A few years ago I began to notice a phenomenon pertaining to power and the exercise thereof. We all know, thanks to Lord Acton, that absolute power corrupts absolutely. We see that not only in daily life but in our ever churning news cycles on a global scale, writ large.

It is equally true, however, that minuscule power is likely to warp its possessor. I noticed this first at the beginning of my career, when the functionary in charge of painting my little office made me go through weeks of process, requisition and clarification; and anyone who has waited for a toll taker on the highway to count out his or her change while a line forms behind will also know what I mean.

I believe it may be possible to work out a mathematical expression of this idea. It would yield an inverse bell curve, I believe, with the amount of abuse highest at the two ends of the power spectrum - greatest and least. While I work out a trademark on this idea, I thought I might requisition your own tales illustrating this concept: small power, big abuse, due possibly to the mental collapse of those who are condemned to suffer with just a tiny bit of self-regard over years of service.

My first illustration of this notion comes from a source very close to home. In fact, she was IN my home up until a few years ago when she had the temerity to grow up. The correspondent is my daughter, who now works in the world of business, too, although hers is slightly more dignified than mine. She writes:

“Last weekend, my friend Jenny and I traveled from Manhattan to Westchester County to attend a close friend’s bridal shower. We had bought round trip tickets between Grand Central and New Rochelle stations, which is on the New Haven line, since that was what made the most sense at the time of purchase. The shower went well: food, games, and much merry. Afterwards, it turned out that it made more sense for us to depart from Crestwood, a nearby station on the Harlem line. Years of traveling to and from our parents’ homes in the vicinity had taught us that both destinations cost the exact same amount on the Metropolitan Transit Authority. To the penny. To the millipenny. And, after years of conflict-free MTA travel, we’d learned that the tickets were basically interchangeable. No conductor had ever contended this practice.

No conductor, that is, until this past Sunday, when we met the one brave—nay, militant—soldier of which the proud MTA organization may boast.

High on the residual effects of the bridal shower, with warm weather, chardonnay, and pasta buzzing about our brains, I thoughtlessly handed our New Haven line tickets to the devout Harlem line employee. She took them, and stopped in her stout tracks.

“Do you have a ticket for THIS line?” she demanded. Surprised, Jenny and I stared at her for a moment. “This is for the New Haven line ONLY. It states that right there on the ticket. DO YOU HAVE A TICKET FOR THE HARLEM LINE?” To which Jenny, somewhat without subtlety, replied, “Are you kidding me?”

“NO. I AM NOT KIDDING YOU!” the conductor yelled.

At this point, we took some care to explain to her, quite rationally, that we weren’t trying to get away with anything. In fact, the tickets were of equal value and we’d done this a million times. She, in turn, launched into a fiery tirade about thoughtless fellow conductors who “DON’T CARE ABOUT THEIR JOBS OR THE RULES OF THE MTA!!” I was immediately transported to a mental image of this functionary on her lunch break, cramming a tuna fish sandwich down her throat while perched above the titanium toilet in the train’s lavatory, muttering to herself while the other MTA employees leap through the aisles, throwing money at commuters and IGNORING THE RULES.

She removed a laminated pamphlet from her front shirt pocket.

“I want you to read these rules,” she seethed.

“Really,” I said. “We believe you. It’s just never been an issue.”

“Well APPARENTLY, you DON’T! READ IT!”

With no other option than either to comply or be thrown off the train, Jenny accepted the leaflet and gave it a mollifying glance. “Uh huh,” she said. “Okay. I see.”

“I don’t know if you UNDERSTAND that or not, but that’s what it says.”

We looked at her in amazement. “No, no, we understand it, thanks.”

“Now,” she continued with quiet menace. “What I DO, in these SITUATIONS…I will take your tickets as a courtesy…” We began to thank her, but she waved our gratitude away. “…As a COURTESY! AND IF I EVER SEE YOU AGAIN WITH NEW HAVEN LINE TICKETS…” Once again her voice deepened to a threatening growl. “You have been warned.” Pale and trembling, we thanked her and mentally willed her to leave. After a long glare, she finally did so, mumbling to herself as she went down the aisle, ““It’s just that people don’t care! The conductors, that is. The rules! The rules! The MTA!” Her grumbling got softer and softer as she made her way down the row and out of the car with a definitive CLANG!”

