Me, I pile.

Here’s the strategy of the pile:

% you get a lot of things every day in the interoffice mail, or even real mail.

% much of this you know what to do with.

% some of it you don’t know what to do with.

% that’s what you pile.

% the pile grows old and after a while you fear to look at what is within it.

% after a while, you throw away the pile.

% the moment you throw the pile away, you need something that was within it.

% Still, you’re better off without the pile.

The moment the pile is gone, you begin a new pile.

********

Here is the strategy of those who file.

* Here is an item. I need to file it.

* But… where?

* I’ll call Beverly. She will know where to file it.

* Beverly files it.

* Beverly goes to teach school somewhere.

* Nobody understands my filing system.

Go ahead! Which do you prefer??

Just a word on a Monday morning to thank all of you who have begun the incredible discourse on air travel. On Friday night, I was delayed on my flight from Kennedy to SFO because there were simply too many darn planes who wanted to take off from Kennedy. Thank Goodness for the American Airlines captain, whoever he was, because it’s my guess he was simply so ill-tempered with the flight tower that we went from absolutely screwed to fourth in line in about six seconds. Dude! You rule.

The stories of injustice and indignity have been pouring in. Look at the comments offered to my prior blog entry. They’re just fantastic.

I want to publish them all, and not just as comments, either, but as an ongoing and interactive international blog. This takes some technological doing, so we’ll see how that goes. In the meantime, keep writing. I have no doubt that there are a million stories out there waiting to be told.

Tell me.

I want to put you all on notice. In a month or so, we’re going to mount a significant effort to elevate a certain issue to the level we’ve previously reserved for ongoing, sustained discussions like the one we continue to hold on Crazy Bosses and Bulls**t Jobs. Click on both links if you want to see what I mean. I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but hundreds of people continue to log their horror stories, insights, jokes and other effluvia on both subjects, and the lore keeps on growing.

The subject I believe should be next on our roster is air travel, and by air travel I mean the following:

• Getting to the airport, which has been under construction since Kennedy was in the White House;
• Arriving at the airport and finding that the line to security will take over an hour to negotiate, even though it’s 5:30 in the morning;
• Incidents at Security;
• Bizarre stuff at the airport itself, including those guys they allow to panhandle near the ticket gate while masquerading as social service organizations;
• Rude, odd, or exceptionally nice behavior by airport and airline staff;
• Tales of waiting egregious amounts of time in the airport;
• Premium clubs that really aren’t;
• Horrendous behavior by airlines in screwing around with people so they don’t get off the ground for some reason;
• Obnoxious incidents on the tarmac, like when they make you wait to take off because a very old plane has a light that won’t either go off or go on;
• Incidents in the air that confound you;
• Diversions to strange places where the airline dumps you for a day or two;
• Luggage mysteriously lost in the ether between time and space;
• Chatty pilots who wake you on the red eye, and other such stuff;
• Airline meals/purchased food;
• Horrible fellow-passengers;
• Pets on board;
• Other

In short, ladies and gentlemen, I believe this topic is one that now occupies fully 35% of all business conversation in pre-meeting Board Rooms, bars and other venues where we go to complain, bemoan and just natter about what makes us miserable in this merry life of ours.

You can tell me good stories, too. Tales of human grandeur, generosity and nobility. Those are never out of place, if you can come up with them.

I think it’s quite possible that a new oral tradition may be forming on this topic. I’d like to make this a place where people like us can come to get it started, keep it going and maybe, just maybe, effect a change in this perpetually declining aspect of our working lives.

So come on. Tell me.

Okay, I admit it. I never know when one of these little blogules is going to prick your balloon, float your boat, fry your oyster. Sometimes I post something I believe to be eminently worthy of comment, and only a few of you bite. Other times I field what I think is a personal pet peeve and wham, out you come with your placards and banners and, in some cases, a couple of rotten tomatoes. I love it all. Every single comment. Oh look, I say to myself, a comment! Then I take it home and wrap it in bunting and feed it special tidbits.

