As we enter into this Labor Day Weekend, with so many of us hitting the skies to enjoy this last little lick from the ice cream cone of summer, I thought it would be timely and appropriate to offer what seems to me to be an achievable, realistic draft of a document that has been much discussed by lawmakers and other philosophers: A Traveler’s Bill of Rights:

1. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do while imprisoned within the air travel system can and will be completely ineffective.
2. You have the right to get to the airport very early, only to find that your trip has been cancelled.
3. You have the right to accept the excuse for that cancellation or not, whatever.
4. You have the right to wonder why the airport has been under construction since you were a baby with no visible progress in sight.
5. If you fly for more than 1,000,000 miles per year, you have a right to a special person whose job it is to apologize to you for that fact that nothing can be done.
6. You have the right to remain in the airport for as long as is necessary for the airline to determine what they’re going to do with you.
7. You have the right to leave the airport if you want to, but once you do the airline has the right to cancel your reservation altogether.
8. Come to think of it, you have the right to consider your reservation absolutely conditional on certain criteria that will remain unclear to you.
9. All travelers will have access to a space on the floor of any airport in which they are interned.
10. You have the right to eat any food that you can find, except when you are sequestered overnight, in which case you have the right to eat any food you may have brought with you, or that you can either scrounge or steal from fellow passengers who are older, weaker or more infirm that you.
11. Once on the airplane, all passengers may sit quietly in their seats for an unspecified amount of time without water, food or air, except in First Class.
12. All passengers will have the right to sleep during long periods of inactivity on the tarmac, except in cases where the crew on the flight deck continually makes announcements that convey very little information in order to expunge their own anxiety and guilt.
13. While waiting for your plane to take off, you have the right to wonder whether it’s going to take so long that they will eventually drive you back to the gate and dump you back in the terminal.
14. While waiting to deplane after not taking off for unspecified reasons, you have the right to wonder why there is no gangway crew to let you off for 90 minutes.
15. You have the right to feel no patience whatsoever when you are thanked for said patience during the 14th announcement before takeoff.
16. During any flight that actually leaves the ground, you have the right to wonder how flight attendants can stand it.
17. You have the right to wonder where the occasional empty seat beside you went, and to remember what that was like, and speculate that the incessant cancellations of flights are designed to ensure that there are no such seats in the future.
18. You have a right to a clean restroom for the first 30 minutes of any flight.
19. You have the right to a turkey wrap.
20. You have the right to stay home.

 There may be more. I invite you to suggest your own. Have a happy Labor Day, everybody.

Everyday you hear about new ailments or new diagnoses of old conditions. Recently, for instance, I became aware that an entire group of business executives I know, including myself, were not actually just vague, ill-tempered, incapable of holding a thought for more than five minutes, obsessed with unimportant details, incapable of focusing on incoming stiumuli. Of course, we are all those things, but it’s not because we’re jerks. It’s because we have a combination of Adult Attention Deficit Disorder brought on post Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I certainly have the latter. Like, if you sneak up behind me and say, “Hi,” I will jump a mile in the air and come down swinging.

The only long-term cure for our common complaint seems to be $10 million and a condo in Maui. At this point, I’m sorry to say, that course of treatment seems unlikely for me. So I’ll just have to limp along with the rest of my fellow sufferers in senior management, applying martinis, expensive food and wine and the occasional trip to Cabo or Vegas as a pit stop on the way to health or death, whichever comes first.

The problem with any treatment for a newly-diagosed condition, or an old one, for that matter, is that any medicine at all comes with side effects. The side effects of daily application of martinis, for example, are well known. Expensive food and wine, too, eventually take their toll, as any cardiologist or tailor will tell you. And trips to Cabo and Vegas, while effective, often benefit the true sufferer for about as long as it takes the first crazy phone to ring. 

Perhaps that’s why I’ve always been fascinated by the side effects of all the new stuff that marketers want us to put into our bodies.  A few years ago they offered us potato chips with Olestra.  It turned out that Olestra, while having many benefits (including possibly helping to rid the body of dioxin, Mr. Yuschenko) also produced a condition that was featured on perhaps the most famous warning label in history.

I’m not going to say what it was in full, not here, but let’s just say it involved the word “leakage.” This term was featured not only on the package — along with the body part involved — but also, as I recall, in the final murmurs of a television commercial or two, although that may just be in my imagination. Suffice it to say that every party where Olestra potato chips were found was sure to feature people reading its package out loud. This eventually must have affected sales, I’m sure.

There are some side-effects, in short, that make the product terminally unappealing no matter how positive its other aspects may be. Other side effects, on the other hand, are more ambiguous.

This brings me to my favorite television commercials right now. They appeal to people who suffer from what sounds like a very serious and annoying neurological condition called Restless Leg Syndrome. There are a number of new products on the market to treat RLS, and I’m sure they are a godsend to many who have suffered from the interrupted sleep, painful twitching, etc., that attends this ailment, for which there seems to be no cure. While I have many annoying things wrong with me, as I’m sure you do too, RLS is not yet one of them, and I’m thankful for that, and my heart goes out to those people.

Anyhow, whether it’s the station I watch or the time of night at which I’m watching, there seem to be a lot of commercials for people with RLS. The other night, while I was kind of doing something else, and one of these marketing messages was being beamed at the back of my head for the 25th time in a couple of hours (this being cable television), I heard the words, “gambling, sexual or other uncontrollable urges” and then a welter of other warning babble. Hm, I thought. Perhaps I heard wrong.

So I sat down and watched the next three minutes of programming that a cable network gives you between commercials and then up came the next pod and sure enough, it had the same spots as the pod before, as they do, and here came another one for people with RLS. I’m not quoting it exactly, but what I remember went something like, “users should inform their doctor if they feel the urge to gamble, sexual or other uncontrollable urges” while taking the drug. Hey, I thought to myself. Sounds like Vegas.

This morning I went to the web page of one of these medicines, and found this:

There have been reports of patients taking certain medications to treat Parkinson’s disease or RLS… that have reported problems with gambling, compulsive eating, and increased sex drive. It is not possible to reliably estimate how often these behaviors occur to determine which factors may contribute to them. If you or your family members notice that you are developing unusual behaviors, talk to your doctor.

I don’t know what to conclude from all this. It’s just kind of evocative, that’s all. I imagine a perfectly nice person with Restless Legs Syndrome finally finding relief. After a week or so, this quiet, twitchy person suddenly has turned into a gambling, voracious sex machine. He or she goes to the doctor. The doctor says, “You have to give up the drug and stop being a gambling, voracious sex machine and go back to being a twitchy, uncomfortable person who can’t sleep.”

What would you do? And how long do you think it will take them to isolate what’s wrong with the RLS medicine and turn it into something really marketable?

Here is our Quote of the Day, which I will henceforth be offering not every day, mind you, but every day I feel that I come across a quote worthy to be the Quote of the Day.

This Quote of the Day comes from Lorraine from Salt Lake City, Utah, who commented on my inclusion of Business Analyst in our growing collection of bulls**t jobs. This one was offered by a reader in Pennsylvania based, presumably, on his experience with members of that profession. “The Business Analyst is the facilitator of time consuming numbness,” wrote our reader. “As simple as a monkey opening a banana.”

Lorraine took issue with that, and offered our Quote of the Day, “If you don’t need a banana to be peeled, then don’t hire the monkey.”

Thanks, Lorraine, for a truly great observation. Like all terrific zingers like this one, I’m not quite sure what it means, but I plan to offer it in meetings. Like, when somebody has a problem with something I’m doing, or some strategy I’m suggesting, or anything that’s been done by one of my people, I’m going to lean back in my chair, look at them with quizzical interest, and say, “If you don’t need a banana to be peeled, then don’t hire the monkey.” I’m interested in what kind of response that will bring, but I have a feeling it’s going to stop whoever is in my face stone cold.

You try it. Tell me how it plays.

And thanks, Lorraine from Salt Lake City, for offering our Quote of the Day, you win… my eternal gratitude! That’s gotta be worth something!

… to explore a very useful and entertaining website that just happens to feature a bunch of stuff about me, myself and I on its front page today. It’s called Total Picture Radio, and it’s hosted, moderated, blogged and otherwise wrested into energetic life by Peter Clayton, who I enjoyed speaking with very much. You can hear my interview with Peter about crazy boss phenomenon now sweeping the nation, and then, if you choose, peruse the site itself, which features a lot of stuff that’s really about, you know, business and all. In that regard, I’m showing a box of Twinkies here because I thought I might catch your eye with something tasty. That’s marketing for ya, right?

For about a month I’ve been planning to go to London for one day. That’s right. One day. The plan was to fly yesterday, at the end of the day, this for two reasons: 1) the way things are going it’s madness to be out of the office for very long and 2) people fly to Europe in the evening so they can hit the ground in a state of complete dementia, pretend it is daytime in their minds, work like beavers until they are seeing little pink wazirs everywhere, drink and eat like crazy people at what is actually the early part of the day back home, go to sleep in what should be the afternoon, wake in what feels like the dead of night, go to the airport and fly home in time to still log in a couple of hours at the office. Fun, huh? Welcome to Businessland.

At any rate, I was really looking forward to my crazy day. We have several cool operations there and I was really anticipating a good time talking to those folks, seeing what they do, discussing how we at Corporate might be able to help them, and eating prawns. For the record, I don’t much like prawns, but it seems to me that whenever I have been over there people are constantly eating them. Prawns with eggs in the morning. Prawns on crustless bread and butter at noon. Curried prawns with dinner. A couple of prawns before bedtime. Like that.

Anyhow, the day of our trip dawned bright and early as all days do right now, with a peek at the BlackBerry — which is better than a bucket of cold water over the head, believe me — a nice long shower and off to work. Work work work. Lunch at the desk. Back to work. Paper. Phones. More paper. More phones. A couple of face-to-face chinfests. Back to the phones. Yak yak. Buzz buzz. The usual sack of nuts and bolts.

