Today I’m flying again. And so it fills my heart with joy to hear the news coming out of Washington today. At long last, President George W. Bush is rolling up his sleeves, focusing on the problem, and getting to work on solving it.

The LA Times, among many other news outlets, reports on this development, and quotes the Commander in Chief, who appears to be as righteously indignant as anybody who actually has the experience of flying commercial. ”There’s a lot of anger amongst our citizens about the fact that, you know, they’re just not being treated right,” Mr. Bush said. “We’ve got a problem, we understand there’s a problem, and we’re going to address the problem.”

The Chief Executive particularly mentioned the need for people’s complaints to be heard and addressed promptly, telling his Transportation Secretary and the acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration “to make sure that consumers are treated fairly and complaints are listened to, and that we address some of the egregious behavior that our consumers have been subjected to… Endless hours sitting in a airplane on a runway, and there’s no communication between the pilot and the airport, is just not right.” 

I don’t know about you, but the news that Mr. Bush is engaged in solving a problem of this magnitude is welcome indeed. At least it gives us something to smile about.

Got a suggestion for the President as to how he can help improve the situation? Send it in. I’ll pass it along with all due respect.

Just a quick note this morning. I was shocked to see the outpouring of bitterness and grief that has attended the death of the Marshall Field’s brand, which Macy’s (M) has apparently defenestrated. You may find said exhalations of regret and anger in response to a prior post on this site, the one inquiring what you believe to be the biggest business stories of 2007.

A huge number of you took the opportunity to expound on this story of a brand retired by its new corporate master. And not in any bogus, organized way, either. One by one, each by each, you line up to yell at Macy’s for depriving you of a brand that you loved and lost.

When I was a boy growing up outside Chicago, I have a sweet memory of the long days of boredom my parents would impose upon me. We would go downtown for the day. While there, we would (if I was lucky) visit the Museum of Science and Industry, which I loved, or, if I was less fortunate, the Art Institute, which made me feel like lying down on the cool marble floor and dozing. Somewhere in there, my mother would insist on a visit to Marshall Field’s. I imagine, and I may be wrong here, that we had lunch there, lunch being the centerpiece of any day for my mother.

What I remember most clearly was the way she said those words: Marshall Field’s. I’m not sure what we shopped for there. I have no idea whether her reverence for the brand was well-founded, even. Not even the names of Bergdorf Goodman or Tiffany (TIF) had the same heft for my mom. Marshall Field’s meant quality. It meant, for her, entering a world of class and calm and civility.

There were other stores that had the same weight, most of which are gone now. I recall that Best & Co. was a very big deal. My mom got me a little hat from there. It was made of felt. I wonder where it is now.

My first car was a Studebaker Lark. My first electric guitar? A Hagstrom. My first beer? Schlitz.

The brands that mark our lives are like everything else. They feel permanent, like signposts that will never confuse us, never alter with time. And then one day they are gone.

We can rail against the motion of the sun and moon. We can bemoan the passing of those things that were meant to last forever. And we can remember what it was like to enter the portals of Marshall Field’s in the great big city that made us feel so small, and wonder what mall, what superstore, what online shopping site will ever be able make our moms, or anybody else’s, feel quite that happy and elegant again.

Honestly, I never thought, when I declared a contest over my IPod yesterday, that I would receive such an outpouring of rational need, foolish greed and wretched hyperbole as has crossed my electronic blotter since.

I challenge you all! Read them, all 145 or so at this time and counting. Which of them would YOU select? It’s tough, you’ve got to give me that. There’s RJ from Oakland, CA, who said, simply and eloquently, “Because.” There’s Daren Baughman, who offered to bribe me with a $500 return on my (zero) investment so that I could get myself some DECENT CIGARS. There’s Mike Baker of Charlotte, NC, who yelled, ”Just give me the damn thing already!” There were a few of you who, quite touchingly, I think, told me to give you the IPod simply because you were Canadian. Jason from Atlanta plucked my heartstrings with “I think you should send me an IPod because I’m a cheap idiot.” Gotta love that. Arren from Greenfield, Iowa, seems to have let Saddam Hussein borrow his or her IPod and hasn’t seen it “since Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction went missing.”

Finally, there are the people who want to please their pregnant wives or others who have a genuine need. Those too, moved me to moments of extreme cogitation in the dark hours between yesterday and now. So many entreaties and exhortations, great ideas, outrageous notions, pleas that would wrench a tear from a lump of granite, stuff to laugh about and wonder.

But in the end, I come down to two:

Scott, who began it all because neighborhood children stole his. One of you amusingly wrote in to say that it was YOU who had stolen Scott’s IPod and then it had run out of batteries. I liked that. There is something fair, however, in giving the guy who got this all started the prize.

And then there is Ed from Syracuse. I quote his entry in its entirety:

I was on my way to my mom’s carrying a new prescription for her heart medication. I had my boom box on my shoulder. It was a hot day and that old boom box was really heavy. I stopped to rest, it was only for about five minutes. When I reached mom’s building there were four flights of stairs to climb. I put down the boom box and rested again, just for a minute or two, then I started to climb. When I reached mom’s appartment she was sitting in the rocker very quiet. I thought she was sleeping so I went to rouse her. She had slipped away. As the ambulance crew was lifting her into the van I could only think that if I had had an iPOD and not that heavy dam boom box, I might have gotten ther in time to save mom.

Here we have a guy who actually conjures up the death of his mother in order to get a free, obsolete IPod. In its shocking willingness to say anything to achieve his desired objective, I believe Ed most fully represents the values that are daily expressed in this website, and in American business as a whole, the driving principle that made this economic system the wonder of the world.

So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to send Scott my old IPod, and I’m going to give Ed my slightly newer, second-generation IPod mini, the one that comes with its own USB connector and hangs around your neck on a cord. If I can find it. I think I can. I was just using it a few weeks ago. I think I know where it is.

Ed? Scott? Send me your personal information in a comment. I won’t publish them, but they will tell me where to send your prizes. Congratulations!

Oh, and be a little patient, by the way. The person with the original old gizmo is still sort of reluctant to part with it. Now more than ever, for some reason.

Scott from Washington, D.C. weighs in with a brilliant idea. “Bing,” he writes, commenting on my churlish refusal to spend my time engaging in social networking, “could I score one of those iPods uselessly gathering dust? Neighborhood kids stole mine.” Scott is referring  to my offhand mention in that post of extra elderly IPods cluttering up my personal space. 

Great concept, Scott! But why should YOU get it when there are so many people out there who are iPodless for one reason or another? Sure, I could pop my old first-gen 20 gig iPod into a padded envelope and send it out to Scott right now. But what fun would that be for anybody but Scott? Why not make a contest out of it?

So that’s what we’re going to do. If any of you now reading this can think of a single reason I should send you my old but perfectly functional iPod, please leave a comment here. I will judge the most convincing, outrageous or demented one, and indeed award its author the discrete object of his or her desire. Scott’s reason is that neighborhood kids stole his. That’s compelling. Perhaps you can do even better. We’ll never know until you try.  

