two ago.

 

 

And I’m thinking of Herman Cain misspeaking about China’s nuclear capability – evidently he didn’t know they had A-bombs – and then saying, in effect, “No, I said the right thing.  I just said it in a way that you didn’t understand.”    And saying that women have the right to choose, but not to choose abortion, which is a form of genocide.

 

 

Not to mention all of those sexual harassment cases, which he has recently said he will no longer discuss.  (Poor baby!  Poor innocent!)

 

 

These allegations, to me, are especially telling.  If I had to guess, I’d hazard that Herman had no idea he was doing anything that could be considered offensive.  He probably thought he could say and do pretty much what he liked, and laugh it off later. 

 

 

Noblesse oblige, right?

 

 

Except that this kind of reasoning doesn’t work outside the boardroom. 

 

 

You and I (voters!) don’t have to do what Herman Cain tells us to do, or believe what he tells us to believe.  We can make up our own minds, and not worry about whether or not he’ll fire us for insubordination.

 

 

So what do you think of that, Herman?

---

 

 

Body wash

 

“I'm going to CVS,” I announced to Partner, throwing on my boa and mounting my camel.  “Do you need anything?”

 

 

He ruminated briefly.  “If you think of it, some body wash,” he said finally.

 

 

“What kind?”

 

 

“Oh, anything,” he said.  “You know what I like.  Something nice.  Not that cheap stuff.  And something that lathers up really well.  Some of the cheap stuff – you have to use half a bottle to get any lather out of it.”

 

 

“AOK,” I chirped.

 

 

A few minutes later I was in the BATH & BODY aisle of CVS, in deep meditation.

 

 

Okay.  There are well over a dozen brands, ranging from the familiar to the bizarre.   Some are very cheap; others cost five times as much.  One brand – I think Axe – has an “attraction enhancing” version, which contains pheromones.  (It didn't say they were human pheromones.  I had a sudden vision of Partner galloping down the street being chased by a moose, or maybe a raccoon or a possum, and decided that this was not a good idea.  On the other hand, it might be very funny.)  The most beautiful container was easily the Old Spice Fiji Scent; sadly, the contents smelled like a fruitcake frosted with Tide.  One brand was bright orange, and also powerfully orange-scented.  I almost bought it, but then I thought: how much orange is too much orange?  And how quickly would we both tire of this?

 

 

And, incidentally, how was I supposed to tell if any of them lathered up?  I tentatively poured a few drops of one of them at random onto my fingers, and it felt sticky and thick, as you'd expect liquid soap to feel.

 

 

Some of the bottles are mock-silver, in interesting futuristic shapes.  I realized later that they're shaped like remote controls, or Wii devices.  Clever marketing to a male customer base, eh?

 

 

So I ended up buying the Right Guard Total Defense Five-in-One Hair and Body Wash.

 

 

And do you know why?

 

 

Because I got a dollar coupon for buying it.

 

 

Hallelujah!

 

---

 

Economics for dummies

---

Economics has never been my strong point. I still don't understand a lot of the jargon and concepts.

But, if you watch CNBC, you'll quickly see that an understanding of economics isn't really necessary. As with political programming, it's really all about the screaming.

With sound effects, yet, if you're Jim Cramer. (Actually, Cramer seems to have sobered up a bit; he still does the “booyah” routine, but the carnival sound-effects board with mooing and yelling and oinking seems to have gone by the wayside. Can it be? Can our boy Jim have grown up, a little?

Nah. I think he just had a talking-to by some folks at the network.)

CNBC features stentorian ranters like Larry Kudlow, for whom capitalism is sacrosanct, and who can't say President Obama's name without a sneer. They have Joe Kernan of “Squawk Box,” sort of a minor-league Chris Matthews, who likes to hoot and mock and talk over other people. Most chillingly of all, they have Rick Santelli, who reports from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, and who snorts and spins and shrieks and waves his hands in the air. In case you're not familiar with his work, Santelli credits himself (and is credited by others) with helping to found the Tea Party, with a famous / infamous on-air rant. Rick continues to fly into rages and make speeches on the air, hoping for another through-the-roof YouTube success; he did one the other day, in which he compared himself to the Founding Fathers standing up to King George. (Honestly, you can't make this stuff up.)

(To be fair, the whole hyperactively angry thing probably made Rick Santelli very successful in business; trading is notoriously competitive, and I'm sure it's an advantage to be bouncier and crazier than the other guy. On the air, however, these things don't make you a journalist; they makes you a clown.  They certainly don't make you a peer of the Founding Fathers.)

CNBC also has the pretty ones: Carl Quintanilla, Maria Bartiromo. These are mostly memorable for their fresh complexions. They seldom have anything deep to say. They ask questions that seem thoughtful and probing, but I wonder sometimes who writes these questions.

But – and here's the thing – most of these “journalists,” the pretty ones and the howlers and the sneerers, make the most howlingly ridiculous statements on a daily basis.

For example: stupid generalizations and truisms. “Markets always fluctuate.” Hell, I barely passed Econ 101, and I could have told you that.

Also: I know the difference between macroeconomics and microeconomics. Macro is the economy as a whole; micro is economics as it applies to a family, or to a business. They are vastly different.

Then why do these CNBC people treat them as the same thing?

Debt, for example. For a family, and for a business, it 's a problem. For a sovereign nation, less so. Countries can print money. I certainly can't. Countries can manipulate interest rates. Can you do that? I can't.

But the Kudlows and Kernans speak as if the rules that govern the national economy are the same that govern you and me.

So: are they experts, or idiots, or wannabe demagogues?

I don't know. It's like watching Spongebob. It's very unreal.

At least Spongebob is cute and well-meaning.

Because, I tell you frankly, these guys aren't.

---