And then? Before I ever knew where the time went, it was 3:30 and time for the Town Car to take me and my associate, whom I will call Young McTavish, to the airport. “Let’s see,” says Young McTavish as we grab our bags and saddle up. “I want to make sure I have my passport in easy reach.”

Then it all went dark. A gooey, swirling sensation took away my sight, my balance. My face grew hot and flushed. My legs felt like strips of undercooked calamari.

“Your… passport,” I choked out. And in my mind bloomed a very clear picture of my passport, safely tucked into a drawer in my night table… in California. I, of course, was in New York.

And that is why I am now writing this to you from my desk back home, at lunchtime. In London, where it is coming on evening, I imagine all the folks that had set up a strenuous day for me and Young McTavish are breathing a long sigh of relief and saying to themselves, “Well, that Bing. What a wanker. But it sure made for a more relaxing day!”

I wish I could tell you that I had forgotten my passport, but that would not be true. Never in my mind did it every occur to me to think about a passport. I’m a business person. I fly all the time. I come and go as I please. Sometimes I fly on the corporate jet, where you don’t even have to go through security nonsense. There develops, over time, a sense of entitlement that deludes you into believing, in a way, that you sort of float above the rest of world. Passport? Hm?

In addition, there’s the fact that we’re always everywhere. In the last month I’ve been in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Hawaii, some other places, too, and I didn’t need anything but a driver’s license for any of those. The fact is, I never really know where I am, or what time zone I’m in, or what day it is, really. I go places. I work. I try to goof off as much as possible. I live on two coasts, with stuff both here and there. So… London? Why not London? It’s not another country! It’s business, right?

And finally, there’s the fact that after a couple of decades doing whatever this is for a living, I am very slowly and inexorably losing my mind. It’s partly stress – the effects of five life-threatening crises a day for a dog’s age. It’s the constant travel and ubiquity of electronic intrusion, too. There are no weekends anymore. No nights. No summer, really.

And so, on the Wednesday before Labor Day, in the city of New York, I am where I was not supposed to be, and have one whole day with no meetings, no lunches, nothing on my calendar at all.

I’m bored!

What do Business Analyst, Strategic Planning Consultant, Chiropractor and Environmental Impact Researcher have in common? You know it! They’re all bulls**t jobs, according to our newest correspondents on the subject.

Go to http://bingjobs.blogs.fortune.com and take a look. Like I said, I’ll be updating that blog with all your tasty bulls**t jobs in the coming weeks, and hopefully you’ll continue to lob in more until the pile is as big and yeasty as all outdoors!

A reader from Pennsylvania writes…  

Analyze and interpret other peoples’ work in order to pass on requirements in order for other people to continue doing said work. You get to tell people what they already know and tell them what they already expect. You get to attend “”Meetings”" that are not much more than stating problems and pawning off the responsibility of fixing said problems to someone who actually knows something and gets paid far more because they actually have a skill/trade.

The Business Analyst is the facilitator of time consuming numbness. As simple as a monkey opening a banana.

What do you think? Is it simple for a monkey to open a banana? Or is it just that it has a lot of practice?

A reader from Washington, D.C. writes…

This is not my job, but I have been the trapped innocent victim of the “”strategic planning consultant”" who has held captive scores of us in meetings that go for hours and it’s ALL BULLSHIT! Hours in planning that results only in more BS meetings to talk about “”next steps, mission, vision and goals”" …that means they can invoice for thousands of dollars to inflict miindnumbing pain that morphs one into a coma-like state despite coffee, peanut m&m’s and “”break out groups”" – your only chance for brief respite to vent if you have any sane people in your group.

But no – you only have the true believers that barf out all of the buzz words, phrases and acronyms that have been droned on about the first part of the day from hell. So, in the small breakout group, emerge the “”leaders and visionaries”" of this group and Oh shit..another strategic POD professional has been cloned.

Like a cult, another true believer is born and ready to be part of this BS industry!

Me? I’m the one with a mental block about how any of the verbage means productive outcome for anyone other than paying for a new beach house and a vacation in Tuscany. So, after 8 hours you leave with a presentation folder full of charts, color coded “planning sheets”, “technique tips”, “” tools”" and the “”notes”" area that is blank except for doodled “”HELP ME”" and “”UGH!”" entries. Coffee-logged but desperate for freedom you stumble out of hell and do all you can to avoid the follow up conference call in six weeks to report progress on …BS.

Living in Washington DC there is an endless amount of BS jobs – it’s the absolute BS mecca of the world! Here all BS who BS are highly regarded. The political hacks, the government agency bureaurcrats on local and federal levels, the corporates that pour in and out and their PACS, the endless nonprofit, international and academic realms – all full of BS jobs that go on without limits. From what I can tell only sanatation workers and Starbuck’s baristas work.

What do you think? Is this a bulls**t job?

A reader from Massachusetts writes…

Duties: Oversell limited back pain treatments as a fountain of youth.

$$: New graduates work as associates for very low pay, around $60k per year which isn’t much considering that you are $100k in debt before you start. Opening your own shop is more lucrative but risky, 50% of them close in five years. If you survive you’ll probably make 90k. Hire some underpaid associates of your own and you could make 140k/yr. Little wonder why the highest paid people in the field are seminar vendors or run schools.

The upside: Making your own hours. Successful high volume clinics often work about 30 hours per week.

The downside: High pressure to succeed, sleazy sales tactics, high student loans and quacks for colleagues.

The dark side: If you fail you’ll be stuck with those loans for life.

What do you think? Some people swear by these guys. Others just swear at them.

A reader from Ohio writes…

In college, I worked for a consultant studying the impact of strip mining in Louisiana (My supervisor was later offed by vigilante mobs who poured anti-freeze down his throat). My job was to water and fertilize the grass in the test beds. The test beds measured 10 x 10 feet. There were five test beds. I got paid $15/hour in 1981 dollars. I had all day to water and fertilize. I did my job in about 30 minutes, 15 min in the a.m. and 15 min in the p.m. I worked 10 hours a day and got paid 2 hours of overtime each day. Love it!

What do you think? Is the job bulls**t? Or the title? Or both?

Saparmurat Niyazov 1940 — 2006
President for Life of Turkmenistan

From Wikipedia::

“Niyazov ruled as an authoritarian leader, notorious in the Western world for the cult of personality he established around himself in Turkmenistan… He renamed the town of Krasnovodsk, on the Caspian Sea, Türkmenbaşy, in addition to renaming several schools, airports and even a meteorite after himself and his immediate family… Erika Dailey, a specialist for the Open Society Institute, said the education system under Niyazov indoctrinated and brainwashed young Turkmen through the Ruhnama, a national epic written by Niyazov… Niyazov first placed copies in the nation’s schools and libraries but eventually went as far as to make an exam on its teachings an element of the driving test.

Presidential decrees

As President-for-Life of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov issued many controversial and unusual decrees:

* In April 2001, ballet and opera were banned after Niyazov felt they were “unnecessary … not a part of Turkmen culture”.[15]
* In 2004 it was forbidden for young men to grow long hair or beards.[15]
* In March 2004, 15,000 public health workers were dismissed including nurses, midwives, school health visitors and orderlies and replaced with military conscripts.[16]
* In April 2004 the youth of Turkmenistan were encouraged to chew on bones to preserve their teeth rather than be fitted with gold tooth caps or gold teeth.[17]
* In April 2004 it was ordered that an ice palace be constructed near the capital.[18] (In December 2006 an article in the UK’s Sunday Times revealed the ‘ice palace’ to be an ornate ice skating rink.[19])
* In 2004 all licensed drivers were required to pass a morality test.[20]
* In 2004 it was prohibited for news readers to wear make-up[21]
* In February 2005 all hospitals outside Aşgabat were ordered shut, with the reasoning that the sick should come to the capital for treatment. All rural libraries were ordered closed as well, citing ordinary Turkmen do not read books.[22]
* In November 2005 physicians were ordered to swear an oath to the President, replacing the Hippocratic Oath.[23]
* In December 2005 video games were banned as being too violent for young Turkmen to play.
* In January 2006 one-third of the country’s elderly had their pensions discontinued, while another 200,000 had theirs reduced. Pensions received during the prior two years were ordered paid back to the state.[24] The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan strongly denied allegations that the cut in pensions resulted in the deaths of many elderly Turkmen, accusing foreign media outlets of spreading “deliberately perverted” information on the issue.[25]
o (Note: On March 19, 2007 Turkmenistan’s new president Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedow has reversed a decision of his predecessor by restoring pensions to more than 100,000 elderly citizens..[26])
* In September 2006 Turkmen teachers who failed to publish praise of the Turkmen leader would remain at a lower payscale or be sacked.[27]
* In October 2006 Turkmenistan claimed to have set free 10,056 prisoners, including 253 foreign nationals from 11 countries on the Night of Omnipotence. Niyazov said, “Let this humane act on the part of the state serve strengthening truly moral values of the Turkmen society. Let the entire world know that there has never been a place for evil and violence on the blessed Turkmen soil.”[28]
* The Turkmen words for bread and the month of April were changed to the name of his late mother, Gurbansoltanedzhe. [29]
* Car radios, lip-synching, and recorded music are all prohibited.[30]
* Video monitors are required in all public places.[30]
* Dogs are restricted from the capital city due to unappealing odour.[31]“

The world has marvelled, shuddered and died under the heel of impressive and in some cases entertaining dictators for millennia. This is the first in a series these very special chief executive officers.