Send in your supplications. They should make for tasty reading. And if nobody answers I’ll just keep the ancient but still highly efficient relic for myself. Either way, I win. That’s my kind of game, ladies and gentlemen.  

“I believe the more connected people become, the more disconnected they truly are.”

Mike
Los Angeles, CA
Commenting on “Why I Refuse to Join MySpace”

It’s almost October and the stores have their Halloween displays up already. Tempus fugit and all that.  Soon it will be time for the drooling season leading up to the holidays to begin. Not quite yet, though, thank goodness. 

With autumn a-comin’ in, we have, however, arrived at the season when people who think about business for a living (as opposed to doing any) begin considering what might have been the biggest, the best, the funniest, the stupidest, the most pathetic and the most inspirational business stories of the year, in preparation for their year-end extravaganzas. So that’s what I’m thinking about. As always, I hate that. Thinking, I mean. I would rather ask you for help.

So. What do you think were the biggest, the best, the funniest, the stupidest, the most pathetic and the most inspirational business stories of the year?

• Was it China, which last week added the recall of a million baby cribs to its list of miscreancies?
• Was it the state of the crazy, hazy airline industry?
• Was it Mr. Jobs promising to give $100 cash American to anybody with eleven fingers?
• Was it the spread of BlackBerry ubiquity?
• Was it the arrival of Sudoku as brain Drano of the year?
• Was it YouTube’s 1,000,000th talking cat video?
• Was it the branding of Philanthropy as a fad, replacing Excellence, Synergy and many others that came before?
• Was it the decline of the celebutante and pop tart as dependable mercantile entities? I mean, haven’t these people ever heard of chauffeurs?
• Or was it something else? Something, say, that YOU did that you believe is worthy of note?

As magazines and newspaper editors meet in serious conclave, with stacks of clips and videos in which to immerse themselves, let’s see if we can go them one better and begin the construction of a meaningful, entertaining and illuminating list.

Okay?

I’m interested in the amount of hostility that my offhand comment about not wanting to belong to MySpace seems to have generated.

What’s fascinating to me is that some of you are more incensed by the fact that I don’t want to be on a social networking site than you are about the notion that your personal information on such sites is being used to target you for marketing purposes. A bunch of you even called me a loser for not wanting to be a social networkee.

I can imagine myself in, like, the middle ages. Not MY middle ages, mind you, but THE middle ages. And here comes a representative of King Richard who is asking all males to get on their horses, put on their armor, and go to the Jerusalem to rid the Holy Land of the infidel. It’s the Crusades! Everybody’s going! Why not you, Bing?

I don’t go to see movies everybody tells me to. I don’t know why, I just don’t. I don’t watch television programs that I simply HAVE to see. I don’t drink chai latte when I’m in LA, although I did try it just once because I was all coffeed out. It made me gag. But that’s not why I don’t drink it. I just don’t like going with the flow, particularly when the thing in question isn’t likely to improve my life one little bit, but will, in fact, just clutter it up more than it already is with social obligations, electronic stimulation and marketing in my face.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m no Luddite. I can take a computer apart and put it back together. My shelves are stuffed with software from the entire age of computing, starting with ancient artifacts like Persuasion and Harvard Graphics and ending with the coolest new toys like Final Cut Studio and Photoshop CS3. I spend more time feeding this blog than I do feeding myself. I have about six IPods of varying generations lying around and one of those new mommas on the way. I work on both PCs and Macs and am completely platform agnostic. I just don’t want to belong to a friggin’ social network, okay? Not even if, as one reader suggested, it would help market my books.

Phooey. Is that why social networks were created? To market more people more effectively? I don’t think so. In fact, I think the things exploded into life when young people called out for a digital space where their every thought, movement and taste would not be exploited by the big boomer sales machine, where they could talk to each other in a virtually mercantile-free zone. Now here come all the boomers to ruin it all. Well not me, guys. Call me square. Call my funky. But I’m out.

I’ll see you at my analog social networking venue. It’s right across the street from my office and features special pricing between 5:00 and 7:30.  

The New York Times reports that MySpace has developed the ability to tailor advertising towards each of its members. Executives knowledgeable about the new program indicate that “the tailoring technology has improved the likelihood that members will click on an ad by 80 percent on average,” the Times says.

This gives me yet one more incentive to join that flourishing community, and only two remaining reasons not to: 1) my conviction that anybody over 28 who belongs to MySpace is a hopeless loser not unlike the parents I knew in the 60s who wanted to smoke pot with their kids and 2) I have no real friends I’d want to put on my page. That is, all the friends I have I speak to as often as I want to and there are a whole lot of people I have forgotten on purpose.

That said, this new technology is a powerful inducement. An imaginary Bing page on one of the social networking sites would quickly target me for:

• Computer related hardware and software
• Cameras
• Liquor
• Downloadable video and music
• Cheese logs, giant fruit, mail-order ham

I will point out that I did purchase each of those things in the last week or so without being targeted, but who knows? With some additional persuasion and a powerful recommendation engine at work, I might develop ancillary needs that are as yet unknown to me. Possible offshoots of my current obsessions may include:

• Beef sticks
• A mainframe to run parallel search functions
• A high-definition video studio
• One of those little golf carts you see on the streets these days
• Bowling shoes

I don’t know that I need any of those things, but I feel like I might if I was properly deglazed, probed and polished by the right algorithm.

Quite a few of you seem to be interested in the subject of grammar, the usage of English in both social and business settings, in speech and on paper. Some of you deplore the existence of grammar entirely. Others defend it with the kind of passion that the citizens of Chicago reserve for the Cubs, with probably the same success.

After I peeved a while back in this space about the distinction between “me” and “I” in our continually devolving culture in this regard, I got enough mail to warrant a full-torque column in that greatest of all business publications, FORTUNE Magazine, where I occupy the back page, as most of you know, I think?

Anyhow, that column is read by people who occasionally touch paper, take a walk outside, think about analog things now and then. One of those turns out to be a very smart fellow by the name of Steve Glass, who teaches Classics and Classical Archaeology at the Claremont Colleges in California. As opposed to me, who admits to being something of a bulls**t artist capable of bloviating on virtually any subject with equal credibility for five minutes, Mr. Glass appears actually to know what he’s talking about on his chosen subjects, one of which is grammar. “Mr. Bing,” he writes…

I greatly enjoyed your piece on “The Element’s of Style” in the August 20 edition of *Fortune.* A moment’s respite and a temporarily empty computer screen before the fall semester begins moves me to offer a few ruminations on some of the points you raise.

The inability to distinguish “I” from “me” is difficult to remedy given that relatively few people can tell a preposition from a proposition. How would one explain the principle of a preposition’s taking an object to those who have never heard of an object. These days, when one is teaching, say, Latin, it’s necessary to have one’s students buy a small book, titled *English Grammar for Students of Latin.* With a little editing, it works for students of Greek as well. What good does it do to explain to students that the accusative case is used for the direct object and the dative case for the indirect object when they’ve never heard of either and have never had teachers who knew how, or were moved to diagram a sentence on the board in front of a classroom? I think you’re right: as regards the object versus the subject of a personal pronoun, “the distinction … may be disappearing.” I suppose that the split infinitive issue is related to the personal pronoun problem in that both are directly related to the fact that English, at least in its post-Old English incarnation as a lightly inflected language, was deliberately saddled with a set of highly inflected grammatical rules that were ill-suited to the language thus saddled. How many times have you heard people say that they never really understood the principles of English until they studied Latin. Why should they have had to study Latin to learn that?