Such is the case with my little screed on the difference between I and Me, offered yesterday in what I considered to be a vacuum of true business news. That happens a lot lately. Who cares about most of the stuff you see in the business section these days? Another merger? Ho-hum.  Another 30-year-old quadrillionaire? Zzzzzz. Bad grammar in the workplace? Yeah, baby!

Anyhow, quite a few of you have written in to agree with me, castigate me, and make fun of my English usage. Several of these have made me laugh, others have gotten under my skin.

I had no problem at all with those who found stupid grammatical mistakes in my original post. I admit I’m not perfect, and spelling has never been my long suit. So I corrected the spelling on some key words, the use of “their” instead of “its” someplace, I forget now, and of course, changed the name of the posting itself to “When smart people USE bad grammar,” which is better, I admit it. I don’t mind being corrected. When I’m wrong.

Whoops! Look at that! I just used an incomplete sentence! In a discussion of grammar, is that verboten? I think not. In this space, I basically speak to you very much the way I would talk if we were sharing a beer at the corner bar after work, or, since I really don’t drink very much beer, vodka, scotch, tequila or, in a pinch, very cold gin. This explains not only incomplete sentences, but distortions of tense that I like to use because they sound right to me, the way people tell stories.

That explains the first sentence of my original posting, about which some of you chose to get up into my grill. “I’m sitting at a lounge last week in Los Angeles with a top business reporter” is correct, because a) it’s mildly amusing to use slightly demented lingo in a demented world, b) I choose to do it and c) the use of the present tense in this context places you in the scene immediately, and is therefore a dramatic device. In short, while the sentence is unconventional, it is not an error in grammar.

Others complained about people like Smith in Topeka, who wrote in to say, “Me hates it when people do that!” The thing is, when I read that comment, and several others like it, I laughed. I want to encourage anyone reading this site to always, always get in touch when you have anything frivolous, idiotic or even slightly funny to offer. Don’t be dissuaded by the Grouchies. Me likes it.

Speaking of annoyed individuals, Joe, in Charleston, SC, speaks for a lot of folks, I think. He’s angry. “I’ve come across many people,” he says… 

… who like to point out grammatical errors of other people and most have the same common characteristics: they are arrogant, snooty, and they seem to think that such “grammatical attacks” make them appear to be more intelligent than the victim. I was blessed with a fairly high IQ and I pay little attention to grammar because it really doesn’t matter much as long as I get the point across. Likewise, our IQs and other characteristics that are beyond our control really do not matter in this world. You will be on your death bed before you know it. Do you want to look back on your life and realize that all you have done is fought for your own pride and vanity? Or will you even be so wise? Perhaps you will only look back at how well you spoke your nonsense and hope that your wonderful grammar will be legendary.

First, I’d like to note that Joe’s grammar and writing style is not peccable. Second, Joe and those like him are exactly the reason why nobody corrects anyone else’s bad grammar these days. People hate you if you do. They think you’re a snob, a hoity-toidy loser, a wimp, a stickler, obsessed with meaningless detail and empty form. Personally, I raised this issue because when a smart person with whom I am speaking says, “Larry and me will get back to you on that,” I worry about the impression they will make in a business setting with guys who have an even bigger stick up their butts than I do.  If that makes me a modern-day equivalent of Marie Antoinette, I guess I’ll have to live with that.

I do sympathize with Joe, though. When I was in France, I didn’t meet one single French person who did not correct me on my usage, my pronunciation, my accent. I even got corrected on the way I said “McDonald’s.” While I appreciated the constant French lessons, I did feel, after a while, that there was something annoyingly sticklerish about the entire nation on this issue. But hey. They love their language. In some ways, it’s all that’s left of their once dominant culture. So I forgive them. And Joe should too.

Finally, I’d like to thank Tim in Montreal for his citation of a new one to me: Skitt’s Law, in which “spelling or grammar flames always contain spelling or grammar errors.” That rings true. I’m sure this one do too.

I’m sitting at a lounge last week in Los Angeles with a top business reporter. True, we’re drinking, but that doesn’t really explain what happens next. I’m conversing with him about something that doesn’t really concern you, and things get kind of confidential, and I ask for his promise that the matter will remain off the record. ”Don’t worry,” says the reporter, a graduate of a fine college and probably a reputable journalism school. “That will just be between you and I.”