That’s the story. But it’s only one. I am put in mind of the American Airlines gate agent who recently made an entire planeful of people wait for the redeye while he had a pleasant conversation with a flight attendant.

So many other ripe examples rear up in my imagination. All aggravating. All illustrations of this principle of power.

Got one?

Just a little story this morning. I knew this guy, see. And he was a yutz. We banged skulls quite a few years ago, where he demonstrated a willingness to screw people when it was unnecessary to do so. I make this distinction because as you know in business it is sometimes necessary to screw people. This was not the case here. This guy kind of cut a swath through whatever work he was doing, did what he needed to do to make himself look good, which he wasn’t, lied when it suited him, pointed fingers when things didn’t work out, was a general hose bag.

Years passed, and I watched as this worm popped out of one corporate apple after another. And no, this isn’t a jab at Apple. It’s a metaphor. Worm pops out of an otherwise perfectly good piece of fruit. Sees another one, all shiny and new, on an adjacent branch of the global tree of corporate capitalism. Crawls out of his existing hole and cleverly burrows his way into the next. That’s what I’m talking about.

So anyhow, a few years ago, this guy pops up at a relatively well-known retail outfit in a large midwestern city that shall remain nameless. At the time, the firm is doing quite well and the guy I’m talking about takes a nice profile, giving speeches, head shot in the trades, that kind of thing.

Then, as you all know, the climate changes, the economy does whatever the hell you think it’s doing, and suddenly retailers aren’t percolating anymore, in fact they’re doing pretty lousy, including this company that now houses the wormish dude I’m telling you about. Sure enough, after about six months of this, the guy pokes his nose around and sees that another place, in another industry entirely, may be interested in whatever it is he’s selling. Time to go. We all get that. Bloom is off the rose. Too bad. So sad. See ya. Don’t wanna be ya.

That’s not the problem. You gotta go where the action is, particularly if you’re an action junkie and opportunist. The thing I loved, because it confirmed my faith in the reliability of Character, was the way he did it. About a week before he bolted, a little piece of slime appeared in an online aggregator/terminator dedicated to hurting anything it writes about. The jist of the post, which everybody in that particular industry read, was that this guy was leaving his current firm because he could no longer associate himself with his current employer. Why? Because he simply could not stand being in the same company with a Chairman whose moral lifestyle was not above reproach. There was more schmutz, but that was the long and the short of it. This fellow was simply TOO decent, TOO clean and upstanding, to deal with the moral insufficiencies of his superior.

Of course, the piece was unsourced. My guy’s fingerprints were nowhere on it. Thus he managed to get publicity for himself and to besmirch the place that had paid for his life for the last four or five years and the crazy, beseiged individual who runs it.

When you gotta go, you gotta go, I guess. But this way? I don’t think so.

But what do you think? I’m sure there are plenty of you out there who think I’m a total weenie here. Aren’t we all in business for ourselves? Aren’t we supposed to do whatever it takes to get ahead? Don’t we live in a world unguided by loyalty, sentiment and personal honor? Doesn’t it make sense to play to unsourced, unedited, unscrupulous internet to our benefit?

Aren’t those who may think otherwise, like, total losers?

You can almost hear the Yahoos from YHOO as MSFT’s bid dropped away, along with about 20% of its market cap. Big credit, as is to be expected in any matter related to cyberspace, is given to GOOG, which reportedly acted in the background as a support against the Gates of Destruction.

It is a great feeling indeed when an unwanted acquisitional incursion is thwarted. If one is inside a company under this kind of assault, the tension, resentment, anger and determination not to see one’s nation fall is quite intense. And when the Huns retreat from the battlements and head back to the barbarian highlands, it’s high-fives all round, definitely.

And many thanks to those who helped repel the invader. And it’s only natural to let the friendly ally inside the castle — for conversation, celebration and maybe even a little synergistic planning.

About 20 years ago, a corporation of which I am more than superficially aware also sustained an ongoing assault from a hated competitor. For a while, this ancient enterprise looked wobbly, doomed to fall before the barbarian invader from the South.

Then a White Knight came along on a very tiny steed and, with great legerdemain and fiduciary savoir faire, sent the Dark Lord back to from whence he came. There was wassailing all around, and the friend was invited in to purchase a nice piece of the castle itself. Before long, he owned the whole thing, burned most of it to the ground and built a parking lot over its remains. It was left to subsequent owners of the place to put up an almost entirely new structure, which is probably for the best anyhow. Those old castles are hard to heat.