“Their” versus “they’re” versus “there” have a permanent home in student papers and examinations, where homophones, homonyms, and homographs my students don’t distinguish those terms either flourish like the green bay tree. One gets used to them, sigh, but they still inflict grating visual pain on their reader.

“Its” and “it’s. Well another sigh this related to your entire article and certainly raises what has always seemed to me to be a curious point about language; it has to do with that point you raise later about the linguistics folk who constantly remind one of the inevitable mutability of language. They’re right, of course, and I suppose it’s worth noting that “it’s” was, in the distant past, the proper spelling of the possessive rather than a contraction of “it is.” The curious point of all this is that we are all aware of linguistic change, and, when we employ what we currently consider a correct spelling or correct grammatical principle, we are, more often than not, using a form that is the direct result of a change that occurred at some time in the distant past. We weren’t there, of course, to object to that change when it occurred, and, as I say, are perfectly content to use it thus changed. When a linguistic change occurs in our own time, however, we orthoepists are outraged, though our descendants will cheerfully employ that change without demurrer. Hell, I’m still pissed off about the designated hitter rule.

Thanks again for the entertainment. It was sent to me by a colleague in the local Economics department. By the way, if you’re disquieted by the strange fortunes besetting the apostrophe, you ought to see what’s happened to the semicolon.

Thanks, Steve. Call me old fashioned, but I get a real charge out of knowing there’s still somebody who cares about punctuation.

A reader from Indiana writes…

There are about 10 of us working under a narcissistic boss. She is also a pathological liar (although this seems to be another of the symptoms of narcissism). The most blatant lie is when she brought in a commercial cheesecake in the original packaging and claimed she made it, and she wasn’t kidding. She said the packaging was something that she had lying around.
The biggist problem is that she is an elected official (Finance Director). At this point she is just appointed as her predecessor retired mid-term. She was able to fool many people including the mayor. About half of us met with the mayor in the fall. At that point he admitted that he also knew she wasn’t right, but we had 2 options-look for another job or find someone to run against her in Nov.(2007) and he said he had someone in mind, our boss’s former assistant, who has since transferred to another department. due to the stress she has put on him. We do know that the mayor is helping us (behind the scenes) in seeing to it that she isn’t elected in Nov., but we don’t know how we can make it till then. The city could get rid of her, but they don’t want egg on their face or admit they made a mistake. She is a bully, a blatant liar and puts so much of her work on us that we can’t complete our work, then threatens to write us up if we are behind on our own work. None of the other Finance Directors have expected us to do their work (which she takes credit for). Looking for another job, isn’t an option. Some of us are in our 50’s, some have been there for a long time and within a few years to retirement. Several of us are on anti-depressants, although that doesn’t help the stress. We all have a hard time falling asleep on Sunday evening, feel sick to or have knots in our stomachs thinking about going back on Monday. We are about 90% sure that she is going to lose the election, but how to deal with her till then, and what is going to happen when she loses in Nov. until Jan. when the new person takes office? Will we have hell to pay?

Please tell us how we can deal with her, we’ve read all the tips- agree with her, look awestruck when she tells the stories, etc. Is there anything else we can do to get her out of there? We have thought about going to the head of HR, although we’re sure she knows what is going on. We are a united front, and lean on each other, but sometimes it isn’t enough.

It is really sad that a president can be impeached, but we have to continue dealing with her because the current administration doesn’t want the embarassment. Thank you for listening.

What do you think? It’s easy to tell people to be patient but how do you deal with the fear and loathing, particularly on Sunday night? Some possible answers lie in the strength this office staff draws from each other. How can they work together to knock off this wicked queen?

A reader from Kathleen, Georgia, writes…

When I was in the military and stationed in Illinois, my immediate boss was a PITA.  He had nervous ticks, including a ball-point pen he used to click all the time, and he smoked incessantly.  He used to come up to the work site at 3AM intoxicated and harass the night shift.  One night he told the night shift there was a fire in the graphics room, and upon being told there was no fire, he insisted that we follow the fire checklist.  He got quite belligerant and one of the workers from another section eventually had to lead him out of the vault.  He eventually got “fired”, which in the military means he was transferred to another office where he couldn’t do much damage.

I’ve had other bosses that were a little off as well.  One went crazy in the middle of Desert Storm and ended up living in his chemical defense gear for 4 days in a closet.  He was already a little bit of an obsessive anal-retentive type, and when the missiles started falling he couldn’t handle not being in control.  Ironically, the guy had a habit of telling everyone he had a BS in Psychology and giving impromptu personality analysis.  Classic!

What do you think? What role does stress play in the morphing of simply obnoxious bosses into truly crazy ones? When even metaphorical missiles, not even real ones, begin to fly, how many executives can keep cool and sane?

A reader from Los Angeles writes…

My boss was on a business trip in Chicago.  He was planning on flying from there to Canada to visit his wife who was on vacation visiting her mother.  The day his flight was to leave for Canada, he suddenly realized that he needed his passport to re-enter the US.  His passport was at home in Manhattan Beach, CA!!!  I, then, was called upon to go to his home, go through the garage using the secret security code, and retrieve his passport from his walk-in closet so I could overnight it to Chicago.  After being assigned this task, he gave me a long lecture about not snooping through his things.  While there, I ran into his housekeepr and after scaring each other to death, she asked me if I was bringing her check!?!?  I have never been asked to do such an outrageous errand   Mind you, I am an accountant and he is the CFO!!! 

Oh, I don’t know. I know a guy who used to have to zip up his boss’s fly when they were drunk.

A reader from Phoenix writes…

I recently switched branches at my bank due to a psycho boss.  I was the #1 banker in new accounts, loans, savings accounts, credit cards, investment dollars and business accounts for the first 6 months of 2007.  Yet my Manager took away my garbage can saying I didn’t use it properly, made me work 6 day weeks when no other banker worked more than 5 day weeks, and put me on written warning because I was involved in an auto accident and did not give 24 notice that I would be late to work! 

What do you think? A boss who undermines and drives away his best performer? Could this be an example of infantile jealousy? Fear of the next successful player coming up the ramp? Rampant insecurity? All of the above. And really, how does a person use a garbage can improperly?

A reader from Rolla, Missouri, writes…

I had a boss who insisted I rewrite everything I did. This woman had no college degree and a poor understanding of business writing.  She had been promoted only because they’d run out of people willing to do the job.  I was trained in what I did and had a good track record, but as far as she was concerned I couldn’t write a simple sentence.  My job degraded to endlessly going over papers with a ruler to catch any “mistake,” typo, or formatting issue.

Ideas such as a style guide or standard business usage were alien to her.  What could have taken a few hours stretched out for weeks, as she sent everything back marked in red.  I felt trapped in an English composition hell by a person who’s main skill was gossip.