A reader from Michigan writes…

Well, let’s begin with my Boss. She used to be this very Energetic Woman who loved life. A Very Caring, Loving, Hard Working Woman. Then… Boom!!!!! Her whole life, as she knew it was taken from her! You see, she had been married to this legend of a man who was swept away from her in one zap of a second in a horrible car accident. Well, it was so overwhelming to her, she never let herself really grieve. For the first year after the death, she drank. Didn’t become a drunk, just drank her thoughts away. The second year, she ran. Ran all over the Country. Maine. Connecticut, Florida, Cancun. She met all kinds of interesting people. She had many choices but was inclined to stay put in her safe little haven that she made for herself. Let me tell you this: She has lost her zest in life, she has become this non-existent person who contributes NOTHING to this World! She’s become listless, maybe even a little lazy, although that she wouldn’t like to hear that. I believe if someone would give her an assignment, some work (she loves to work), that she couldn’t refuse and it would bring her back to life.

Now Stanleybing, I want you to know that I got up immediately after reading your article in Fortune Magazine, (I was Basking in the sun, at my Pool), I got up and I sat down and wrote to you. Now write back to me.

P.S. This is a True Story. The woman I am talking about… is ME!!

I don’t know about you, but I’d hire this woman. She can hold a drink. She likes to read FORTUNE while sunning at the pool. She has endured a Grief, and come through. Enjoy these and other stories at http://bingbosses.blogs.fortune.com. You’ll be glad you did.

A reader from the Northeast writes:

My politically connected maniacal boss was recently fired for spying on a co-worker who happened to be running for a county office for a political party that was not hers. Here is the background. This boss had previously used a key logger program to catch an internal threat to our network. The use of this program was approved by our administration, although I was kept in the dark by my manager and 2 other co-engineers when the threat was found. The decision to monitor this user and choice of logging program was also done without my knowledge or input.

I’m the lead of three computer engineer employed here. At this point I realized that I was no longer being trusted by my manager. You see, I had always spoken what I felt was right, not what I thought the manager wanted to hear. The other two engineers had no problem acting as her monkeys, doing whatever she wanted, saying whatever she wanted to hear. In meetings, the other two never backed me up if they sensed the manager was not being receptive to my suggestions, even if they previously agreed with me.

Well later this manager was fired for using this same key logging software on another co-worker mentioned above, an act which was NOT approved by administration. This boss was able to involve the two other engineers by having them install and monitor the unauthorized key logger program. Again I was not aware of this usage.

When the boss was finally escorted out by the police, I asked my two co-workers what was going on. They both implicated each other and this was backed up by other coworkers who saw then hovering round the guy’s office. I was very upset with them and found it very hard to trust them after being treated as I was by them during this and some other previous incidents.

Even though I asked for leniency for the 2 engineers when interviewed by the big bosses, citing the intimidation tactics employed by the fired boss, I still find that I cannot trust these two. After the interviews of all office employees, the fired boss was also charged with hostile workplace violations.

Later, one of the two engineers involved in this was given the bosses title and now thing are really bad. We were all interviewed by internal affairs and during the interview I mentioned that many of my coworkers saw both engineers in the victims office installing software and many wondered what they were doing there. I also mentioned the many closed door meetings that were conducted by the fired boss and these two engineers and how everyone would stop talking if I were to enter the office during one of these meetings. This interview concluded with the signing of paperwork stating that the information was not to be discussed.

As time went on, the internal affairs officer was spending a lot of time with the acting manager which at first seemed no big deal. But after a while thing started to change for me. First the new boss stopped talking to me. Then his secretary stopped acknowledging me too.

The internal affairs officer and the acting boss, I feel, were getting very close, yucking it up all the time and spending a lot of time together, meeting almost everyday, laughing behind closed doors. And this is one of the two guys who was seen installing this unauthorized software.

I now feel that this internal affairs officer compromised my testimony to this acting boss. I’m almost sure of it.

During this whole time I feel that I acted appropriately and I can look in the mirror without fear of seeing a snake looking back. I don’t know how these people can live with themselves but they seem to have no problem doing so.

Any ideas? I’ve been with this State job for 27 years and have been offered a job with another division.

What do you think? I know what I think! I think this fellow should take the job in the other division immediately. And then report that Internal Affairs guy! What a creep! In fact, what a BUNCH of creeps!

A reader from Tennessee writes… 

I worked for the Ultimate Wimp. He was hired as a Director but had no experience managing (go figure). So he chose the youngest and least threatening person in our office (who literally had zero experience) and gave her all of the projects with direct access to senior executives. She forwarded them a lot of blank e-mails. Nice. Then, he has a nervous breakdown and just stopped showing up to work for 2 weeks. Comes back and never says so much as, ‘Thanks for keeping it going while I was gone!” He proceeds to fall asleep at his desk every afternoon (that he shows up that is) and blows off every meeting. Because his wife was a friend of mine, I did my best to cover for him (big mistake). I was even offered his job by our VP but turned it down because I didn’t want him to get fired — (I really like his wife!) The clincher was when the magazine I was editor of won 6 major awards, and he had the girl filling out the submissions put his name on them (although he did NOTHING on the magazine itself!!) I sat next to him at the awards dinner, and after the 5th award was announced and he came down off of the stage where everyone clapped for him, he had the gall to lean over to me and say, “you can go up and accept the next one if you’d like!”

What do you think? A board in the back of the head do it for this boss? Or something a little more protracted?

Another reader from Michigan writes…

I was hired to reorganize a totally dysfunctional subsidiary of a hospital. Hospital execs assumed that running a physician group was just like running a hospital, and had made a total mess.

The doctors were being overpaid by 50% and the revenue system had been a wreck for six years, so it was even more dysfunctional that I had been led to believe. A new VP had hired me (apparently he wanted a crony but was overruled) and I didn’t realize for a while that he was a sociopath. It was tough to report to him. He was such a freak it is difficult to describe, but one story sort of sums it up. I missed a Monday because my daughter had a baby (a few weeks premature). At the end of a Tuesday morning meeting I told the VP that I had become a grandfather, everyone was healthy, and happy. The VP ordered me to contact the Employee Assistance Program and seek psychological counseling. Say what? He could not explain his reasoning. This was one of a long string of bizarre incidents, so I stopped being nice and snapped at him pretty hard. He backed down. (The VP was not exactly an expert on family matters. His one marriage had lasted 10 months, and the hospital employees found him on a Yahoo dating site, much to their entertainment.)

A couple of months later I wrote a memo suggesting some intensive internal auditing because some of the doctors were paying fast and loose with the billing rules. I was fired and the memo disappeared from the face of the earth. About a year later he was fired. He insulted the CFO so badly she threatened to cut him into little pieces with a letter opener. He took her literally, filed a police report, it hit the newspaper, the hospital CEO was embarrassed, and the VP had to go. My former boss is now a hospital VP on the east cost. Says a lot about healthcare management.

What do you think? Do hospitals make people crazy? Or do the people who run them start out that way and then find the proper place to express their insanity?

A reader from Michigan writes…

Well, let’s begin with my Boss. She used to be this very Energetic Woman who loved life. A Very Caring, Loving, Hard Working Woman. Then… Boom!!!!! Her whole life, as she knew it was taken from her! You see, she had been married to this legend of a man who was swept away from her in one zap of a second in a horrible car accident. Well, it was so overwhelming to her, she never let herself really grieve. For the first year after the death, she drank. Didn’t become a drunk, just drank her thoughts away. The second year, she ran. Ran all over the Country. Maine. Connecticut, Florida, Cancun. She met all kinds of interesting people. She had many choices but was inclined to stay put in her safe little haven that she made for herself. Let me tell you this: She has lost her zest in life, she has become this non-existent person who contributes NOTHING to this World! She’s become listless, maybe even a little lazy, although that she wouldn’t like to hear that. I believe if someone would give her an assignment, some work (she loves to work), that she couldn’t refuse and it would bring her back to life.

Now Stanleybing, I want you to know that I got up immediately after reading your article in Fortune Magazine, (I was Basking in the sun, at my Pool), I got up and I sat down and wrote to you. Now write back to me.

P.S. This is a True Story. The woman I am talking about… is ME!!

What do you think? Is there hope for this boss? Can one use work to get over tragedy?

A reader from Illinois writes…

Almost 20 yrs ago I worked for a manager who was completely out of sorts in his job as the manager of quality in the technology center of an old-line company. The customer of the tech center were a few in-house business units, who used system created at the tech center for production. The manager implemented the boiler-plate quality processes meant for commercial systems used by external customers. Constraints in the name of quality were put in place, but they added little or no value to the customer, who would rather have a beta now to meet the business window than a flawless system later. With just a handful of in-house customers, betas actually could be supported quite cost-effectively, compared to the millions spent on complex tools and trainings that facilitated a different set of business objectives.

No one knew how to spell out the problem of the quality processes he implemented – that it caters to a completely different business model – although everyone knew in their gut it was a disaster. He became isolated from the other managers reporting to the same VP and spent his days playing solitaire at his desk. I heard that he called support to fix his desktop computer when it froze in the middle of a solitaire game.

Unfortunately for his reports everyone in his organization had to work without any support or direction from him. Each of us tried to make things work in anyway we could, mostly by customizing the process to suit each project. Then once we made any inroad, Mr. Manager stepped in to dictate changes to be made his way. None of us got anywhere. As we became discouraged and transferred out, his responsibility got scaled down. Finally, he joined the ranks of the “individual contributors” and gave up his corner office for a cubicle. Yet that’s not the last we heard of him. A couple of years later, he became the VP with quality responsibilities for one of the big six accounting firms.

What do you think? Did this boss learn anything from his failure? Or is he now at the Big Six accounting firm, still screwing things up in the name of Quality?

A reader from San Rafael, California, writes…

I stopped working for jerks after being in the workforce for 14 years. My boss made 12 calls during 2 hour time when my wife was going through an operation delivering our first baby. He was calling me to inform me that there is a conference call scheduled in the next one hour for go live on a new system which is two months away anyhow. Can you believe this? And in the 12th call he told me that I should be courteous enough to at least pick up the call even though I am in the operation theater. He also wanted me to come back to work after the baby is born so that I can finish some pending programs although there were 10 other system programmers in the company. I made one call to him after my baby was born and I saw his face and responded with one line: I quit. I got another job in about a week which paid me better and respected my personal life.