This has nothing to do with whether all the Yahooing and Googling about Microsoft’s retreat is warranted. For now, I’m sure it is. But sometimes it pays to be careful just who you give the keys to the castle, even if they are the most truly awesome dudes in the land when the dragons are flying.

In about a month, my new book will be published. It’s called Executricks: or How To Retire While You’re Still Working. Compact, entertaining and wise, the book will teach you how to live like an executive even if you aren’t one, cleanly, legitimately, creating while you are still in mid-career all the benefits of a retired existence. It will be essential reading for anybody with a heartbeat.

On this site will be a host of entertaining and stimulating features on this topic - quizzes, contests, galleries of famous people who have succeeded bigtime while essentially living the life of the affluent retiree by using a host of Executricks. You will also be offered an opportunity to tell you own stories, as always; how you’ve served the system and beaten it at the same time, maybe even tales about those who did it less elegantly than they might have.

And of course you will be incessantly exhorted to purchase the book via a handy link at the top of the page. I hope you will do so.

All that is in the future, however. Today I would like to finish what began about a year ago and has continued with some energy ever since: the work we have done together on two important topics — the Crazy Bosses we serve and the Bulls**t Jobs we occupy. I have a trove of letters you have sent me on both subjects, many of which are publishable. I will now go back into my archive and work them up, so that we may complete both blogs, bring them to some kind of closure.

This is a big task for me. Fortunately, I travel between California and New York a great deal and should have plenty of time, if I don’t put it off. Then, after a month or so, I will bring together all my new stuff and any new submissions to the blogs that YOU may care to make, and retire both from this page, making way for new things.

The Crazy Bosses and Bulls**t Jobs blogs will not die, no way. They are deep, trenchant, funny, sad, illuminating, chock-a-block with YOUR stories, ideas and tales of woe and triumph. I read somewhere that since we’re in a recession we should all be repurposing things a lot more. That sounds like a good idea. I’m nothing if not a creature of my times.

All of this is a typically long-winded way of inviting all who are reading this to poke around each topic on this site, think about your own experience and those of your friends and enemies, and lob in a few stories if the spirit moves.

Due to the somewhat complex architecture of this site, however, negotiating around these topics and registering your comments and thoughts is not always as easy as it might look. So I’m going to quickly walk you through it.

Crazy Bosses

Go to the main home page and read about the topic here.

Then look at a nice gallery of Crazy Bosses, starting with Stalin here.

You may then read about the Crazy Bosses that your fellow readers have enjoyed here.

and finally, submit your own stories here.

Bulls**t Jobs

Likewise, start your Bulls**t Jobs investigations here.

Then look at a horrifying panoply of them here.

Then read about your fellow bulls**tters here.

And then submit your own here.

While you’re doing your thing, I’ll do what I said — go back into the e-mines and dig out the rest of the material that’s lying around glittering in the digital caverns. I’ll report back when I’m as done as I want to be.

Oh and by the way: anybody wishing simply to send me their crazy boss stories or bulls**t jobs without the comfy mediation of this blog may do so by sending me an email to bingblog@gmail.com.

That’s bingblog@gmail.com. Please mark your e-mail either Crazy Bosses or Bulls**t Jobs. Or, you know, if you just want to write me to say hi that’s okay too.

Have a great weekend. In fact, start now, huh?

As some of you might have been able to tell, yesterday’s blog was not a random exercise. It was written in the near dark just after dawn, as I looked forward to a day that was to include a meeting that began with breakfast and ended well after lunch. The meeting did take place. I followed many of the tips I offered to you. Some of them worked to alleviate to pain of the day. Others did not. And there were some unforeseen consequences that materialized as a result of the ordeal. I’d like to look at those now.

During the meeting, I began to experience existential discomfort well before the first break. This manifests itself as an intense desire to leave the room and walk aimlessly about the executive floor. To do so before one hour has elapsed is considered highly bad form, since all conceivable excuses seem premature at that juncture. It’s too soon to hit the Men’s Room (unless one has a condition of some kind that he or she would like the group to know about) and likewise too early to have developed a crisis severe enough to merit such a quick exit. 