The last straw was a huge pile of documents I had turned in months ago were returned to me.  She had never even looked at them and now I was to go over them all again!  I did, and no surprise, they still weren’t good enough.  I quit, and this idiot had the nerve to call me up wanting me to rewrite my resignation letter! 

That’s a new one on me. Rewriting one’s letter of resignation! You gotta love it. The vaccilation between vagueness, inattention and laziness and obsessive-compulsive correctionitis is not uncommon. Zooming from one pole to another is classic Crazy Boss.

A reader from Ottawa, Canada, writes…

Dear Bing, here’s the (repeated) (hi)story:

• Boss makes decision based on cursory examination of the facts, starting with a statement that he has four solutions that instantly come to mind for this issue.
• Boss loses track of test data accumulated from the tests he designed to address issue.
• Boss berates staff for not implementing the tests correctly, or for not recording relevant test data not intitally asked for.
• Boss avoids performing any tests himself, or visiting the test floor.
• With test results in hand, ignores alternative explanations for issue not in his initial solution set, even with overwhelming data that would allow the janitor to make the right call.
• Runs out of gas, stating that things will need to be broken further before they can be made to work. Also threatens staff with repeating meaningless tests.
• When the solution is finally implemented by avoiding any contact with Boss, creates revisionist version of the facts proclaiming himself solver of the issue as per his initial assessment.

This boss shows all the signs of executive dementia: losing things, lack of concentration, selective stupidity, inappropriate rage, inattention to details, greed for unearned credit. What can we do but laugh!? (Cry?)

A reader from Illinois writes…
 
I have a boss that depending on what day or even what time of the day you catch her on, her mood and tactic has completely flip-floped.  Case in point, she has the nerve to tell me to act more professional for laughing too loud at a joke that a co-worker told me at my desk.  Was this unprofessional, yes, it probably disturbed those around me working, but this is the same person that earlier that day told me that the past weekend she and her husband got drunk and that she gave him oral pleasure while he drove. She shops on-line and talks to her girlfriends about weight watchers after coming in late, then complains that her employees aren’t working up to their level.  Interesting tactics she choses to lead by.

What do you think? Is this a crazy boss? Or just a person with a VERY bad filter between her brain and her somewhat overly active mouth?

A reader from Albany writes…

I have a great boss. He instills in me words like “consistency” and “hot rush.” He also throws a few “well if I said that I didn’t meant it”s. We can have a complete breakdown in productivity but he wants to see the vacation schedule. He’s really big on that. After every holiday he wants to know if anyone was absent so we do not have to pay them for the Holiday, even if they have worked here 30 years (my right hand to God it’s true). We have 300 Mexican employees working here and he told me not to hire anyone that cannot speak English. If he asks you,”"What do you think of this?,” while he shows you something (what it is is not important) I desperately want to pick the right thing to say, but did I mention he is completely inconsistent in his thinking? He asks me things like, “Why does that person walk slow?” I truly hadn’t noticed and still cannot see it. One of my biggest causes for alarm is when he says, “I have been noticing……,” fill in the blank with whatever. The one consistent comment I can count on is, “”This is the worst year we have ever has for……….”"again you can fill in the blank.

What do you think? Why are crazy bosses plagued by inconsistency of mood and speech? Any ideas?

A happy Monday to you. It’s a stop and smell the neurosis morning. The sky here in New York is a deep and trusty blue, the air has the tang of autumn soccer in it, and the first leaves in the park are starting to turn. It’s days like these you want to open your window, lean out and inhale what is probably the best air we’re likely to get for a while. Too bad they don’t open – our windows. The best we can do in this particular corporate tower is peer out at all the little people in the street enjoying the weather. My, they look happy.

Quite a few of you wrote in to either spank or thank me about my little tale of BlackBerry autism I offered last week. My favorite came from Michael in London, who writes:

Hi Stanley, had similar experience on flight from Dubai to London except in my case I was treated to all the emotions that your bloke didn’t seem to share. Before we had even received complimentary drinks, we heard the roars of good news I assume, followed by hmmmm, wonder what was next, it came just as we left the tarmac, it was “oh b**ger”, when I looked at him he didn’t even muster up an apology or some flippant British comment, instead he met my gaze then looked straight back down. So on we go, through the turmoil of mutterings of oh I know better, all the way through to pain. The good point came for me when as I was getting ready to prepare to stand up he practically pushed past me, being never the quiet one, I asked him if he had left his manners in Dubai to which he was amazed and said “sorry boy I didn’t see you”. The only possible sweet & sour of such a story would be that as I picked up my baggage he was still standing hovering over his blackberry oblivious to the world passing, so there maybe an advantage to these anti-social devices after all!!!

p.s. the world goes on when you are in the sky, sleeping and driving so please don’t try to alter it, business was here before you and will be here when you’re long gone, enjoy the journey and look around, the girl/boy of your dreams or a perfect network opportunity may just pass you by otherwise.

Thanks, Michael. It may be, in the future, that there will be two types of people: the wired and the unwired. The first will quite literally be just that, outfitted with subcutaneous nano-filiments and micro-implants that make pocket devices unnecessary and render each person a walking bluetooth pod. The second group will have made the conscious decision NOT to join that new subspecies of homo sapiens, choosing instead to concentrate on the sapiens aspect of their makeup than their electronically enhanced counterparts.  

I know where I’ll be. How about you?

Last week I did my usual drill and flew someplace. It was a long flight, but I got my upgrade and things were okay. There was only one glitch, something about a battery charger that needed a switch-out of a power pack back at the gate. We taxied out. We taxied back. I was convinced, of course, that we were back at the terminal to stay. It’s happened to me so many times lately. Taxi out. Taxi back. Sit in the airport for six hours. Take off. Land at dawn. That kind of thing.

But this time, no, the captain was jolly and reassuring, the powerpack was switched out, we rolled off and landed pretty much on time in New York. So no complaints there, for a change.

In fact, no complaints at all, really. Just a scary experience. It was the guy in the next seat. Sometimes you get a chatty one, and that’s not so good. Other times, mostly in Coach, you get babies and entire families eating salami and cheese out of a Baggie. This time, the guy sits down, he sort of looks like, well… me. Blazer, which he has the Flight Attendant hang up. Casual slacks, this being a non-work day. Collared shirt. No tie. Concerned expression.

He’s in the window seat. And here, over nearly five hours (six if you count tarmac time) is what he did:

• Dozed (20 minutes, total);
• Worked on his BlackBerry, which was not in a two-way mode by which it could receive or send mail (3 hours, 50 minutes);
• Looks at a print out of a PowerPoint presentation (30 minutes).

Here are several things he did NOT do during the time we were confined together:

• Talk;
• Smile;
• Respond to polite observations (“I wonder how long we’re going to be on the ground here”)’;
• Get up, even once, to stretch his legs or use the restroom;
• Watch a movie or use the personal in-flight entertainment system;
• Eat the in-flight meal, although he does have a few hot nuts;
• Drink anything except water with a bit of cranberry juice in it.

I don’t care that the guy didn’t talk to me. I am generally silent throughout a flight. But the non-response thing creeped me out a little. When somebody says to you, “Oh no, not again,” as the plane is pulled back to the gate, it is customary to say, “Yeah, this stinks,” or even, “Uh-huh.” But this guy? He just kept working his BlackBerry and catnapping.

