Life is Not a Dream

I hardly ever remember my dreams.  I know that I do dream.  I just don’t seem to recall what they are about most times.

But recently, I did actually remember one of my dreams and it reminded why not remembering my dreams is a blessing.

It was a sunny day and I was walking through the front door of my Grandmother’s house where I lived for about twelve years of my young adult life.

The house was completely bare.  No people.  No furniture.  It was in the state it was in when I last saw it.  The day we moved out.  That would have been around about September of 1993.  So quite some time ago.

I walked slowly through the house, looking down at the dark brown wall to wall carpeting.  I noticed the old time air vents in the floor that were huge foot and a half square metal grates.  If you happened to accidentally step on one in the winter time, your foot would turn into a crispy waffle.

But no matter how piping hot the grates got, the house was still freezing cold.

How could that be? I need a thermodynamics major to figure that one.

Continuing my walk through the old house I spot the old window unit air conditioning near the back of the living/dining room area.

The thing was monstorously large, taking up two full windows. Apparently it was one of the units taken out of an office building downtown when they switched to central air in the 1960′s.

I recall the thing barely put out any cold air, despite its girth.

Again, need a thermodynamics major.

My wander continued upstairs past my Grandmother’s and Mother’s room and back to my old hiding hole.

My room was a converted sewing room at the back of the house.  It was the approximate size of an olive pit. It had slanted ceilings that made it seem even smaller. I remember being able to touch my ceiling while lying in bed. Something I did often and for no apparent reason other than I thought it cool that I could touch my ceiling while lying in bed (later I would realize this was not at all “cool”).

Now the weird thing about all of this was the fact that throughout my stroll around the old house the song “Nightshift” by the Commodores was playing softly from an unseen source the entire time.

Why in the hell would such an obscure song from the early eighties be playing in my dream? I have no affiliation with that song. No memories are tied to it. It’s a completely random song that has no significance to me at all.

I know that the song is about dead R&B singers Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson and how they died too young and their music lives on and so on.

So what is my dream telling me?

By dragging me through an empty house in which I once lived is it telling me that my past is empty of all baggage and I am free to move forward unhindered by those items that once dragged me down?

Sounds like a good theory.  Probably not true, but sounds good.

Perhaps the presence of that particular song in the dream is a reminder that no matter how talented you are, things end badly for all of us.  And sometimes much too soon.  Time is slipping away from me, and who knows how it may waste me in the coming years.

That also seems like a reasonable theory.  Freud would be proud of me.

I recall another dream I had a couple of years ago.  I was in Chicago, it was bedtime, and had taken some hydrocodeine that my doctor had prescribed to me for an arm injury I suffered at a company softball game (which is another ghastly story altogether).

I should also mention that I had consumed quite a bit of alcohol prior to adjourning back to my hotel room for painkillers and some much needed rest.

(I realize that this sounds vaguely like a half-assed suicide attempt but I assure you it was borne of pure stupidity).

That night I dreamt that I was riding a white tiger through the jungle while all of the other jungle creatures lined up and looked upon us with reverence.

I waved at the jungle creatures and appreciated their reverent stares.  For I was their benevolent leader on parade, was I not?

I recall the loin cloth being particularly uncomfortable, which is interesting because it was the tiger who was wearing the loin cloth while I went full-on Lady Godiva on my jaunt through the jungle.

Now does this mean that I was the tiger in my dream?  If so, who was the naked son of a bitch that looked like me riding on my back?

What does all of this have to do with anything you ask?

Good question.  You are very smart.

In a futile attempt to tie all of this together into a salient point, I would say that trying to interpret your dreams is much like trying to interpret the insane ramblings of the people you work for.

Sometimes you can make so much random insanity sound reasonable – as in the interpretation of my first dream.

Other times, you sound just as insane as your bosses (if not more) trying to interpret their irrational babble – as in the interpretation of my second dream.

So the lesson is never try and you’ll never fail (and sound crazy doing so).

Also do not mix Hydrocodeine and alcohol, lest you’ll be the benevolent leader of jungle creatures far and wide.

In Search of Budweiser and Chicken Wings

I just returned from a nine night trip to Mexico for vacation.  All of my luggage and personal belongings cleared customs.  Unfortunately, my liver stayed behind as it was deemed too important to the Mexican economy to be allowed to return to the U.S.

I find the Mexican way of life fascinatingly simple and much more logical that the way we go about things in the U.S.  I think this is true of European countries as well.

For instance, in Mexico if you want to sit down and eat at a restaurant, you can simply peruse the open seats and find a table that suits your needs.