What do you think? Is this boss crazy?

A reader from Michigan writes…

I worked for the local Super Department Store for 5 years. We were all told and signed paperwork at orientation that we were not to operate any heavy equipment until we were licensed by the store to do so. If management witnessed an associate operating said equipment we would be terminated on the spot… several managers witnessed the operation of equipment or even instructed associates to do so. On another note, my health became bad and I had to go on medications, still working and trying to get acclimated to my medications, finally due to the way Wal-Mart was working me, I had to go on anti-depressants and was finally told by the store manager at the time to take a leave of absence or be terminated on the spot… so here are the “bosses from Hell”!

What do you think? Are these the “bosses from Hell”?

You’re not going to believe this. One of my loyal readers, Ken from New Jersey, pointed out not long ago that the last posting on my Crazy Bosses blog was on May 30. Wow, I thought. That’s weird. Where did all your stories go? Did all your bosses suddenly turn sane? Did you stop caring about the issue?

So I looked at the blog, which may be found, given the somewhat complex and inscrutible architecture of this site, at http://bingbosses.blogs.fortune.com. Sure enough, a layer or two down from all the other interesting material on the subject, the last of your postings was dated May 30. And the one before it, too. And the one before that. And the one before that. Hmm, I thought. That’s odd.

I scrolled down and it became clear to me that basically what happened is that ALL of your stories were set down in that blog, which given the somewhat idiosyncratic and abstruse architecture of this site, had last been updated on May 30th. Then we all moved on to other things, of which there are, of course, many.

Then I figured what the hey, and took a look at another vast and fascinating chronicle, the site dedicated to your Bulls**t Jobs, which, given the subtle and rather delicate organization of this site, may be found amid a welter of other interesting stuff on the subject, at http://bingjobs.blogs.fortune.com. And guess what. The last posting on THAT blog was made in early May. Early May!

So I talked to my editor at The Bing Blog and asked her what could have happened to, like three months of your thoughts, replies, insults and tales of management horror and bulls**t? And she looked and, to make a moderately long story short, thanks to her, and to the fact that nothing really ever dies once it is sequestered on a server, we found them.

Think of Indiana Jones stumbling on a vast chasm filled with treasure. He wasn’t any happier than I was.

Here’s where we stand. I have one huge file full of the stuff you’ve written about your crazy bosses to me, and another, almost as long, where you tell me all about your various bulls**t jobs. I mean, they’re huge. And I love them very much.

I don’t know if you know a lot about my situation, or care, actually, but what the deal is is that I actually have a real, 8 to 6 job that demands some attention, and I also do this and some other stuff as well. My editors at The Bing Blog are pretty much in the same position. Like they also have real business writers to attend to, and breaking news beyond, say, what your boss may expect of you or what happened the last time you were screwed over by your airline. This is just to say that they’re, you know, busy. And unlike me, they don’t always think about me.

Which brings us to me. In the evening, for instance, when my day’s “real” work is supposedly done, I need sufficient time to drink and, of course, eat, and then usually drink again. Occasionally, I see people, some of whom are even friends that will outlive my business career. This, too, eats up valuable time that could be spent loading up my two beloved blogs with your input.

So it’s going to take me a while is what I’m saying. I’ll do them a bit at a time, and post them as I go. Sure there are a lot of them. But as God is my witness it’s not going to lick me. I’m going to go through every page and every posting and when it’s all over, you’ll never go unpublished again. No, nor any of your folk. If I have to delegate a portion of it to somebody else and even pay them — as God is my witness, you’ll never go unpublished again!

A reader from Ohio writes…

Are you kidding me? Totally offensive. Why don’t we also discuss our boss that has a physical handicap, not just a mental handicap. I had a boss that went on tirades – and she did not have a mental health disorder. She just did not know how to deal with people. Not a good idea to assume everyone that acts inappropriately has a mental illness.

What do you think? Is she right? Can people who act crazy just be guilty of “not knowing how to deal with people?”

I was talking to my friend Mortimer. I’m not saying he’s a nice guy. He’s not. That’s why he’s been in prison since he told a few lies to the SEC and they put him away. He’s what you’d call a white-collar criminal. He’s reprehensible, no doubt about it. But I don’t think that’s a reason to have tortured him.

He got out just a couple of weeks ago and went on a huge bender. I caught him in mid-flight, and I don’t mind telling you, the guy was a complete wreck.

“Bing,” he says, and one of his eyes is kind of milky and tipped to the right.

“What happened to you, man?” I ask him. We’re sitting at the bar at the Ritz-Carlton in New York. It’s the only place I know of in the world that serves a $1000 drink. I don’t care how luxurious it’s supposed to be. It’s an abomination. But that’s another story. I buy the next round. He’s drinking Black. Doubles.

“I never knew how bad it was going to be,” he says, chasing a devastating shot with a beer. I see his other eye is wobbly, rotating here and there, not really focusing. I feel bad for him.

“What happened to you, dude?” I reiterate. I didn’t know if I wanted to hear. I was thinking hot pokers. Soap in the shower. No cable.

“Every day,” he says. “Powerpoint.”

“I don’t really get you,” I tell him. But I do. Oh Lord, I do.

“We get up in the morning,” he says, with an awe that comes of great suffering remembered. “We have to read the Wall Street Journal from cover to cover. Even the editorial page.”

I shudder, but I keep it to myself. This isn’t about my pain.

“Then, you know,” he says, “it starts.” He drains his massive tumbler of alcohol in one draught and looks at me. I get it. I order another for him. By that time, I’m drinking coffee, and I’m thinking we’re going to need an ambulette to get him back to the Parker-Meridian, and that’s only three blocks away. “They get us into a big room together, all us business guys… and they turn out all the lights…”

I don’t know if I want to hear about this. Like, when I was a kid I used to close my eyes when they tortured or killed animals in Walt Disney movies. I haven’t really changed.

“Come on, Mort,” I say. “What.”

“They made us watch Powerpoint presentations,” he says.

“When?”

“All day,” he says.

“No.” I was shocked. This was too much to think about, even for me. Not since the ’80s had I heard of anything that even came close.

“And… if we started to fall asleep, they, well…” He couldn’t go on.

“What did they do, Mort?” I was starting to get angry.

“They ostracized us,” he said. And he started to weep. I gestured to the waiter for another drink for him and one for me as well. I needed it now.

“How,” I finally choked out, after we were both fully beveraged.

“Aw,” he said, and a bubble of snot pathetically blossomed from his nose. “They would say, ‘Look! Mort is falling asleep during the presentation!’ and then everybody would have a laugh and you’d feel like frickin’ killing yourself.”

“Every day?” I felt like throwing up.

“In the mornings, they did budget presentations. In the afternoon, after catered sandwiches that had no condiments, they did long-term, three- to five-year plans. That was the worst.”

After that, I don’t remember much. Mortimer and I hit a couple of other spots and then, at dawn, we found ourselves outside his hotel. He seemed reluctant to part.

“So, Mort,” I said. “Now you can move on, right?”

“The thing is,” he said, and it was the voice of a man whose soul had died but whose body was condemned to go on, “I miss it.”

I looked at him, too horrified to speak.

“I need them,” he said, and he raised his face to me, a face with empty eyes from which all hope had fled. “Now that I’m out, I don’t know what to do without them. I dream of them. I walk around and see bullets and sub-bullets, headlines and graphical elements, bubble charts and area graphs. And then I wake up, and realize that none of that is available to me now that I’m out. I’m lost. I don’t know what to do.”

I let him go then, and went my way as well. But that face has stayed with me, become, in a way, a burden to me.

So yesterday I made some calls. Thank God I have some friends at McKinsey. They’ll know what to do with him, I think, at least for the next few years or so. After that, who knows? With his passion and background I can’t think of a strategic planning department that wouldn’t snap him up in a New York minute. I figure it’s the least I can do. I hope, when my time comes, somebody will do the same for me, you know?

Quite a few of you wrote in yesterday to comment or complain to me about the use of the word “bipolar” in my current Ask Bing posting.

One reader from Virginia made a very good point. “I have to say your answer on how to handle the bipolar boss was mostly good,” he writes.

… except for the highly offensive reference to “crazy people”. Bipolar disorder is a serious ailment with significant stigma. Your reference perpetuates this view that keeps people in the closet and from getting help they need. It also further inflames the situation the questioner asks about because he can just dismiss her as crazy anytime he doesn’t agree with her. This will not help him. Or her. Maybe you can take out the crazy reference before this article cause more problems than it resolves. Otherwise, your no BS answer is on top of things.

This made me feel bad. I bandy the word “Crazy” around a lot, particularly in my excellent and highly useful and readable book on the subject. And I guess the reason I feel justified in doing so is that in using the term I mean no specific insult to anybody. In fact, some if not all of my best friends are crazy. I, in fact, am considered quite crazy by many of those who are nearest and dearest to me, let alone the people who work for me. I, of course, consider myself to be sane in the highest sense of the word, even if that sanity is not immediately obvious to the naked eye at first blush.

For me, there are two kinds of crazy. The first kind involves people who see things that really aren’t there, are afraid of invisible microbes/little men who hide in the phone lines/people listening to them outside their 15th-floor window, etc. , talk to themselves when they are not on a Bluetooth earpiece (and get a response from nobody visible in our everyday light spectrum), and so forth. I have nothing against these people, but they should not be managing a business unless they own it, and then, as you know, they can do pretty much whatever they want.

Then there’s the second type, which I believe includes, to one extent or another, all of us. There’s my friend Dworkin, who cannot stay still for more than two minutes for any conversation, no matter how leisurely, without popping up and down like a runaway bobbin. There’s my pal Brewster, who makes obsessive, extensive plans down to the minute, none of which he ever lives up to. There are all the bigtime moguls I know, most of whom have to operate on a daily cocktail of pressure fueled by a tremendous anger. I could go on. But I believe you all know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about you and me and the people we work for and who work for us. They put us in suits and uniforms so we look standardized in some way. But underneath? Who really knows what lurks in our hearts and minds.