Finally, I guess, it was the BlackBerry thing that was the weirdest… the fact that all human interaction or behavior resolved itself down to intense fascination and activity on that device, which was disconnected from the web and therefore nothing more than a dumb terminal to be worked with one’s thumbs.

I don’t think I would have had the same reaction if the guy was on a laptop. Lots of people honk around on their laptops during a flight and I think nothing of it. But there was something about this that gave me the willies.

Wherever you go these days, people are not there. Their bodies, perhaps, occupy the space near us, around us, but they are somewhere else, on a phone, checking in on their messages, essentially Not Here. Sometimes you can go through an entire city block and not see one person just walking through analog space, occupying the moment in real time.

And then there was this guy in the seat next to me, almost non-corporeal, with no physical or personal needs other than to work his BlackBerry and get a little shuteye now and then. His hair was gray. His slacks were gray. And in my mind’s eye now, his skin is gray.

There was a great American philosopher back about 50 years ago who wrote a comic strip called Pogo. His name was Walt Kelly. The most famous quote from the strip went like this: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” No kidding.

Is it too late for us? Can’t we turn ourselves around? Come on, people! Wherever you go today, wherever you are, take a moment to unplug yourself and look about you. And if you can, turn to the person next to you and say hello. Who knows? We may start something.

Or stop it.    

Reese from Arlington Heights, IL, asks me a question that I think is worth a reply in this venue: What did I learn from the quiz? I thought I’d just give you a few gleanings…  

• I learned that most of you are happy, an overwhelming majority, as a matter of fact, and that fewer of you are anxious than I would have thought.
• I learned that a significant number of you are willing to answer “yo mamma” to a serious question. I think that’s a hopeful sign not just for me, but for FORTUNE and cnnmoney.com as well.
• I learned that many of you eat breakfast at home. I think that’s nice.
• I learned that the majority of you are either Independents or Opportunists. I think that should be of interest in the coming national debate over our political leadership.
• I learned that while many of you like Chinese food, you are also concerned about the direction that gigantic world power is headed. I also found that seven of you really have no problem with poison paint on Grover.

Most of all, I found that if I ask you guys to fill out a short quiz, a bunch of you will do it. And that, perhaps, is the most welcome lesson of all.

I asked. A good number of you answered. Here’s what you said, based on a sampling of about 75 people.

1. A surprising number of you (21) felt a lot like working yesterday. This surprised and pleased me, since I seldom feel like working a lot, you know. My feeling was shared by a plurality of you (26), who felt like working a little. A fair number (14) were in a lazy mood altogether and did not feel like working at all. And a satisfying 11 individuals felt impelled to choose selection d, which as you may remember was “yo mamma,” a saucy reply only those with a healthy contempt for the whole exercise could muster.

2. A huge majority of you (42) spent a little on your breakfast, and selected a, with the moderately-priced meal coming in a distant second (11). Interesting to me were the two (2) individuals who obviously eat at my restaurant and spend between $11 and $30 on that most important meal of the day, slapping down their company plastic when the bill comes, I have no doubt. One respondent admitted to the egregious sum posited in selection d, which I assume was a joke, but maybe not. Interesting is the fact that fully 16 of you answered (e), an option that was not offered, because you have your breakfast at home or bring sack from your own kitchen to your desk. I would have thought that toast in tinfoil still costs something, really, and would have engendered the low end response offered you (a). But there you guys are, always making your own rules.

3. A solid block of you (42) are looking forward to the weekend, and I hope you have a nice one. It’s still a few days away, you know. More piquant to me were the six (6) of you who were anticipating sexual congress with your assistant — you will note that any hint of gender was carefully eliminated from that scenario in our little exercise. Good luck to you guys! Don’t get caught! And make sure it’s consentual, huh? Even more of you (10) are sublimating such thoughts by focusing on your evening martini, even at this hour. Most intriguing were the eight (8) dudes of varying stripes who admitted that they were keenly anticipating the pleasure of kicking somebody else’s ass in the near future. That’s a healthy representation, I think. One person chimed in with a “none of the above,” which makes me worry about him. Or her.

4. When it came to attitudes about China, you made me proud. While thirteen (13) of you focused on the quality of Chinese cuisine, a very large number (28), the plurality of this group, expressed a general nervousness about the way that nation is developing, a feeling I believe is shared by many, including a fair number of Chinese. Almost as many (22) focused that skittishness, and expressed the hope that the Chinese would stop putting poison into children’s toys, which seems reasonable. By now it should have been clear that I was flushing out a certain kind of butt-kicking, name-taking senior executive with all my (d) options, and sure enough, that same group came through with seven (7) votes in favor of the kind of free-market capitalism that the Chinese seem to be getting off on these days.

5. Here I was surprised. For while registered Republicans are the minority in this nation, among respondents to this quiz you guys are in the majority. Twenty-two (22) of you haven’t yet gotten the message that America is tired of the way things are going, and only eleven (11) are committed to a Democratic agenda. I’m sorry I didn’t ask you whether you believed in the myth of global warming. Good news for advocates of change comes with the large percentage of you who are either Independent (18) or belong to the party actually occupied by most committed business people I know: Opportunist (17), a fact backed up by the way corporations generally split their campaign contributions right down the middle. Two (2) of you were None of the Above. Good luck to you. My dad was one of those.

6. Finally, I am happy to report that most of you by a wide margin (50, the highest number in the whole survey) are (a) Happy most of the time. That is so nice, ladies and gentlemen. I have to find you and hang around with you more. Eleven of you (11) are persistently anxious, and hello to you, fellow travelers. Very few of you were jealous (2), which is interesting to me, since I think most people walk around coveting something these days, but that’s another story. In the end, only five (5) of you admitted to being angry most of the time, a condition I have noticed applies mostly to the very rich and successful. Get a roomful of CEOs together and you will have some of the most truculent and peevish people on the planet.

I want to thank all of you who participated in this pseudo-scientific exercise. I think we learned something about each other and that’s a beautiful thing. Have a great day, okay? Especially all of you (d) people. You rule!

Like all good corporate enterprises, I’m going to replace lack of ideas this morning with some well-timed research. Please answer the following questions and send me your replies via the comment link at the bottom of this posting.

1. I feel like working this morning:
a. A lot
b. A little
c. Not at all
d. Yo mamma.

2. My breakfast today cost:
a. $1.25, and it was all you can eat.
b. $5.95 – $10.99
c. $11.00 – $30
d. $455, but I had the smoked salmon

3. I’m looking forward to…
a. The weekend
b. Humping my assistant
c. My first martini of the night
d. Kicking somebody’s ass first chance I get

4. I think China…
a. Makes delicious food
b. Really makes me nervous
c. Should stop putting poison into children’s toys
d. Generally has the right ideas about free enterprise

5. I am a registered…
a. Republican
b. Democrat
c. Independent
d. Opportunist

6. Most of the time, I am…
a. Happy
b. Anxious
c. Jealous
d. Angry

After receiving more than three (3) replies, I will tabulate your scores and tell you, as a group, how you did and what my criteria were, except if you answered (d) on more than one question, in which case I’ll probably be seeing you at my next meeting.