No need for a host or hostess to hold your hand and guide you to the table near the shitters when the restaurant is completely empty.

If you ever want to see people shit egg rolls, walk into a restaurant in the U.S., ignore the hostess, and simply seat yourself at the first open table you happen upon.

They’ll act like you just pissed in the soup du jour.

Mexicans are famous for their siestas.  They open up their businesses or go to work sometime between eight and ten in the morning, then go to lunch around noon or one, then take a siesta until two or three, then back to work until five or six.  Dinner is at eight or nine, sometimes later.

This schedule can be exceedingly frustrating for Americans.  Particularly the flexibility of it.  Sometimes a restaurant opens at nine, sometimes at ten.

But doesn’t it make more sense.

Aren’t we always a bit tired after lunch and need a quick nap to keep us going?

And why do we insist on force feeding ourselves a steak at 4:45pm instead of waiting until we naturally get hungry later in the evening?

“You shouldn’t eat right before bedtime,” you might say.

First of all I can’t find any good research that says this is truly an unhealthy act.  The only thing I found is a few statements about your body not digesting food quite as well while you sleep.

But as a retort I submit that when Mexicans and Europeans eat dinner they take their time.  They eat slowly and let the food digest as they go.  They almost always have a salad.  They usually have an after dinner drink of some kind.  Sometimes a bit of espresso or perhaps some wine to help with digestion.

By the time they head home to hit the sack their meal is all but digested.

In America, we tend to shovel food in our mouths with a back hoe – ever anxious to move on to the next restaurant for a mid-afternoon snack.

It is as if we are on a speed eating game show or something.

If you have some free time, head to your local IHOP, have a cup of coffee, and just watch people eat for a half an hour or so.  This is a good trick to lose some weight because after watching a bunch of Wildebeests tie their hands behind their backs and eat pancakes slathered with liquid cheese sauce out of a trough, you tend to lose your appetite for a few days.

Am I America bashing?  Not really.  Definitely people bashing.  And since I live in America, they are the one people I know well enough to bash.

I suppose I just long for certain things to be simpler and be a little more logical.  Less things to consume.  Less choices.  Less things shoved down my throat.

I’m fully aware that coming back from vacation it’s easy to say “I should live like that.”  Of course drinking beer and sitting in the sun all day would be nice.  But that’s not really what I’m talking about.

I watched the people in Mexico work.  Real estate agents, waiters and waitresses, scuba shop owners, etc.  They take advantage of what they have right in front of them.  The weather, the view, the ambiance.  They take advantage of the fact that we live in a mobile society.  Laptop computers open at little coffee shops.  Taking a business call while strolling on the beach.

If you don’t pay close enough attention, you might make the mistake of believing these people to be uncaring or flip or even lazy.

I don’t think so.  I think they are working hard to make a living.

The difference is they are living while they are working.  Not the opposite.

In contrast, I like watching people get off the cruise ships at the other end of town.

Frantically scurrying about the t-shirt shops and junk stores and restaurants in an attempt to consume everything they can about a place in their allotted two hours before heading back out to sea.

Chunky older guys in sleeveless t-shirts that say “Shut Up and Fish” on them desperately sniffing out a hamburger.

Sunburned couples in matching Ben Roethlisberger jerseys loudly lamenting the fact that the quaint little bar I’m sitting at doesn’t sell Budweiser.

Everybody wants chicken wings.

They’re easy to cook.  Easy to eat.  Easy to digest.

They fill us up.  At least for a few hours.

The Name of the Rose

Recently I was doing some market research on a particular line of business and ended up surveying the websites and financial statements of fifty or so companies within the purview of my interest.

I recall that some of the company slogans were absolutely ridiculous.

One company slogan was “Ready, Set, Succeed.”

Yeah, I think I saw that on a poster in my niece’s kindergarten classroom.

Another slogan was something like “Helping you help others to help themselves.  Brought to you by Helpy Helperton and associates.”

The names of these companies were really bad too.  Some were really generic like Technologies Inc. or General Consulting, LLC.

Others didn’t necessarily breed confidence.  Like “Waxjob Consulting” or “Scheister Attorney’s at Law.”

While going through this exercise, I realized that I’ve always been interested in names.  Names of people, names of products, you name it.  (Pun intended).

One thing that has always bugged me is when foreigners on work visas or otherwise take on American names to use as their work moniker in the U.S.