So I sat. The discussion went around the table. The feelings of impatience and anxiety grew. I eventually had to get up in a thoughtful manner, go to the sideboard, and assemble a plate of berries that was altogether way too large. Too many berries make me feel sort of crazy. There was a great book called The Phantom Toll booth I read when I was a boy. It posited the existence of a stew that made one hungrier the more it was consumed. That’s what berries do to me. You eat and eat and eat, and then the plate is empty and you’re starving. That’s a lot like life, I think.

After an hour and twenty-four minutes, we took a break. Nobody talked to each other very much during it. We were all too busy working our BlackBerrys. I remember a time when people talked to each other before and after meetings. Those days are over. The room is full and almost totally silent, except for the impossibly faint sound of thumbs clicking tiny keyboards.

And so it went on. It was a very productive meeting. A lot got done. But my attention span is not a towering edifice. It’s a rickety footbridge across a huge abyss of boredom and unease. And after two hours of anything relating to concentration/paying attention/not indulging in some sensory experience… it snaps.

And so I sat and sat and sat and sat, plummeting every lower into the pit of despond and non-existence. At this level of corporate life, the windows do not open. I believe I know why.

Lunch was served and everybody ate too much. Discussion continued over the food. I found that on the other side of my powerful urge for flight was an equally potent urge to fight. In short, after 4:37 of the gathering I became extremely ill-tempered. When I realized I was pointing a fork at one of my colleagues and spewing breadcrumbs out of my open mouth, I knew it was time for me to take an unscheduled break and leave the area entirely.

I went down to the lobby and stood in the street for a while. When I was not run over by a delivery truck I went back inside and re-entered the meeting. The rest was pretty uneventful.

Afterward, through some horrendous gap in scheduling acumen on somebody’s part, I had two other meetings back to back. Here’s where the consequences come in. When they think of new ways to torture people - still a growth industry in the world, I think - the experts should consider the toll that excessive sitting, forced attention and the denial of the natural tendency to sleep wreak on the human spirit.

They had PowerPoint. The room was warm. The meeting went on and on. My boss was in there too. I was aware that I was skating along on the edge of total unconsciousness AND YET I COULD NOT SLEEP. It was truly horrible. I am not exaggerating. A dozen, two dozen times I could feel my eyes sliding shut, my chin lowering to my chest. Did I snap to attention too dramatically? Did I say “Buh!” and pop my eyes open? Did I snore or drool during the brief moments when I lost consciousness? I don’t believe so. But I don’t know for sure…

By 6 PM it was time to go home. I had a bowl of cereal and went to bed. Today my calendar is pretty clear. Good thing, too. All my attention for the week was used up yesterday. My body will be here through Friday as usual. I can’t speak for the rest of me, however, which is now somewhere in the park, chasing pigeons.

1. Sit.

2. Check your BlackBerry, but never when someone superior to you in the pecking order is speaking.

3. Draw on the pad provided on the corporation for your take-away.

4. Go to the bathroom, but never while someone on a higher branch of the corporate tree is tossing apples down from his or her great altitude.

5. Eat and Drink. Food will be provided at certain times, and coffee, cookies and berries at other times. Do not eat throughout the day. This will make you feel sick by 2 PM. And watch out for too much coffee, which can produce a variety of bad behaviors over the course of an entire 8-hour session, depredations ranging from overly-aggressive posturing to psychotic need to get out of the room and use the facilities to an extent that is inappropriate and noticeable.

6. Present findings. At some point, presumably, you will have to provide a reason for those in the room explaining why you are there. If you are senior enough, no such rationale is necessary, of course, but for many this will mean taking the floor for a time. So always go into these things with a small agenda for yourself and make sure it gets played out, even if it’s not germane or useful to the rest of the gathering.

7. Feign interest. Options include: nodding, assiduous and ostentatious note-taking, occasional exclamations and eye contact with others.

8. Avoid sleep. This is more difficult than it looks for some of us afflicted with meeting narcolepsy. Solutions include: a sharp pencil in the palm (if overdone, can lead to blood poisoning, which is certainly not sleep but should probably be avoided), the drinking of beverages both hot and cold, the acquiring of foodstuffs and/or implements, strolling around thoughtfully, leaving the room while glaring at one’s BlackBerry to simulate crisis mode, even, when all else fails, light dozing with one’s eyes open, a skill that is mastered only by those with long tenure in the realms of gray.