I suppose it would be germane for me to point out, after all the Applemaniacs got so upset on Friday, that I am devoted to the Apple (AAPL) universe and reside, not on the DOS-based dark side but with the MacForce.

At this moment I own: a 17-inch Mac Book Pro, a 12-inch PowerBook G4, a big old 24-inch iMac, fully loaded, and a little Mac mini with a big remote hard drive and a 21-inch screen. I will never go back to PCs, not after my experience of losing two machines in one quarter to the vicious nerds who troll Windows-land with malware.

I make fun of Mr. Jobs for only two reasons, 1) because he deserves to be made fun of for overpricing his cute little toy and giving so many regular people the droolies, and 2) in my opinion, he should have given back $200, not $100 to reward his early adopters.

He’s not the only one to have thrown the entire intellectual framework for early adoption into question. There’s this club in downtown Manhattan not far from where I work. I’m not going to give its name because sometimes I like to eat there and they treat me well. One time, when they were trolling for members, I actually got a free dinner. So I’m not going to be mean to them.

But when they got started, they sent out an invitation package that looked like a cross between a college application and an invitation to a Grimaldi wedding. A membership could be had — for early applicants only! — for as little as $100,000!

Wow, I thought. That’s a lot of money. The place wasn’t even built yet. To be one of the first to be a member, though, that would be something. For some reason, possibly the cost of two college educations, I didn’t pony up the dough. A few years passed. The place opened. It was popular, you know, but not an absolute must-have for the fatuous fabulositors. I started hearing that the club would comp anybody in the public eye who wanted to join. One writer I know occupied a permanent table there all of a sudden, and word was he was totally in for gratis just because of the panache he brought to the establishment. Then I heard one could join the club for, like, thirty grand. It didn’t make me want to join. Not yet. But who knows? When membership falls to $2,500 maybe I’ll spring for it. They have a nice bar and an attractive wait staff. One time I think I saw Ron Perelman there, even. So there’s that.

My point is, what do you think the six or seven idiots who coughed up six figures for that evanescent bubble of exclusivity feel right now? I’ll tell you. They feel bad.

This past summer there was a concert in the Hamptons on Long Island, a phalanx of getaway communities that cater to people who can barely keep from floating away due to the gas buildup in their egos. And one day a promoter there came up with the idea of a very exclusive concert and dinner series featuring Billy Joel, James Taylor, Prince, like that. Tickets for the lucky few who would get to attend were slated at $15,000.  I believe dinner might have been included.

Incredibly, far fewer than that limited run of 1,000 individuals showed up to extrude that sum of money, so by the time the Billy Joel event actually happened, a whole slew of people were rumored to be comped to the event, including the daughter of a mogul I know and several others. Good for them! A comp of that calibre is a joy forever.

Still, if I were one of those who bought into the whole extortion-for-status transaction, I’d feel gypped. 

So that and that only was my point. A hundred bucks does little to repair the wounded pride of all those who stood on line and paid the full freight in exchange for the boost in self-image early possession implied. In fact, even $200 seems sort of limp at this juncture. Why not $250? Or $300 and a next-gen iPod? Hey! Come to think of it, how about an extra $50 to everybody who declares their intention to purchase an iPhone in calendar 2008? Or a couple of free downloads, even!

It has come to my attention that Mr. Steve Jobs, the head of Apple (AAPL), has just offered to pay every American citizen $100 immediately. I think this is extraordinarily generous, and puts Mr. Buffett and Mr. Gates, as great as their philanthropic efforts have been, to shame.

I’m not sure how the idea occured to Mr. Jobs, but I can tell you that the idea of just getting $100 out of the blue, for nothing, essentially, makes me feel very proud and happy to be a citizen of this vast, global corporate state we all live in. I can tell you that I know what I’m going to do with that hundred bucks. No, it’s not a windfall. But I think I can put it to good use. I mean, $100 buys you all kinds of things these days. Half a pair of sneakers. One tire. A cheeseburger and a Coke at the Ritz.

I could even put it away in the warchest I’ve been building toward the purchase of one of those new iPhones Mr. Jobs has been selling. I hear they do all kinds of terrific things. If only they weren’t so darned expensive!

A reader from Syracuse writes…  

When I was in the Air Force I had a job manning the O.R. desk.  We were a combat F-4 fighter squadron based in Thailand in 1973. O.R. stood for ‘Operationally Ready’ and referred to the maintenance status of an aircraft.

My boss noticed that as the flight crews stood in line in the maintenance debriefing room after a mission they would listen to other pilots ahead of them describe problems they had with their aircraft and then when their turn came they would relate some of the same problems or having had time in line to think about it, come up with something else to complain about.

So he made me the ‘O.R. Debriefer’ with a separate desk and a sign to that effect. If a pilot had an O.R. aircraft he could bypass the line, sign a form I had already filled out and pop out the door headed for the O-Club. Our O.R. rate skyrocketed! Most of the time I wasn’t doing anything so I would bring two books from the library every day so that when I finished one I had another to start on.

What do you think? Is a person in charge of taking forms that state that everything is okay engaged in a BS activity?  

1. Have an apple at your desk. Nobody will interrupt a person who is eating an apple. An apple a day keeps the bosses away.
2. Get three of the huge binders that financial people use to house their long, tedious spreadsheets. Put them under your arm and walk around the hallways with them. This may be a little tiresome after a while, but it beats working, right? Better still, people after a while will think you are actually a financial person and definitely leave you alone.
3. Find a meeting that marginally concerns you, or perhaps not even. Make sure it contains more than six people and, if possible, is badly lit because somebody is doing a Powerpoint presentation. Slide into a chair at the far end of the table, lean over to the person next to you and say, “Sorry I’m late.” Then sit for the duration of the meeting without saying anything, while taking notes. This is appropriate behavior for a person whose function at the meeting is unclear to everybody. After the meeting, hang around for a while straightening up your notes, saying hi, shaking hands, etc. When you return to your space, you can tell people you were “at a meeting,” and it will have been the truth. If your boss asks you why you were at a meeting about building security when you are actually in Information Technology, you say that you don’t know, really, and you have no intention of getting roped into another again. This will work.
4. Eat a banana at your desk. Nobody ever bothered anybody who was eating a banana. If the banana is your second piece of fruit for the day, make sure to have a document in front of you or something like that. You don’t want people think that all you do is sit around eating fruit all day like a monkey.
5. Defragment your hard drive. This takes several hours and incapacitates your computer for business use. It’s also good digital hygiene. If you work in a system that won’t allow you to defrag your hardware, try doing a complete system scan of some sort. You can then tell people you are annoyed at how long it is taking.
6. Some techniques that work for management (see yesterday’s entry) may work for you also. This includes the use of coffee. The only difference between you and an executive is how far you are allowed to ramble with your cup. Do NOT go off the floor. Stay relatively close to home and make sure you have a sheaf of paper in one hand so you can lean over the desk of a fellow goof-off and regard the documentation when necessary.
7. Don’t forget to take lunch. Everybody deserves a lunch. You have a right to it. So do not waste your lunch time by working at your desk unless you have a door. If you have a door, you can have lunch delivered, close your door and be perceived to be a hardworking person so busy that you don’t even have time to go out.
8. While it is very hard for sub-management to take naps, it can be done. While a simple associate, I used to sleep in my office on the floor with head against my closed door. That way if anybody opened the door it would hit me in the head, waking me dramatically so that I could then flip over and go about on my hands and knees muttering something like, “where’s that paperclip?” or something like that. Incredibly, I never got caught, perhaps because my bosses were napping at the same time. Another good technique is to sleep with your feet up on your desk only until the telephone rings. On busy days, that may be just two minutes. On quiet summer Fridays, however, you may need a bib.
9. Gatherings of like-minded associates in a public location — like the nearest conference room — often give the impression of business activity while involving very little. Obviously, on days when all the bosses are at boondoggles, getaways or other forms of executive indolence, your standards can be adjusted accordingly.
10. Don’t ever forget that, as a responsible employee, your right to goof off is directly proportional to your ability to deliver the goods on time, under budget, every time. Only the most superb performers can consistently goof off and get away with it. So sometimes, when you don’t really feel like working? Work anyhow, okay?