See anything wrong there? I do, but I don’t say anything about it. I don’t want to come off as Miss Grundy.

A couple of days before, I’m in a big presentation where an industry leader is addressing about 300 hotshots. Very smart guy. Very sharp speech. Somewhere toward the end of the thing, he leans forward to make a particularly important point. “The future of this technology is obvious,” he says, “although you and me may not be around to see it.” Ouch.

Every day it happens. I try to ignore it. But it gives me a little stab in the back of my eye every time I hear it. Really smart people, people who can explain the impact of tax abatements on earnings per share going forward, who can discern how internet revenues will play out in the coming decade, who can shoot craps or guide investments with aplomb, don’t know the difference between I and me. Does it matter? Should it matter? I don’t know. It just seems to matter to me.

The thing is, you can’t really correct people about it. They hate you. They look at you like you’re some kind of jerk. And maybe you are. After all, with all that’s going on in the world, does grammar matter?

For the record, and for those who even marginally care: this is really easy. The word “I” is used when the You in questions is the subject of a sentence. “I” does things. “I like that,” you say. You don’t say, “Me like that,” unless you are Tarzan. “Me” makes his appearance when things are done to You. “He really screwed me on that deal,” is both a common occurrence and correct usage.

Most of us know this. It’s when we combine with others that the problems start. “You and me are going to kick his butt,” is a laudable strategy, but a grammatical boner. ”I” is going to kick his butt. Likewise, “In the future, clearance for lunches over $100 must be obtained from Max or I,” may be excellent policy, but goofy usage. Just looking at it on the page here, doesn’t it LOOK wrong? And yet I hear it every single day, from people who are smart and too powerful, conceited or just plain tender to be corrected.

Even the best newspapers in the nation have given up on the split infinitive. Almost nobody cares about the difference between “presently” and “currently.” A good portion of the population reading this conducts much of its online communications in abbreviations, alphabetized contractions and emoticons.

Can’t we save this one vestige of good speech, you and I? … or is that you and me?

Well, it was quite a shindig. There were hundreds of Harrys there, a gaggle of Hermiones, a couple of Weasleys, a few dogs, a couple of cats, dozens of affectless teenagers slumped into doorways talking into cell phones and, inexplicably, a guy about 6′6″ dressed from head to foot as some kind of rodent made completely of gray pile carpeting. They said about 3,000 people were assembled in The Grove, but of course I was looking around for only one person. I found him standing by a fire hydrant, smoking a Cohiba under a sign that expressly forbade it.

“Lord Voldemort,” I said by way of greeting. He turned to me with those flat, expressionless eyes of his and I could see him going through his huge cranial database to remember where, when, who I was. That’s how executives are. They just wait, and then it comes to them. As he sorted me into his memory, I noticed with some pleasure that he had regrown a completely effective and attractive nose. It’s amazing what they can do with a face out here in LA.

“Mr. Bing,” he growled at last. “How long has it been.” I could tell he was glad to see me because he did not turn me into a grease spot immediately. “Can you believe this?” he snarled. “What a zoo.”

“People love Harry, you know.” It seemed like a pretty mild thing to say.

“Please shut up,” he said. I did. I could see he was wearing a black wristband. Everyone else was in orange and blue. I wondered what a black wristband would get you when the doors opened at midnight and the books began to be sold to the eager throng. I didn’t want to think about it. “On the bright side,” he continued, “after this and a couple of cruddy movies, it’ll all be over and my reign on earth will be eternal and supreme, just like it was in the 1980s when I was putting together the first boom in tech stocks.”

“You did that?” I hadn’t known. That was before we worked together.

“Sure,” he said. “And the bust, too.”

“Wow,” I said. I had lost a lot of money in that.

“The ’90s were the greatest,” he sighed, leaning into a metal lamp post, which instantly melted into the shape of his back. “I loved that whole democratization of capital thing as a guise for the destruction of innumerable organizations, the consolidation of entire industries, and the enrichment of a small group of investment bankers, lawyers and senior executives. Of course, that was BH.”