9. Entertaining use of wireless communication. Many is the long meeting these days that is lightened by continuous passing of digital “notes” to guys in the room as frizzed out and bored as you are. Dangers abound, however. Particularly to be avoided is joke-related sniggering while deplorable financial performance is being discussed by the CFO.

10. Hobnobbing. During breaks, you may have the opportunity to rub shoulders with guys you rarely see outside of these things. Don’t forget to do so. These interchanges may in fact be the actual purpose of the meeting. All day-long sessions have a subcutaneous reason for being — team-building and camaraderie. So laugh and scratch with the boys and girls. You may make a friend. And you know what those are worth these days.

11. Do breathing and stretching exercises. This may include extending your foot to touch that of your neighbor, but only if she is very cute and at least on the same pay and grade level that you are.

12. Collect ALL your “notes,” that is, sketches, rude graffiti, inelegant detritus, etc. NEVER leave your space festooned with evidence of what you were actually doing during the time allotted. I’ve seen quite a few people wrecked after leaving behind a scrap of paper featuring a hilarious and derisive a doodle of the chairman, complete with horns and drooling fangs. People get childish after a while, even at such serious and essential events. Leave no evidence of your inner child behind.

NEW YORK, April 29, 2008: Observers of the business scene were aghast today, when it appeared there was in fact no breaking news to fill the pipeline. “There’s news,” said one analyst who declined to be named because he was unauthorized to speak by his senior management, which is now considered an adequate source by most of the print media. “But it’s not really breaking. It may be doing other things. But breaking? No.”

A quick scan of the headlines revealed the unique situation. Stories covered as if they were breaking by a variety of media outlets included:

• Foreclosures rocketing up more than 100%;
• American Airlines losing millions of dollars a day;
• Mars buying Wrigley for $23 billion;
• Fed expected to lower rates again;
• Oil down a bit on easing of supply;

“Each of these events, while interesting, cannot really be classified as ‘breaking news’ per se,” said P. Spagnold Verbalot, the media pundit best known for being a media pundit. “Take the news on foreclosures, for instance,” he continued. “That’s really not breaking. It’s sort of seeping out and collecting in a gooey mass around our feet. And American Airlines (AMR)? It’s been losing money just about every day for a long time. The fact that somebody estimated the loss may be news of some sort, but not breaking news, possibly cracking, or rumbling, but breaking, I think not.”

Similarly, analysts analyzing the paucity of analyzable material opined that while Mars purchasing Wrigley (WWY) is in fact news, it was reported yesterday, when it actually “broke,” making today’s coverage simply that — coverage of information previously noted, with some augmentation of data to fill up space that would, in happier times, be dedicated to advertising. The same could be said for the rest of today’s reported news both in the political, financial and lifestyle arenas, where much was written about, but little enjoyed genuine breakage.

“We’re hoping for a better day tomorrow,” said a spokesman for the American Society of Journalists Exhausted by the Incessant Need to Fabricate Breaking Stories (ASJEINFBS), “but it’s difficult to predict when anything is going to break again. We’re hopeful, though. And pretty good at doing it the other way.”

Good morning. Happy Monday.

Okay, enough with the niceties. We begin our week with a tiny bit of paranoia offered by G of San Diego, who was trolling back in old Bing Blogs (get a life, dude!) and found something additional in what we might learn from the current crisis (as I saw it last August, when things were so much merrier, and we weren’t all sitting around waiting for the final quarter-point cut from BenCo).

It has to do with gas prices. This past weekend, I was in the Bay Area near San Francisco, and Regular was going for around $4.00 a gallon. I saw Premium for as high as $4.29.  Amazing sight to somebody who once used to get Merit for 23-cents a gallon — and I’m young, I tell you. Young!

As always, the gas is higher in affluent areas, which might make a person cynical if they didn’t believe in the fairness and probity of fuel companies and the Feds who oversee their evergreen efforts. They tell me that gas prices are still low in Texas, so that’s something.

At least, one would hope, you get your $4.29-worth when you sidle up to the fuel dispenser.  But this note from G  suggests otherwise. I don’t know about the accuracy and fairness of his or her research (there is no discernible gender to the letter G), but it seems worth passing along…