So back to my reader from Virginia. He’s right, of course. The person we refer to as “crazy” in my Ask Bing headline may very well be no more “crazy” than you or me. And by all means that individual should be held to account for her actions just as anybody who is not “crazy” — if that person could be found — should be. And there’s no real use in slinging around a pejorative that muddies the water and allows the moody boss to get off the hook. Actually, we don’t even know if that boss really is bipolar. All we know is that the employee who wrote me experiences her as such.

And that’s what it’s all about. Craziness is not an objective thing. It’s subjective. The experience of craziness, except in those with extraordinary illness or insight, is most often in the person who is receiving that behavior, and it DOES help us to understand that the problem lies not in ourselves, sometimes, but in the stars around us.

Bob the boss is happy! Five minutes later, Bob the boss is angry! How about Ned? He usually dresses in three-piece suits. Today, on a Wednesday, he came in in a tee-shirt and jeans! Doesn’t he have a meeting with the Chairman? What’s up with him? Freddie is a trustworthy and efficient employee. Except all of a sudden, during a very big fire drill, where is he? Gone? Gone where? To Fresno? Now? Why? And why is Doris, who is usually so cheerful, so quick to burst into tears at the drop of a hat all of a sudden?

How can people be so inconsistent? So weird? So inexplicable to others? One thing this? Next thing that? It it bipolarity? Anxiety? Depression? Paranoia? Rage? Grandiosity? Delusion? Grief? Or are people just kinda crazy, whatever the heck you call it?

Who wouldn’t be, with all the stuff that’s going on around here?

I have this theory. It’s pretty simple. I believe that, when it comes to our jobs, we’re all like a quart of milk or a pack of sausages. Each one of those objects, and so many more of varying compositions and ages, are stamped with a date by which they must be sold or consumed. It’s their shelf life. Everything has one. For fish, it’s a couple of days. A can of corned beef hash can live a decade in a cupboard. But eventually, everything reaches the point of expiration.

So it is with jobs. Some of us are lucky. The invisible stamp on our foreheads says 2014, maybe, or “good for 32 years if kept in a cool, dry place.” But the stamp is there. And there’s nothing any of us can do about it.

For the smartest guys I’ve known… as well as the dumbest… it hasn’t made a difference. Their boss changed, either in demeanor or, you know, they got a new one entirely. The management structure was reconfigured in some fundamental way. The whole operation moved to LA. Whatever. Their time came, and they were removed from the shelf. Sometimes they were as crisp as they day they entered the market! It didn’t matter. Their date had come.

This is what I thought when I read the following letter that appeared in my inbox a little while ago from a reader in California. “My story is kinda long but here it goes,” it began.

“I have worked at my company for ten years, and I am pretty damn good at what I do. However, last May I had to take a leave of absence. When I returned, the company had hired, like a week before my return, obviously to fill my responsibilities, a new staff member. I was told that my hours would be cut to some degree because this individual would be part time.

Well, that has not been the case. My hours have continued to decrease and this individual has gotten more training and a full time position. My boss who I once kind of considered a friend, told me that it was brought to his attention that I have been “complaining” about stuff (mainly my hours), though he admitted my performance in all aspects of my work is outstanding. The issue seems to be with my character.

I was told by another staff member I am just too friendly. Too friendly? My boss told me that either I am too gregarious or maybe too quiet. I know it is hard to understand. I had a hard time trying to understand myself. But I get the feeling I am be being pushed out, or to the side. When I made several comments about the new staff member, and my years in the office and my exemplary performance in the past, it just seems to irritate my boss. Nothing that I said to him about the new employee (not that it was all bad or bad at all) was getting through or mattered. In fact I left the meeting feeling I was at fault.

It seems of recent that no matter what I do, I just cannot please him or do what is right. I have never been late to work, I support my boss in all the aspects of the company and I am always available for extra work. I feel lost. Please help.”

I’m sorry, my friend. I don’t think I can. Your boss has gone “off” you. When you come in, he wants to be not there. When you speak, your voice grates on his nerves like fingernails on the chalkboard of his mind. Stick a fork in you. You are done.

There’s this guy who used to work for me. It started by him calling me too much. Then he started dropping by just to chat. All of a sudden, his hulking frame would be in my doorway. It would take me 10 minutes to get him out of there. I had always sort of liked the guy. But now, I wasn’t sure. I found that when there was work to do, I wanted to give it to somebody else, just so I wouldn’t have to deal with Mort. Then he started to do things that really annoyed me. Appeared at cocktail parties that he shouldn’t have. Attended meetings to which he wasn’t invited. Talked too much. Picked his ear.

In the end, I didn’t have to fire Mort. He sniffed the air and ascertained that it was time to move on to a different shelf, one that rendered him as fresh and new as the day he came out of the ground and into the store.

Oh, did I mention that? As time-dated as we all may be, we are all infinitely renewable as well. So when Mort came in and told me he was leaving for something else, something good, I shook his hand with real affection and wished him the best luck in the world. He won’t really need it. He’ll do fine.

You know, Scott Fitzgerald said there were no second acts in American lives, but in business, I think, we’ve all got enough karma to go around a whole bunch of times before we ascend to nirvana, which in my case, I think, may be Maui. Until then, I’ll see you around, huh? I’ll be the one in the cool, dry place.

He wants you to watch his back.

What am I to say to you people? Many of you get it. The rest of you? God help you.

You really hated the idea, for instance, that you have to be somewhere when the Boss needs you. Ooh! Ouch!

Then you were informed that you had to dress for the job. That went down a little smoother, as did the idea that you needed to tell the truth most of the time. I was kind of disappointed that you didn’t freak out over that stuff.

What are you going to say now, when I tell you that your boss expects you to care about his skin? The guy would throw you under a bus if he or she had to! How dare he?

Well anyhow… he does. She does. They do.

When Caesar was being stabbed to death by a large group of his senior managers, it was the cut made by Brutus, the reportee he trusted most, that hurt the worst.

When Howard Hughes had lost his mind, and had sealed himself inside a luxurious tomb high above Las Vegas, he relied on his trusted lieutenants to make sure business got done and that no germs were permitted to attack him.

When Richard Nixon was spiraling down into full-bore paranoia, he had two pit bulls named Haldeman and Erlichmann to watch his door, share his ravings, keep him inside the lines as much as possible.

This is perhaps why I continue to wonder what life inside the White House will be like for our current President without his faithful Rove. I don’t feel sorry for the guy, by the way. But I still wonder.

It’s hard to be the boss, precisely for the reasons some people think it’s not. You have some power. You have some freedom. You don’t have to worry about a lot of the things guys on the lower levels stay up sweating about. But some power is not absolute power. Some freedom is not enough. And the things that make you bolt upright at three in the morning are the kinds of monsters that chew your guts and spit them out, not just muss your hair a little.

You get to the office and people want, want, want. Big problems come up and you have to find solutions, or at least look like you have some idea of how to do so. You run here. You run there. And always, behind you, in the weeds, in your blind spot as you’re driving at 80 miles an hour down the road, there are enemies, fools, huge beasts with pointy fangs, and the shadow of your own potential incompetence crossing the sun.

Of course you need loyal, kind, intelligent, honest, appropriately-dressed, supremely competent individuals who don’t go on vacation during your busiest week to watch your back!

1. When there is no Stupid Money in the system, everybody gets very freaked out.
2. The economy now runs on deals that are financed at fifteen times cash flow, with less equity up front than it took you to buy your house.
3. If big lenders can’t jack up the prices for assets, deals will only get made if they make operating sense. This puts a crimp into the system it just can’t tolerate for very long.
4. Wall Street is very uncomfortable if no deals propped up by massive debt are in the pipeline.
5. Unless companies can buy growth they can’t sustain over time, security analysts are unhappy with their fundamentals.
6. No debt, no glory.
7. The Feds will take action to ease this kind of crisis before they will, say, investigate why the price of gasoline seems to be determined by the affluence of the neighborhood in which each gas station in located. Gas this weekend on this section of Long Island, for instance, is $3.60. Gas 40 miles away back in Queens and New Jersey is $2.89 or lower.
8. The Feds will move more swiftly to help the banks with their debt problem than they will to make sure that airports work properly.
9. If bankers, lawyers and traders don’t make hundreds of millions of dollars per year off the deals they engineer with Stupid Money, there will be no one to buy a two bedroom apartment in Manhattan for six million dollars.
10. When you are addicted to something it hurts to take it away. So, you know, why do it? Bartender! More debt!

Students of this blog will note that Phil from NY, NY just weighed in a while ago in a prior posting and accused me of slacking for skipping a Friday post. Guess what, Ken? You’re right!

I’m at the beach. Downstairs, CNBC is reporting that the market is up a lot today. There are some steaks in the fridge and the sun just came out!

Labor Day will be here soon enough, guys. You have my permission to take the rest of the day off.

And have a great weekend, huh?

Want to know something quaint? I get mail not only here but also at my aol address that is published in FORTUNE, which is an actual magazine that comes to you on paper, ladies and gentlemen. Go buy a copy right now. Some of you may not remember the experience of sitting down with a physical magazine. It’s great! They’re even more portable than a 5-pound laptop and they never have problems loading their home page.

Anyway, you’d be amazed at how many people weighed in with stuff that drives them crazy about the way other people talk. I thought that given the lusty back and forth on the subject here, you might enjoy this one. And if you do, possibly send me yours as well. Or yell at me on the subject, the way some of you like to do. Here it is:

“Hi Stanley,

I just read my wife’s copy of the August 20th edition of Fortune magazine and was thrilled to see the topic you chose for ‘While You Were Out’. Great tongue-in-cheek approach and, oh-so-true!