“BH?” I inquired.

“Before Harry,” he said, and lapsed into a malevolent silence. An oily steam poured from both his ears, which had large lobes and were quite hairy.

“Yes,” I said, and then, as politely as possible, “so what have you been doing for the last few years, since, you know, you, er, left to, um, pursue other interests?” That was the phrase that had been used. “Mr. Voldemort has left the company to pursue other interests in this and related fields,” the press release had said. But we all knew what had really happened. Harry was in charge. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was out.

“I worked for McKinsey for a few years,” he said. “Then I got a job teaching mergers and acquisitions at Wharton. After that, I consulted on a few start-up situations in biotech for a while, mostly commercialization of genome research. I helped Microsoft on their legal strategy. Other than that, just doing the things we do. Lunching at Michael’s, Morton’s, Spago. Dropping in at Gstaad and Sun Valley. Golfing. Looking for the next big thing.”

“What’s that going to be?” I inquired. I always like to know where I should be putting my money.

“Don’t know yet,” he said. He stamped out his cigar dead center of the lightning bolt on the forehead of a young man sporting a maroon and gold scarf. The kid sunk to his knees, gibbering meaningless incantations. I felt bad for the fellow. I’d seen that happen to dozens of middle managers in innumerable budget meetings with this particular executive.

“I wouldn’t worry about it, though,” said Lord Voldemort, with a weird and scary grin. “I’m ageless, you know.”

Then he disappeared in a puff of smoke, leaving behind nothing but a dark crimson glow and the very faint smell of money.

The outlook was stupendous for the soccer crowd that day
As thousands of potential fans had come to see the play;
And even though they fought through freeways clotted and congealed,
The mood was high as they awaited Beckham on the field.

Some had paid a thousand bucks to view the Galaxy
Usher in a dawn for every soccer devotee
The moment when the greatness of the game would be revealed
And a roaring crowd would greet young Beckham on the field.

Rumors, true, had swept the world that something might be wrong
That a precious body part refused to go along,
Yet everybody prayed and hoped their hero would be healed
And all would soon be thrilled to witness Beckham on the field.

The day arrived! The crowd was stoked! The players hit the green!
About the sport of soccer such a fuss had ne’er been seen!
A star of such a luster who to everyone appealed?
The future of the game looked bright with Beckham on the field.

And here they came into the sun — Frank Yallop’s lusty crew!
Stirring every heart with our beloved gold and blue.
With Cannon on the guard, we knew, no point our team would yield!
And goals would flow like ticket sales with Beckham on the field.

Some had traveled from as far as London and Beirut,
Trusting that the fates would smile on David’s hinky foot,
Still others brought their kids to witness this historic day,
And had to pay the crazy freight of lodging in LA.

But whether they arrived from places populous or rural,
Nobody dared to think that any crisis talocrural
Was an eventuality ‘gainst which we should be steeled
And so we raised a shout to welcome Beckham on the field.

Oh somewhere in this favored land the god of soccer shines
And smiles on happy fans who cheer the men between the lines
And somewhere people do not sigh, and curse their hero’s name

But here? Forget about it.
Mighty Beckham has gone lame.

This coming Friday, I’m going to be attending at Harry Potter party at a Barnes & Noble in Los Angeles. I’m really looking forward to it, because several agents I’ve talked to around here have passed along a rumor that a really big celebrity is going to be there. No, not Harry, he’s busy someplace else, according to sources close to the wizard himself. The guy I’m hoping to see is Lord Voldemort, because I used to work for him and I’ve been wondering how he’s doing.

It’s a little funny for me now even to be using his proper name. We had come to refer to him only as “He,” “Him,” and “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.” This is not in any way unusual. That’s how it generally is with most ultra-senior executives. “He’ll be here on Tuesday,” is well understood to mean, “The Chairman will be in town that day.” In the phrase, “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is really pissed about the third-quarter projections,” the identity of the angry senior officer in question is totally unnecessary.

Now that he’s been out of things for a while, however, I’ve heard a lot of people who used to work for the guy and tremble at his name refer to their former honcho in any old offhand way as “Lord Vee,” “The Voldemeister,” and even “Larry,” which I think is totally disrespectful. 