Them taking an American name doesn’t bother me mind you.  I understand that some foreign names are long and difficult to pronounce and it is a courtesy to us Americans that our foreign friends adopt a simpler name.

What bothers me is the names they choose.  Some of the names are really dated.

Not to say that I think they should be choosing Brayden or Kaitlyn as their work names.  But why did you choose Orville?  And what’s with calling yourself Clarence?

Do  you think they get these names from watching reruns of old American TV shows?

How else can you explain an Indian guy named Wally?

Or a Chinese guy named The Beav?

Do you know how uncomfortable it is to get an e-mail from someone named The Beav Wang?

And when Wally Gupta calls to ask about project status, how do you keep the milk from shooting out of your nose?

I once knew a Chinese guy whose name was Hill.  He named himself that because when he was thinking of choosing a new name, he was looking out of his window at a beautiful hill on the horizon.

Good thing he wasn’t in the bathroom at the time or I would have had to send e-mails to Urinal Dong all day.

I think I should be in charge of handing out names to foreigners who want an American moniker.

I would give them cool names like Blade or Vito or Slick.

Then again, I can’t really fathom having a meeting with someone named Slick Wang.

Yes, that would be bad.  Forget I said anything.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

In a few weeks, my wife and I are headed on a tropical vacation.  We will travel approximately fifteen hundred miles south where sandy white beaches and royal blue waters await.

As I stare out of my window at the frigid hell-hole I call home, I am comforted by thoughts of frosty drinks on my lips and warm breezes dancing lightly about my face.

I’m also slightly disconcerted by the fact that I have chosen to live in a place where the summers top one hundred degrees and the winters sink well below freezing and bring all manner of snow, ice, hail, and freezing rain.

Interlude:

If I had any musical talent whatsoever, I would start a rock band and name it Freezing Rain.  We would sing dreary songs filled with lamentations of love, loss, and inclement weather patterns.  Our songs would have titles like “Ain’t No Sunshine…Ever” and “Ice Stroke” and “Buckets of Blood, Gallons of Snow.”

I said above that I’ve chosen to live in this place, which is a true statement.  I’m an adult and could conceivable pick up and move to warmer regions anytime I choose.

But in reality, I’m here because my family is here.  Because this is where I was born, raised, and went to school.  It is emotionally comfortable and that is a difficult thing to upset.

After much ponderance, I’ve come to the conclusion that my ancestors, who settled here so many years ago with the  hope of building a life in this new magical land called America, were imbeciles.

What the hell were they thinking?  Did they arrive here in April and think “mamma mia, I sure lika this place, eh.”

And two months later they thought, “holy moly, thisa hot somanabitch, eh.”

And five months later they thought, “whata the hell, thisa cold somanabitch, eh.”

And yet, some eight decades later, here I am.  I have zero excuses.  They were poor and didn’t speak English.  I have a college degree and live in an age of advanced travel and communications.  I could get a job and live anywhere.  San Diego.  Boca Raton.  Belize.

I thought about this a lot in the past few years.  Particularly when I was pondering whether to leave jobs that were kind of miserable.  I’d have these visceral emotional reactions to leaving because “this is where I’ve always worked” or “I know what I’m doing here.”

Moving on is difficult.  It’s not for everyone.

I did it and experienced my share of discomfort starting new.  It doesn’t come natural to me, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it.

Someday I may take my leave of this town, if only for a few years.

But for now I have promises to keep.

And miles to go before I sleep.

And miles to go before I sleep.

The Subtle Art of Doing Nothing

At several points in my career, for one reason or another, I’ve found myself with nary a responsibility to speak of.

No calls.

No e-mails.

No one stopping by my desk to ask dumb-ass questions.

This type of situation can arise fairly often in corporate life.  Particularly at very large companies.

Whether due to a reorganization, a pending layoff, or just plain randomness, there may come a time when you yourself fall through the cracks and float listlessly through limbo (just like all of those poor little pagan babies).

Falling through the cracks is an interesting experience.  I’ve known people who, by virtue of a major layoff, ceased to have a boss.

In other words, their boss was let go.  Their bosses boss moved into a new role.  And their bosses bosses boss retired to spend time at his ranch in the Grand Tetons.

All of a sudden, Dustin Dorfbag, Marketing Analyst I, reports directly to the CEO of the company.

Disconcerting, certainly, but it can be a fun experience if you let it.

If ever you should find yourself in such a situation, I feel it a moral imperative that I share a few wise words as you navigate your way through the blank spaces in between.