I have my own pet-peeve: I must tell you that I have been getting sick and tired of reading and listening to people misuse the word ‘less’ (instead of the word ‘fewer’) since the inception of the Lite Beer from Miller commercials back in the 1970’s! You remember, don’t you: the ones which pitted two individuals or two groups against each other with one of them taking the firm stance that Lite Beer from Miller ‘TASTES GREAT’ while the other one countered with ‘LESS FILLING’? Anyone who watched Monday Night Football HAS to remember them!

Well, sometime in the late 70’s or early 80’s, I noticed a distinct upswing in the use of the word ‘less’ to describe something when the word ‘fewer’ would have been the correct word in both written and spoken American English in newspapers, magazines, television, and radio alike. For example:

· ‘There are less books being read than ever before.’

· ‘I wish I had less problems than I do.’

· ‘The hospital reported less instances of staph infection this year than last year.’

It has only gotten worse over the past 25 years and I can’t remember the last time I heard someone use the word ‘fewer’ properly! What have been your observations in this regard: have there been more of fewer instances of using the word ‘less’ improperly?

Say, I just used it properly! Wow! Can you help me fight back and make people aware of this gross misuse of the English language? Thanks.”

Right on, Mr. Beasley, which is not your real name. Keep on peeving. I have my own linguistic gaffes that get under my skin. I don’t like it when people tell me “No problem” instead of “You’re welcome,” for instance, after I thank them for something. I don’t like it when the sportscaster, recapping a game, says, “He would go on to hit two home runs.” Why the conditional tense? He DID go on to hit two home runs, right? Isn’t that “would” just a pompous affectation? Well whether it is or not, I just hate it. Now it’s creeping into financial reporting. “The market would lose 350 points by 4 PM.” It would? Did it? Of course it did! The whole market is nuts!

I don’t have a lot of time to write this. Aren’t you busy? What are you doing wasting your time reading this?

What Your Boss Expects of You:

#3: Be honest.

Don’t get me wrong. He or she doesn’t care if you’re honest with other people. Or maybe he or she does, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. She or he simply wants you to be honest with him or her.

Like:

> if you promise to deliver numbers, and the numbers aren’t coming in as planned, get with him or her early and let him know that she or he is going to have a problem on his or her quarterly earnings conference call with about 300 analysts;

> if you say you’re in Bangladesh, you shouldn’t actually be in Petaluma. You’d be surprised how many people at all levels are lying when they tell you where they are.

> if the thing is due on Monday, and he or she drops by on Friday afternoon and says, “Everything under control?” don’t say, “Sure!” unless you really mean it. Better to get your ass kicked beforehand than afterwards, when there is nothing you can do about it.

> if he’s about to give a presentation at review time that is going to lead to his destruction, you will tell him about it;

> if he or she has snot on his or her nose, you will offer a hankie;

> if there is an enemy at his or her back, you will give a teenie heads-up.

That kind of thing. Your boss expects you to tell the truth when it counts. The rest of the time? Tell him or her that he or she looks good in that new suit.

Sometimes you come across a raft of spin so dense, so firmly packed, those of us in business have to hoist our hats high and say, “Excuse me?”

The comment in question came from the Editor of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. That bastion of conservative thought has for as long as I can remember been at odds with the rest of the newspaper, which maintains its status as a towering edifice of dispassionate, apolitical, slightly quirky, disconcertingly vicious probity. The editorial page, for its part, is the front page of that the vast and well-organized think tank that Bill and Hillary Clinton complained about. More power to it! It has run the media discourse for a long time. And one trembles to contemplate the number of rumors, spins and stories that Karl Rove has lovingly placed there for the last several decades. The last time our civilization produced a mind like Mr. Rove’s was in Italy, in the 15th Century.

As you know, Mr. Rove has resigned from his position at Mr. Bush’s side at this time because, ostensibly, he knows that if he stays past Labor Day he’ll have to hang in there at the White House through ‘09, and that he and his family have decided they would rather do other things.

Now, if a corporate executive offered this explanation for a resignation from a troubled senior management team, the Wall Street Journal would pillory him. Four reporters would be assigned to suss out the real reason. In the end, and I am speculating here, this is only my conjecture based on reading of the Journal for 20 years, the paper would offer the following alternative explanations, sourced by many disinterested individuals both named and close to the situation:

> Mr. Rove was fired because in the wake of many failures, the chief executive had to make an offering to the gods of destruction, as he did with several key lieutenants in the recent past;

> Mr. Rove deserted a sinking ship, because he has other fish to fry in addition to his decision to spend more time with his family;

> We don’t know why yet. But nobody’s buying the whole “spend more time with my family” stuff;

> More to come. We’re on it.

Most of the people I know are wondering what the real reason is that Karl Rove is leaving the office of the best friend, boss and protege he ever had in the world, the man, in a sense, that he created, and that created him, leaving the lonely, embattled warrior alone to define the last days of his Presidency.

That’s why I sat bolt upright and nearly spit out my soup when I clicked on this interview with the editor of the Journal’s editorial page. This is what he said: “I’m going to take him at his word.” He said it twice, while repeating the whole drill about how Mr. Rove and his family were looking forward to doing other things. What other things? And why now?

After that, I find myself even more interested in the whole situation. Why the spin? What really happened? Honestly, I don’t know. It seems weird, though. Either Mr. Rove has been dispatched by his ultra-senior management to another, more productive gig in this crucial political year… or there’s something else. Some rift between old friends. Something… painful.

That should keep our minds off Brad and Angelina for a while.

I was not there. I read about it. And it sent the willies up my spine. I hate the willies, especially over the weekend. But this one did the trick.

Nearly 20,000 people. A computer glitch. Some glitch. A glitch is when my game of Halo freezes in mid-frag. This was not a glitch. This was a meltdown. Several people had to be taken to the hospital. Scores more languished in the airport, suffering from hunger and dehydration. Babies cried for formula. On the tarmac, planes from all over the world waited, waited, some as long as seven hours before permitting their passengers to get out of their tiny tubes and head down the gangway. Food ran out. Water, too, after a while.

In the airport parking lot at 3:00 AM, gridlock. Not a traffic jam. Not a frustrating slowdown. Total immobility. Time standing still at the horizon between night and day. A few weeks ago, I was in one of those, in Oakland. We sat, emitting an occasional honk out of sheer desperation. Finally, we mounted a curb, drove across an oncoming lane, and escaped into the night. I guess when society fails to provide rationality and order, and our level of outrage gets urgent enough, folks eventually feel entitled to, you know, do what’s necessary.

All around us, it seems, the infrastructure we have come to depend on is crumbling. And we read about these things, and know in our hearts NOT that it might happen to us sometime soon, but that it most certainly WILL.

Were you there, when the computers coughed and 20,000 people were held in limbo? Or did something like this just happen to you in a place that doesn’t matter to the media quite so much? Do you have some thoughts on why these things keep coming down? Why a computer system of such manifest importance is insufficiently backed up? Bridges falling… debt markets exploding… tornadoes in Brooklyn? What next? Any ideas?

Oh by the way, happy Monday to ya. Looks like a nice day outside, doesn’t it?

“The apparel oft proclaims the man.”

          

                         Shakespeare

I tremble as I write this. Your reaction to the notion that we are all expected, as employees, to be where we are required to be during times of action and importance was so extreme (some of you), so enraged (some of you), that I really wonder what you’re going to feel about all the other things that our bosses expect of us.

Before I get to that, I want to make one thing clear: every boss you have has a boss. That boss has a boss. And that boss’s boss probably has a boss. Some of the most nervous people I know are the boss’s boss’s boss’s boss, because they have to deal with an Uber-Boss and, most scary, a Board of Directors filled with Ultra Super Uber-Bosses.

So while your boss is tooling with you, he is being tooled with by an even bigger tool. This is an important factor for you to ponder. That is, your boss is most probably operating under the same — if not more stringent! — requirements as you. And while it is highly unlikely that YOU will be called at 2:00 AM by an enraged mogul, there is every chance that your boss’s boss’s boss’s boss’s boss lives with that possibility every day.

What I’m saying is that it’s not completely sensible to divide the world into Bosses and Employees. Some of us are, it is true, bosses. All of us, except perhaps for Warren Buffett, are both. Even Steve Jobs must report on his activities to the scary gray suits at the SEC.

Speaking of that, here is What Your Boss Expects of You, Part Two:

#2: Dress appropriately.

Let’s discuss the concept of “appropriately,” because it’s not an easy one. A central concept of the sociology of groups is that members of a group are, to one extent or another depending on the ridigity and structure of the group, expected to behave and perform in ways that are predictable and consistent. That’s what makes them members of the group, as opposed to visitors or outsiders. Part of what makes you consistent and predictable is involved with the way you look.

When a McKinsey consultant comes to visit your operation, you may all be dressed in dark pants and short-sleeved white shirts with pocket protectors, but they will invariably be in dark blue suits with a light pinstripe, crisp business shirt and modest red, yellow or blue tie. This says to the group they are about to gut, “You may all be members of your group, but I belong to the McKinsey group, and woe is you.”

In short, every organization has a “uniform” of one sort or another. Groups that are highly structured have a real one: the Army, for instance. The priesthood. IBM.

Others allow latitude within the shell. Recently, I have noticed, it is acceptable at high-level meetings with new media people to wear a formal business suit and an open-collared shirt. A black t-shirt under your jacket, however, may push the envelope too far and lead to negative chatter about you afterwards, unless you are an entrepreneur, in which case you can wear what you like and comb your hair forward. Of course, that’s the entrepreneur uniform. If they show up in a pinstriped monkey-suit, people tend to think they’re not quite as with-it as they might be.

When you see a bunch of Googlers (GOOG) hanging around Mountain View, they are all in uniform too. I can’t quite describe it, but when I was there a while ago it seemed to have to do with neat, collarless t-shirts, nice jeans or simple slacks of some kind, no sports jackets, at least for the groundlings. A guy in a three-piece suit there would stick out like a turkey in a flock of geese.