Should you tell a job interviewer your current salary? Is the fact that the boss is a woman change your strategy if you are, you know, ever so slightly sexist? Are not-for-profit organizations a haven for bloviating nerds at the highest levels?

For answers to these and other questions I refer you to today’s Ask Bing section of this site. I try to get them done by Wednesday but if you remember this was a short week and blah blah blah and so forth.

Take a look! You’ll be glad you did!

An interesting story was on Reuters today, dateline Kathmandu, Nepal. It seems, according to the newswire, that “Officials at Nepal’s state-run airline have sacrificed two goats to appease Akash Bhairab, the Hindu sky god, following technical problems with one of its Boeing 757 aircraft…  Nepal Airlines, which has two Boeing aircraft, has had to suspend some services in recent weeks due the problem.”

Bad for the goat. Good for passengers? What do you think our carriers over here should consider offering to the gods of air travel?

As always, your suggestions are not only welcome but encouraged.

1.  Manage by Walking Around: This technique, invented as a fad in the 1980s, involves the acquistion of coffee and perambulation around the workplace. It was originally intended solely for managers, who would leave their desks and disappear for an indeterminate amount of time, getting up close and personal with people instead of shooting memos at them right and left. It was, after several years, revealed for what it really was – a means of goofing off – and retired as an acceptable management technique, then forgotten. That organization amnesia makes it once again available to all who aren’t running a machine for a living as a way to get out of their cubicle or office and give the appearance of working.
2. Download software updates: this may incapacitate your desktop while displaying a message stating that certain arcane procedures are in process. While that’s going on, you can Manage by Walking Around.
3. Call an impromptu meeting. This is most effective for middle managers who have a couple of people reporting to them. Go down the hall. Pop in unexpectedly on a few people. Call them together. Have them address you about things in progress. All that is required of you is nodding. Note: Nodding does NOT mean nodding off. Stay frosty and alert.
4. Take a nap. This is most effective in the afternoons, when the warp and weft and organizational life starts to get unravelled. Guys who nap in the mornings are often noticed, and not in a good way.
5. Have a meeting out of the office. I often find, when things really get funky in my head, that a meeting out of the office at the local DVD store is most effective. They have a basement that is out of the reach of electronic equipment.
6. Go visit the executive floor. Bring a cup of coffee. Walk around the area reserved for executives. Guess what. Many of them don’t feel like working qua working either. What you may not know is that at the uppermost regions of a corporation there is no distinction between “talking” and “working”. That means if you get somebody altitudinous into a conversation of any sort, you are now both judged to be working! And not only working, ladies and gentlemen, working on something important enough to be discussed on that floor. Nicely done.
7. Arrange lunch/dinner/drinks. This is not very hard labor, and it involves something important: making an appointment for a future business interface. In some industries — show business for example — such forms of planning are between 40% and (among the most successful) 95% of their daily activity. 
8. Have lunch/dinner/drinks: I’m not forgetting about breakfast, either. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day in terms of goofing off. A true, practiced breakfaster is the consummate corporate bulls**t artist. These guys invented the entire concept of the “power breakfast” to dignify their indolent, expensive face-stuffing. You can extend their magnificent achievement into all potential visits to the trough that may take place during your waking day. “He’s at lunch,” is perhaps one of the most unassailable explanations for somebody not knowing what you’re up to. Use it.
9. Close your door. It is often very helpful to get some research material of some kind, the bigger the better, and then leave instructions that you are “behind closed doors” and “not to be disturbed” by anybody except the chairman or someone with a large, gift-wrapped box. Managers have to digest all kinds of research, often in silence and private, so they can, you know, think. You could be doing that, right?
10. Work on your blog. What? You don’t have one? Where have you been? Mars?

Today visitors to our Crazy Bosses blog will make the acquaintance of a software entrepreneur who soaked his investors before he had to soak his head and an Air Force employee who braved death on the ground, among others.

The list keeps growing and growing… have you told me about your Crazy Boss yet? If not, why not? Time’s a wastin’!

A reader from Ohio writes…

During my 20 years in the Air Force I had many great bosses, except for one.  He was a bully who felt that he needed to let everyone know that he had power.  During a very difficult 6 month stint when morale was hitting a low he called me into his office to let me know that he was getting complaints about uncompleted work.  I told him that morale was low because of the extreme workload.  His answer, he demanded that everyone start working 12 hours per day minimum.  I immediately blurted out “You can’t do that, sir.” 

He planted both hands on his desk leaned forward and said, “I’m going to kill you.”

I left immediately and went straight to his superior. He was removed from his position the next day, but continued to harass me until he was discharged.

What do you think? Isn’t this a happy story? It shows our armed services are possibly better run than your average abusive corporation. Could that be true?
 

A reader from the Inland Kingdom writers…

Cruella was nicknamed that because she is not worthy of a true name.  She is despicable, untrustworthy and calls HR behind your back when she has no valid reason to write you up.  She is the most horrible person I know, I have never in my career has someone blatantly try to destroy my career.  She was a jealous, manipulative, out for own gain who does not have a beating heart.  I swear that if I ever hear her name in a professional circle, I will be the better person, after all, she is just jealous I have half her title but more respect in my company than she could ever BUY!

I’m not going to even ask you what you think. There’s nothing more to be said about this one. I include it only because this bleat of hatred is so typical of the kind of things people feel. I hope the writer got some of this bile out of his system. If not, I expect his head to fly off his body any time now.

A reader from suburban New York City writes…

Several years ago I landed a job with a great company making a very good salary. I was one if the initial employees in this new start -up department. Over one-and-a-half years our department added ten more people.  My territory was quite large as well as filling in for vactioning/out on leave employees in that new department.  When it came time for ’senior’ to be added to my title I was overlooked in favor of a person with less time in the department & co., much less territory & case load.  I let it go. I had been  mentally & emotionally jumping through hoops to please this boss & accelerated this behavior assuring myself next time you will definitely get the raise.