First of all, never freak out and say these exact words to your boss, your peers, human resources, etc, “I have absolutely nothing to do and I’m going MAD!  Don’t you love me?  Why don’t you fuckers love me?”

You will be laid off immediately.  The key to existing in a large company is to always appear busy and important.

One trick to remember is always show up at work early, before anyone else arrives.  That way when your peers show up they’ll think “boy that Tire Shop is a real grinder.”  Then you can leave for lunch around 10:30 and never come back.  Everyone will just think you have meetings when really you’ll be drinking at the bar or buying crack at the mall.

When you are at your desk, just leave your e-mail program up so it looks like you are perusing the four messages you’ve received in the past week and a half.  People are always eyeballing your computer screen so it’s best not to spend all day browsing Target.com for flatware.

Also remember that whenever anyone asks you if you’re worried about not having anything to do and possibly losing your job, just act real nonchalant and say something that doesn’t make sense like “I’m easy breezy.”  Don’t let on that all you think about is giving up your Audi A6 and eating canned soup every night for the next two years, eventually settling on a job at Lowe’s counting nuts and shafts.  I mean how embarrassing will it be to tell your in-laws that  you got a new job as a nut counter.  This followed by an awkward silence and them making an offhand comment like “well, it’s an honest living.”

Yes.  Very honest.

The other key is to find yourself either a hobby or a project.  I recall one summer, having nothing to do at work, painting the outside of my house.  I would clip my cell phone to my belt, put my ear bud in, and get on conference calls while standing on a twenty foot ladder painting trusses.  I remember praying that I wouldn’t fall off the ladder, if only to avoid unmuting the phone to ask someone in Bangalore to please call me an ambulance.

If you can’t score a project, try a hobby.  Go to the library.  Volunteer at a leper colony.  Paint a few watercolors of your backyard or knit your dog a sweater that he’ll hate.

You simply must keep busy.  There’s nothing worse than sitting in your kitchen, staring at a dust bunny under the refrigerator, and questioning the existence of God for three hours.

And last, but not least, don’t worry.  You’ll have stuff to do soon enough.  So enjoy your time in limbo.  It doesn’t happen very often.

Intellectuals & Originality

One thing about intellectuals, they prove that you can be absolutely brilliant and have no idea what’s going on.

- Woody Allen

One of the realizations that I came to some years ago was that business intellectuals, unlike scientific intellectuals, are not very skilled individuals (unless you count bullshitting as a skill – which I do).

If you think about it you’ll realize that all of the schooling and training in scientific disciplines informs the work in the field, i.e. new scientific research at universities drives the practice.

Conversely, all of the schooling and training in business disciplines is informed by the work in the field, i.e., case studies.

That’s really all we ever did in our business classes isn’t it?  We reviewed someone’s complete screw-up and explained to our professor via transparencies on an overhead project  what those idiots did wrong and what they should have done to avoid their awful mistake.

So if that’s the training we receive, it shouldn’t at all surprise us that the only thing most business people are really good at is taking  someone else’s’ work and shitting all over it.

It’s difficult to find original thought in business because a) we were trained to critique work, not come up with our own, and b) people generally aren’t really that original anyway.

I like to call this “The Frozen Banana Stand Effect.”

What in God’s name do frozen banana stands have to do with my point you ask?

Well you’re in for a treat (possibly even a frozen banana).

In the wondrous land of sunny Southern California, there is a little tourist stop/vacation spot called Balboa Island.  Balboa Island is just off the coast of Newport Beach, California (and when I say just off the coast, I mean there is a one hundred yard long bridge that takes you to the island).

The island is packed tight with one and two bedroom vacation homes for the wealthy.  The homes are fitted in so snugly together that many an alleyway between them is narrow enough to make walking sideways a necessity.

Now on Balboa’s main strip, there is a bevy of T-shirt shops, restaurants, and trinket shops (you know, the kind of places that sell sea shells with “Balboa Island” printed on them – this is what I mean when I say people generally aren’t original).

In the middle of Main Street, on either side of a small Catholic Church, there is not one, but two frozen banana stands with less than fifty yards separating them.

(For reference, a frozen banana is simply a banana frozen to a stick and dipped in chocolate – delicious.)

Each of the two frozen banana stands in question display prominent signage stating that they, without question, are the original frozen banana stand of Balboa Island.

One of the stands has the words “founded in 1945″ printed right on the large banana that juts out from the roof.

The other stand has the words “founded sometime previous to 1945″ printed right on the blue and white striped awning.

These two frozen banana stands are obviously at war.