What may be appropriate in one setting for your culture may be highly bizarre in another. A few months ago, I dressed in a way I believed was acceptable for the day: brown slacks, pink shirt, deep red tie, and a camel’s-hair sport coat that was my pride and joy. The thing is, I had forgotten that I was scheduled to go to a luncheon where my CFO was speaking to about 500 security analysts. I entered that ballroom into a sea of blue and gray. I felt like Bozo the Clown at a funeral.

I will stress that within the bounds of what is permissible in your corporate culture there are many colors, many variations, and to some extent your role can determine just how crusty you want to be. When I have a meeting on the 247th floor of my office tower, I always dress like a banker. When I am at home with the troops, particularly on a Friday, I will throw on any old thing — remembering that a call may come that requires me to appear more serious than I feel.

And for the true creative oddballs almost anything goes. Take the guy down the hall from me, we’ll call him Ted. Ted is unique, a one-man band that handles the creative chores that might be assigned to four normal people. Some days, he only shaves half his face. Not long ago, I came in one morning and my assistant, Elizabeth, said to me, “Ted is wearing two left shoes today.” I thought, “Nah, come on. That’s too much even for Ted.” So I went in to look and sure enough. Two long, elegant left shoes, one of them on his right foot.

“Ted,” I said. “What’s with the shoes.”

“Well,” said Ted, “I ordered them from L.L. Bean and they made a mistake. I’ve asked them to send me a new right one, but that’s going to take about a week and I didn’t want to waste them, you know…”

Did I think any less of Ted? No way. They were appropriate business shoes, even if it was incredibly weird to see both bend in the same direction. And hey, if the boy needs that kind of out-of-the-box thinking to work the way he does? More power to him. You don’t want to be a jerk about these things, even if you are the boss. And people can get ridiculous about it.

Back in the early 90s, I worked for a division of Westinghouse. The head of the corporate department that oversaw my function held a horrible offsite in Morgantown, West Virginia, which I think is probably a great place to go hunting and fishing and enjoy the beauties of the outdoors, but to be holed up in a conference room in a motel for four days with a bunch of people you didn’t really know talking about Quality was pretty intolerable.

The second night, we were all supposed to enjoy an informal barbecue. Now, “informal” poses a serious problem for corporate types. What do you wear? Just the other night, in fact, I attended a cocktail party with a bunch of very serious people. The garb was “business informal,” and as each of us entered the party I saw them look around to check whether they were making fools of themselves, myself included. “Thank God you’re in a polo-shirt, said one President of a division to me. “I was worried.” See?

At any rate, there I am with my pal Charley, who is also from New York, and we’re going to this barbecue in Morgantown hosted by the stick-up-the-butt corporate vice president. And we both decide that the safe informal costume for men will do — khaki slacks, blue button-down shirt and navy blazer. We arrive and Aileen is at the door to the hall. “What are you two wearing?” she says.

“Well,” I said, “You’re pretty much looking at it, Aileen.”

“Go back and change,” she says to us. I laughed. “I’m not joking,” she says. “This was supposed to be informal and relaxed. Didn’t you get the memo?”

So we both went back to our rooms and put on polo shirts and jeans, which we wore with our business shoes, which looked ridiculous. And then we went back to the party, where we were about as informal and relaxed as two pit bulls on speed.

The boss can only mandate certain things, I guess. What you wear on the outside is his or her business. What goes on inside? That’s still your call.  

“Eighty percent of success is showing up.”

                 Woody Allen

This begins a series of short instructions to you, as employees, informing you of the various things your boss, no matter who he or she may be, probably requires of you, regardless of what business you are in, what level of the tree you inhabit, or whether they are crazy or not.

I think these may be useful. I spend a lot of time poking fun, and sometimes a sharp stick in the eye, at bosses, for their various depredations. What I don’t often talk about is what we employees do to drive our poor senior officers around the bend. There is no guaranteeing that if we give the boss what he or she wants, the situation between us will improve. Bosses are irrational. But these are a good start. Here’s the first:

#1. Be there.

I knew an executive not long ago, we’ll call him Barry. Barry was in charge of new media. Now, every year in Las Vegas there is a gigantic rat scramble called the Consumer Electronics Show. It’s not really all about consumer electronics. It’s a huge gathering of nerds, techs and visionaries from every business discipline that is interested in the future of business as we know it. More than 100,000 attend. It’s insane for about a week. Anybody who is anybody or wishes to appear as somebody is there from Gates on down. Apple (AAPL), in its extreme creative grandiosity, actually programs a competitive convention in the Bay Area for technoids who wish to follow their eightfold path. Barry’s company sent about 35 people there, including its executive vice presidents of just about everything. The only one who took vacation that week was Barry. He was in Hawaii. I hope he liked Hawaii, because about eight months later he was given the opportunity to spend the rest of his future there.

Last week, my company announced its earnings. One of my guys took the opportunity to take a well-earned vacation. When he returned I took him into my office. “Have a good time in Ecuador, Mark?” I inquired politely.

“Oh yes,” he said. “It’s great there.”

“I have no doubt,” I said. “Please sit down.” He sat and looked up at me with big, limpid eyes. “Mark,” I continued with maximum cordiality and blandness, “don’t ever take a vacation during earnings week again. The fact that you did so indicates to me that you’re not really thinking about how you fit into the work around here. It shows your head is not in the game. Is that understood?”

“Yes,” said Mark. And then he went away.

But not too far. He’s no dummy.

Okay, I’m not going to say you read it here first. But a lot of you responded when I asked you a couple of weeks ago to weigh in with your horror stories about air travel.

Since then, I’ve had a couple of real doozies. Like, a few weeks ago I’m at SFO at 10:30 PM for the red-eye. And you know, people who are about to take a red-eye are not always the happiest campers in the world. So we’re all milling and waiting at Gate 64, I think, of the American Airlines (AMR) terminal, and we can’t get on the plane, which has been there waiting at the gate for a while, mind you, because it hasn’t been cleaned yet.

This is the not the first time I’ve been delayed because nobody was around the clean the plane after it got in, and not just on American, either. I’m wondering whether cleaning crews is one of the places they are saving money, you know?

Another area of fiscal restraint seems to be the number of people working at the departure gate. Like, the night in question there was exactly ONE to serve an entire planeful of people. He kept calling on his little phone, with increasing petulance and desperation, for some help. None arrived, at least while I was waiting there, convinced that there would BE no flight. That’s the new headset they’ve got us in, by the way. The airlines have now made the possibility of there being absolutely NO transportation a very real possibility. Consequently, we are glad when they take off at all. We’ll take just about any kind of treatment to get where we’re going. I guess that’s good for them, in a sort of demented way.

Anyway, this mother rolls up to the gate with a double stroller and two tiny infants swaddled inside, and she says to the Lone Ranger at the gate, who is sweating and bouncing off the walls by now, “Can I board early?” And he says, “I don’t really know. I can’t promise that.”

I never saw that before. And I didn’t blame the guy, either. He was totally overwhelmed, so I’m not blaming him. On the bright side, the flight crew was in a very good frame of mind. They kept appearing in little party hats by the closed door to the gangway. Turned out it was the birthday of one of their members. So they were very jolly. And that was nice, particularly after it was clear that we were going to board, clean plane or not. In the end, by the way, the mother of two seven-week-old infants DID get to board early, so that ends happily too.

Guess who they sat next to?

Make sure to read your USA TODAY today, if that’s not too redundant. The article you’re looking for is on the front page under the headline FLIGHT DELAYS TRIPLED IN JUNE, 462 jets sat on runways 3 or more hours.

I figure I’ve been on about 235 of those. How about you?

I had a fun time reading the Wall Street Journal yesterday. That isn’t always the case. I don’t know about you, but a lot of the time I find the nuts and guts of business kind of boring. Yeah, yeah. I know it’s important. Wake me when it’s over.

Not yesterday, though. We had three, count ‘em, three juicy pen and ink drawings on the front page, and each featured an executive whose fate seems attractive to me in one way or another.

First there’s Warren Spector. He used to be one of the ultra-senior players in charge of Bear Stearns (BSC), which was hit very hard recently during the subprime mortgage rate bust. I like this story because here we have a guy who deferred his appropriately generous compensation so persistently that he ended up making only about two million dollars less than the almost $34 million his boss did last year. That can make a senior officer a little testy. They tend to like a ten million dollar gap or so between them and their closest subordinate.

Bear Stearns stock has lost 27% this year. Still, this summer the CEO who fired Mr. Spector, James Cayne, continued to spend his Fridays off the grid in Jersey. Many CEOs do, of course, if not in Jersey. At the same time, you have to wonder what was going on in the corporate offices during July, when Mr. Spector also took his leave for a while to play in a big bridge tournament. You have to like a guy who doesn’t let business pressures spoil his priorities. It’s hard to be fired, of course, particularly when it comes as a surprise, as it reportedly did in this case. But I have to think that after a period of deep mourning, this accomplished executive will hit the ground, fold up his platinum parachute, and be off to his next super-luctrative assignment. Doesn’t that sound nice?

This brings us neatly to Robert Nardelli. He’s just been picked by enormous, slightly ominous, all-powerful and mysterious Cerberus to run its newly acquired Chrysler operation. He brings with him years of experience in making incredible sums of money, although he hasn’t done much with cars. That’s all right. I’m sure he’ll do very well, depending on your metrics.

This one is a huge no-brainer for me. Here’s a guy who ran Home Depot (NYSE: HD) for a few years, walked away with more than $200 million dollars. Do that a couple of times and you’re talking about real money. His record at Home Depot was somewhat inconsistent. On the upside, he grew the business in scope and reach. People liked him for that. On the other hand, if you talk to other observers, they point out that in 2003, a bit more than two years into his reign, the company posted its first decline in sales in its history. The company’s stock fell 8% during his time at the helm, while that of his closest competitor grew double digits and he earned $124 million, not counting what the Journal refers to as “certain equity awards.” Lord knows what those were, but they sound tasty, don’t they?