Well, it didn’t work.  Same results.  That did it!  I refused to sign the evaluation &  requested a mtg with the boss from her assistant. I did hear a ‘gasp’ come out of her and she remarked, annoyed; “It will take weeks before you get an appointment.”  “So be it,” I said .

What a sense of freedom came over me to have finally spoken up. Nothing I could do would have ever made the grade with her and calling her, this BULLY,(as she was to a couple of other people in our department) on the carpet I figured my days were numbered. I no longer asked ‘how high’ when she said ‘jump’.  We had our meeting within days and and 2 mos later she stated she was resigning. This woman had a fabulous paying job, why would she jeapordize it by acting like an idiot?  No managerial skills, highly insecure.  I just didn’t get it !

About a year later several ‘reps’ approached me to say she had been asked to leave, had lied to them & took credit for many of their ideas. I did not offer any comment to these remarks but was actually surprised. As it turned out when we relocated to a new office, her former boss provided me with an ‘office with a window’  (we only had desks). Believe it or not I think about this woman from time to time & think how foolish she behaved & feel somewhat sorry for her.  I hope she learned her lesson.  And still today I don’t fully understand these kind of people & the reason for their behavior.

Oh yes, shortly thereafter I did receive my title of ’senior’ which included a healthy raise.

What do you think? Why do bosses sometimes promote seemingly less qualified people while ignoring the potential superstars?

A reader from Texas writes…

What do you think of this? The first week of December, the founder and CEO shows the entire company (120+ people) his new Porsche. On the day after Christmas – the company “downsizes” 56 employees and forces the remaining to take a 15% pay cut (or resign). The boss then brags to all of us about the upcoming gala New Years party for the “survivors”.

What do you think? Is cruelty crazy? Or just par for the course? Why do so many companies fire people at holiday time? Is it a coincidence? Or something far more sinister?  

A reader from Michigan writes…

In college, I found an Internship with a small local company.  The owner had spent many years plundering money from small government and educational entities near the college that I attended.  He really soaked the .com era for all that it was worth and then some, and managed to lose it all.  I came in at the beginning of the downfall.

In fear of losing it all, he tried to reach out into new branches of IT related work.  He decided that he wanted his company to jump from networking and tech support into the software market.  So he hired me and two other students from a local university.

From the very start, he tried to get us to sign a poorly worded version of a non-compete statement that was so vague that it would have left us college students with no other choice but to move out of state to find work.  He tried to get us to sign the document repeatedly.  Finally when he gave us an ultimatum, we all quit.  Keep in mind his genius software was only half done and the customer had already paid for it in full (and he had already squandered all the money).  He got so mad that he threw a box of blank CD’s through a ceiling tile and stormed off into another room where his seccond in command chewed him out for letting us go.

Shortly thereafter, he begged us to return to work and offered us anything to come back.  We left the meeting room, discussed the matter and came back for a 50% pay raise.  We all knew the writing was on the wall, and he folded the department shortly thereafter.

Later that year, I ran into the seccond in command.  He started his own company that was doing great.  Without the dead weight of his previous boss he was thriving.  He informed me that our previous employer had folded the company.  He also informed me that our previous employer was seeking treatment for bi-polar disorder. 

What do you think? Does being bi-polar explain everything? Or do we have a guy here who’s just a huckster in disguise, and is now scamming himself?

The gentleman at right pictured with the happy little Boy Scout is Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Until last weekend, he was the close associate and Republican colleague of poor Senator Larry Craig of Idaho, who was forced to resign after serving nearly two decades in the Senate when he salaciously tapped the shoe of the guy in the next stall. But you know that story.

I have nothing to say about whether Mr. Craig is guilty of anything, even hypocrisy. Listen. If hypocrisy was a punishable offense in politics, the halls of Congress would echo with the hollow sound of tumbleweeds skittering across its nearly vacant floors.

What interests me about the whole thing is what it shows about loyalty among certain people. The point was driven home with clarity on Saturday in the New York Times. You can hit the link if you want to, but here is the portion that tugged my heart strings and sent a little wiggle of ice down my spine:

In Idaho, a person close to Mr. Craig did not say exactly what drove Mr. Craig’s decision, but said that the veteran lawmaker had been stunned by the party’s response to his predicament.

“Larry was shocked by the deafening silence by some and rush to judgment by others, even in his own leadership,” said the person, who is a confidant and adviser to Mr. Craig and asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the behind-scenes deliberations. “He had to evaluate what it would be like to go back into that environment.”

The adviser said that none of the Republican senators who called for his resignation, including Senator John McCain of Arizona, sought out Mr. Craig’s version of events, and said, “If you served in Congress a long time, you’d think you’d make that call before you ask for someone’s resignation, but that didn’t happen.”

Of course it didn’t. Corporations in crisis don’t work that way. When things are okay they might, possibly. A guy gets in trouble, even humiliating trouble, his buddies may rally around him, give him a chuck on the chin, tell him to hang in there, even if he is a sex fiend (as long as he’s, you know, the right kind).

When the field is swarming with enemy troops ready to take the high ground, and ammo is short? They start lobbing guys out of the trench to lighten the load.

So it doesn’t surprise me that Senator McConnell reportedly passed a word to Mr. Craig’s fellow Idaho Senator (whose name, incredibly, is Crapo) and Crapo told Craig that if he did not resign he would be hauled into the public square and forced to wear a dunce cap on his head. Exit Craig, who up until the end believed that his longstanding relationships of trust with the untrustworthy would protect him in a pinch.

No such thing. I’ve seen it happen so many times. A couple of years ago, I knew this guy who ran one the key operations of his company out of Chicago. Everybody in his senior management thought he walked on water. I happened to go out to lunch with one of his superiors around the time he was finishing his first year on the job. “How’s McMurtry?” I asked my pal, whose name is Woosner.

“Guy’s a superstar,” said Woosner. Then he gushed for a while, but since it wasn’t about me I didn’t stay interested all that long. Still, it registered enough for me to be a little bit shocked two or so weeks later when I read in an industry trade that McMurtry had, like Karl Rove recently, left his corporation to “spend more time with his family.” I called Woosner.

“What happened with McMurtry?” I asked him.

“Guy’s a total loser,” said Woosner, completely without irony. Executive amnesia is a wonderful thing. Sometimes I think it’s the only way we can exist over the long haul.

“Hold on a minute,” I said. “Just a couple of weeks ago, you were singing his praises.”

“Nah,” said Woosner, and I could imagine him waving the notion away with his free hand. “A total dope. Complete C student.”

“Well, something must have happened.” This just seemed so arbitrary, so senseless to me.

“It was a long time in coming, of course,” Woosner allowed. “But I guess the last nail in the coffin was that he has a bad meeting with Morty.” Morty was then the company’s CEO, and a very irritable guy indeed. “Morty had never met him before and the guy totally failed to impress.”

And that was that. Genius one day. Mug the next. That’s the way it goes, I guess.

I have to feel, though, that the guys you really want to work with might actually pick up a phone and talk to you before they push you off a cliff. But then, I’m a sentimental guy. It’s possible I wouldn’t last very long in the corporation that really runs the big show in this great nation of ours.