People make this big error, see. They think just because a CEO is disembodied and can only be seen around town in the body of a snake or a ferret, that he’s not going to come back and kick butt at some point in the future. I don’t know why people don’t get it. Look at all the guys who have proven them wrong, from Marius, who came back after being ejected from the top slot in Rome to kill all his adversaries and their dogs as well, to Napoleon, who was very bored on Elba, to Carl Icahn, who just never seems to stay disembodied no matter what happens to him.

Nope. You can never count a really big wizard out. That’s why I’ll be at the Potter party tomorrow night, and will report back to you on what comes down. I’ll tell you one thing. I’ll be having a couple of goblets of fire before I go.

I just finished watching “She Wore A Yellow Ribbon,” John Ford’s valentine to the U.S. Cavalry. It’s a good movie, not a great one, not the equal of “Stagecoach” or “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” both of which serve less cheese with their meat. I’ve been watching Ford westerns lately because they had an enormous impact on the Japanese samurai movies of the 1950s, which in many ways offer the greatest explorations of corporate life ever, equal to Shakespeare’s plays in their understanding of organizational behavior. Watch Kurasawa’s “Sanjuro” sometime if you want to see what I mean. The last five minutes, in its exquisite mix of swift violence and perfectly replicate at least one Board meeting I recall from the late 1990s.

Be that as it may. In “She Wore A Yellow Ribbon” John Wayne delivers a nugget that precisely mirrors a comment that just came in from Me Again of Seattle, who I’m guessing is writing to me under a fake name, like most of you do. Me Again’s observation was about my thoughts on the subject of John Mackey, the green, leafy head of Whole Foods (WFMI), who was caught pumping his corporate mojo on a chat board under an anagram of his wife’s name. “He should of never apologized for what he did,” writes Mr. or Ms. Again. “If you are going to do something like that, one should never apologize and by doing so is admitting to guilt on something that he shouldn’t have to admit guilt for. We live in a country built on free speech.”

Free speech? Whatever. If anything, the quality of speech on the web goes beyond freedom into license. The real issue in our vast and thorny media culture is the utility of apology. And on that matter, my belief is more clearly set forth by the Duke to a raw recruit: “Never say yer sorry, Mister,” he growls. “It’s a sign of weakness.”

We live in an culture of apology. Apology, sometimes tearful, sometimes not, followed by rehab of some kind, usually, or a highly publicized prison stay, and after that a certain pleasant amnesia as we all turn our attention to new miscreancies we can feast on. At times, these apologies are enough, and many naughty boys and girls are reinstated, if we like them, or they are pretty, or good enough copy. That’s the way it’s supposed to work, anyway.

More often these days, though, the reward for apology seems to be a higher level of punishment for he or she who shows a pink, tender underside to the beast. The cycle has shifted. Apologies seem to enrage the creature, not mollify it, until the sorry apologizer spirals down into the doom that his or her weakness virtually demanded.

The big maw isn’t satisfied by a simple “I’m sorry” anymore. Perhaps only the kind of apology that will be accepted at this point is the samurai version explored in the classic Japanese movies I love, where all the blood is black on white, the moment when the hero or villain, in recognition of fate or his own misdeeds, quite literally falls on his sword and reels back into good grace with his guts falling out all over his hands. Whoops! Ouch. All is well.

Those who don’t apologize do better, I think, all things considered. Two individuals come to mind who might have apologized if they listened to the wrong advisers. The first is Barry Bonds. He’s the only player who has suffered under intense scrutiny on the use of performance enhancing drugs and did not buckle. All the others who have, who stepped forward, talked with Congress, the press, their mommies? All toast. Did they in any way benefit from having unburdened themselves? They did not. And then there’s our Commander in Chief. Many might say that in the course of his Presidency, he may have done some things for which he might have apologized. Katrina. WMDs. That kind of thing. But has he ever offered even the slightest sigh of remorse? Nope. And you know what? I think it’s working for him. In 20 years, I expect to see history books that bear no resemblance to my perception of what’s going on right