Like many a top dude, when revenue faltered Mr. Nardelli went out and bought it. He acquired Hughes Supply to build a wholesale supply operation. Today, that’s for sale. Stuff happens, you know? Not every deal works out. But at the same time, there was his controversial and imperious behavior at the company’s annual meeting, where he informed the shareholders that he wasn’t taking any questions and ended the meeting after only thirty minutes. I liked his reply to one query about the independence of his Board. “This is not the forum in which we would address your comment,” he said. That’s good grammar.

It’s said that this time around, Mr. Nardelli will receive not one penny unless he achieves a turnaround at the big car maker. Those who are concerned about him may contribute to a fund for his support during this transitional period. I’m looking for the website now. When I find it, I’ll let you know.

And finally, there’s Bert Fingerhut. He manipulated the relationship between the IPO market and mutual banks that went public. He got the idea from a book by Peter Lynch and over some years made $11 million at the game, which is not $210 million or even $124 million but is still not chopped liver. I’ll have to work until six years after I drop dead from exhaustion to make that kind of money. Now the Feds got after him and he has to spend two years in jail after being forced to apologize. “This was purely an act of selfishness and a crime of greed,” he told the court. I’m sure he’s sorry, and he probably has to give up at least some of what he scammed, although I didn’t see anything about that in the writeups.

But even if he does? I’ll be honest with you. A couple of years of peace and quiet in a nice, white-collar penal institution doesn’t sound horrible to me. It would be sort of a think-tank experience, like teaching somewhere off the beaten track. After he gets out, I have no doubt that Mr. Fingerhut will do fine. I’m sure there are several business schools who might be interested in what he could teach young entrepreneurs about the rewards of creative thinking, and the unpleasantness of getting caught.

Several years ago, a Sales Weasel was up for a promotion to the head of his department at the large media company for which he had labored lo these many years. He went in and pitched the job, but his problem was that he had been closely associated with a former head of the function who had left in rather bad odor not long before. Still, senior management valued the Sales Weasel and wanted him to be happy. So he was given due consideration.

In the end, however, the ambitious weasel did not get the promotion to Vice President of Sales for the company. Instead, he was given a raise, a new four-year deal, a swanky office, and other lovely perks designed to make him feel like a very important weasel indeed, if not the top one in the organization. On the day he was informed of this mixture of both good and bad news, he was called to the office of the Executive Vice President of Human Resources, whose job it often is to impart information that may not be welcome to its recipient.

“Bob,” said the HR executive, “you didn’t get the big job, because Ned thinks Max is better suited to the overall role. You’ll be reporting to him. We do think you’re terrific, however, so we’re going to bump your title a notch, give you a hefty increase, a car, a club membership, an extra five points on your bonus target, and a number of other perks designed to make you feel like a very important sales weasel indeed, if not the top one. I hope that will take some of the sting out of the whole thing.”

“Well!” said the Sales Weasel. “I am quite naturally disappointed. But I am very grateful that all these good things are being heaped upon me. I love this company and want to be a part of its future. Tell Ned I’m proud to have been considered and will be pleased to work for a sales weasel as accomplished, experienced and creative as Max.” With that, both men stood and shook hands with great sincerity and warmth of feeling.

The next day, the Sales Weasel informed the corporation that he was leaving that very afternoon to take a job across town with his former boss, the erstwhile head of the function who had left in rather bad odor not all that long before, and taking his lists, database and half his reportees with him.

“Goodness gracious,” said the Executive Vice President of Human Resources to Ned, the Chairman. “What a lying sack of offal.”

“I’d like to rip his snout off,” said the Chairman, who tended to see things in primary colors.

We now move our story several years into the future, up to the present day, or at least last week. The Executive Vice President of Human Resources, the Chairman, and several other senior staff members were meeting in the small conference room on the 152nd Floor of their building.

“How are we doing on that search for the head of Sales of the Flute Reamer Division?” said the Chairman.

“Having a tough time,” said the Executive Vice President of HR. “It’s not that easy to find a person who can run an operation like that.”

“Nobody out there?” asked the Chairman.

“Well,” said the Executive Vice President of Human Resources. “I hear the Sales Weasel has left that other place and is looking for a new job.”

There was a silence around the room. Then the Chairman spoke. “He left here under rather weird circumstances. Remember?”

“Are you kidding?” said the EVP. “I still remember him standing right in front of me and shaking my hand, saying thanks, we have a deal. Then the next day I’m at home in New Jersey working outside and I get a call saying, Hey, I’m outta here. Do I remember? I never had anybody lie like that right to my face before or since.” Everybody thought about that for a while.

“All right,” said the Chairman after a while. “Let’s move on.”

And so the company continues to look for an applicant that can fill a lucrative, prestigious position. And the Sales Weasel continues to troll the streets, looking for scraps.

Moral: What goes around comes around.

Friday is a day for happy stories and this one is happier than most. FORTUNE today reports on an Indian company that has opened a call center in Reno.

“The phenomenon has a name: ‘insourcing,’ the term experts are starting to use when foreign multinationals open offices on U.S. soil and hire Americans, at a higher price, to do the very jobs they once lured overseas,” writes reporter Jia Lynn Yang. “In this case the center in Reno is targeted toward companies willing to pay a premium – its workers there cost up to 40 percent more than their counterparts in India – to give their U.S. customers a more culturally fluent, less frustrating 1-800 experience.”

Now, this is a side of globalization that I think most of us who live in the United States can appreciate. It reverses a trend that made many of us nervous, the feeling that jobs are simply slipping away from us, and with them, some of our national identity. It’s weird enough for a guy in Atlanta to call the corner business and get instead a centralized rabbit warren in Omaha. But a phone call to your corner bank that ends up eighteen time zones away? Not exactly warm and fuzzy. 

Still, whenever I call Citibank (C), for instance, I always like to establish a personal connection right away. “Where are you, by the way?” I will ask the clipped, precise English person on the other end of the phone.

“Mumbai,” they will say.

“What’s the weather like there?” I will ask. This elicits one of two replies. The first is, “Hot.” The other is, “I don’t know, I haven’t been outside in quite some time.” I know how they feel. One day last week I got to the office at 6:00 AM for an earnings call and left at 8:30 PM after all the exploded fat has been cleaned up from the kitchen. Outside that day, it had been 90-degrees and soggy humid in Manhattan. For me, it had been 72 and dry the whole day long.

What’s most interesting is that Asian companies are doing this to improve customer service for Americans who want to hear a friendly voice. They are, in a sense, defying the economics, and going for good business practice. What a concept!

This turn-about could extend to other portions of our business civilization, as corporations think about the comfort and well-being of their employees and customers over strict adherence to the short-term bottom line. We could see:

• Senior management firing all management consultants and using the money to hire internal people and fund pension plans;
• The “insourcing” of jobs that used to go to out-of-house law firms, advertising and public relations agencies, print departments, cleaning crews, etc.
• The implementation of the four-day work week;
• Business-class seating throughout the entire airplane;
• Free snacks for any customer forced to wait more than 10 minutes online;
• No commercials in movie theaters that charge more than $7.00 for a ticket;
• Nobody permitted to make more than $500,000,000 in one year;
• All instruction manuals to be written in original, comprehensible English, not in pidgin nonsense translated from Urdu;
• The reinstatement of thousands of real, live human beings where there are now audiotapes instructing you to press numbers in order to be put on hold.

This last is most important. I believe we may date the decline of our society from the moment some genius got the great idea to put computers and digitized voices behind 411 information. These Asian businesses have already taken a great step by recognizing the American consumers might like to speak with voice that is recognizable to them. Somebody smart can take the next step, I think, and realize that most of the time, when  human being has a problem or a question, they might not want to talk with a machine.

Last week sometime, the ability of deal jockeys to put their inane transactions together with teeny amounts of equity and big towering dollops of debt seems to have dried up. This means that companies wishing to acquire other companies must come up with real money to buy them.

While this is possible in some cases, it competely defenstrates the useless, nutty deals in which hapless entities eager to buy revenue suck it up with money provided by banks thirsty for fees.

A world where corporations have to buy things with money instead of debt? The mind boggles.

While this is good news for people inside of companies who do not wish to be acquired and hurled through the hermetically sealed windows, it is very bad news for the entire part of the business universe that subsists on transactions for their own sake. This includes lawyers, investment bankers, hedge fund managers, management consultants, ultra-senior management looking for that last big payoff, and their former spouses.

This has happened once before, most notably in 1991, when it took two years for the easy money to reappear and folks were able to put together indefensible deals at 15 multiples of EBITDA again.

So while we all wait for a more hospitable atmosphere for bored senior executives, speculators, pyramid schemers and cynical financial architects, here are some things that the remora that prey upon the gigantic body of corporate capitalism can do:

1. Assemble Powerpoint presentations about the coming second, third and fourth wave of consolidation.

2. Have lunch with fellow investment bankers. Try the veal. It’s the best in the city.

3. Have dinner with frustrated CEOs who don’t know what to do in the idiotic deal vacuum.

4. Have breakfast with just about anybody. While breakfast is the most important meal of the day, it really doesn’t matter, in a business sense, who you have it with. You can even pick up the check and generate the impression with your boss that you are engaging in some form of industrious business activity.

5. Talk to reporters who will let you attack your competitors without attribution. It’s safe and fun.

6. Assemble Powerpoint presentations about the first, second and third wave of deconsolidation.

7. Golf.

8. Go to boondoggles at Gstaad, Sun Valley, Mountain View, or any other location where really rich people gather together to figure out ways generate the appearance of creative activity while enjoying fine wine and cheese.

9. Learn to play the violin.

10. Just wait, you know? Things will turn around. They always do, right? Like, what’s the alternative? Business as usual? Gimme a break!