What one realizes when observing these warring frozen banana stands from a safe distance is that one of them is lying.  They both can’t be the original frozen banana stand.

I’d really like to find out which of the banana stands is actually the original.  Not because I think their frozen bananas will be necessarily better than the copycat.  Only because I like to stand on principal (occasionally) and support originality.

The problem is, as it is with many such situations, there is no easy way to find out which banana stand came first.  I haven’t the energy to research business license grants in the greater Newport Beach area.  Plus, I’m probably quite drunk when sitting on a park bench and staring across the road at the dueling banana stands.

So the mystery abides.  Whether someone takes credit for your work or criticizes your attempt at making your company better, all they’re really doing is opening up a copycat frozen banana stand forty feet away and charging ten cents less per banana.

Unoriginal bastards.

Escape Routes

Once on vacation in a small town in Maine, my wife and I saw a quaint little trolley car dropping tourists off by the wharf.

I recall her saying these exact words, “I’ll bet that trolley will give us a nice tour of downtown.  We should jump on it.”

We were just finishing up lunch at a little seafood restaurant overlooking the bay.  So we downed our drinks and jogged over to hop on the bright red trolley car for a relaxing tour of small town New England.

Three hours later, at some dusty trolley-stop on the outskirts of town, we were still riding on that rolling chamber of horrors.  Our sweaty backs stuck to the faux-wood bench seat.  We sat there in daze, staring into oblivion like half-dead Sudanese refugees crossing the border into Egypt.

Apparently, the trolley-cars in the northeast are more akin to the city buses I’m used to via my mid-western upbringing.  The difference being in my estimation is that trolley cars make five to ten stops over a five mile run while city buses stop every seventeen feet.

Interlude:  The other main difference between city buses and trolley-cars is the quality of clientele.  A trolley-car is generally filled with tourists, mostly the extremely elderly, and a few locals who happen to live/work along the trolley route.  A city bus is usually filled with crack-heads and mildly retarded people who talk to their Marvel comics lunch boxes (trust me on this – I used to ride the city bus all the time when I was a kid).

With no hope of an end in sight, the wife and I finally hop off the trolley-car and begin to hoof it back to our rental car at the town wharf.

After a sweaty six-mile walk, we arrive at our car only to see that rancid trolley car from hell pull up next to us in all of its mocking glory.

The moral to this story is a philosophy that I’ve developed with regard to both vacations and corporate life.

The overarching guideline to this philosophy is simple.

Always provide yourself with an escape route.

No matter if you are in a board meeting or your significant other is trying to convince you to go para-sailing, make sure you can get out of the situation at a moments notice if things go awry.

A few guidelines:

• Never get on any public transportation (bus, train, trolley-car, rickshaw, people-mover, horse-drawn buggy, ferry, tour-boat, etc.) without knowing precisely where it goes and how long it takes (lest you risk ending up on a nine hour trolley ride like yours truly).
• Never commit to any timeline for any project for any reason.  Be vague or provide ranges (i.e., “this project will take me anywhere from two to forty-seven days).
• As a corollary to the first guideline, never let someone lure you onto a boat, bus, etc. by telling you that there are alcoholic beverages on board.  I can just as easily meander down to the local pub and buy a pint as I can on a three hour tour of hell.
• Never commit to any point of view (whether it be yours or others) without providing yourself an escape route.  For example, instead of saying “I think these recommendations are dead on,” just to have your boss retort, “why would you say that?”  Simply say, “these recommendations are interesting.”  Then you can bail one way or the other very quickly once you see which way the wind is blowing.
• Never rent one of those two-seated bicycles with your significant other.  This isn’t as much an escape route issue (you can always return the bicycle immediately) as one of aesthetics.  You don’t want to look like a jack-ass do you? (This same guideline applies to those goofy paddle-boats and the motorcycle + sidecar combo).
• Never commit to any meeting that doesn’t come directly from your superiors.  In fact, block out your entire calendar (including weekends) so that no one can meet with you for the rest of your life.
• No hot air balloon rides.  There is no steering wheel in those things and I’m pretty sure the only qualification you need as a hot air balloon pilot is lots of weed-smoking.  Plus, you don’t want to die dangling from power lines do you?

You get the idea.  Always have an escape route.

Think about that when you are about to step on that all-day fishing expedition bound for the South Pacific.

Undeserved Reverence

I recently found myself recalling my not so bygone days as a young man in the world of business.  Back when I was bright eyed and fascinated by the machinations of life in the corporate biosphere.

Interlude:  Certainly I’m still fascinated (that’s why I write this blog after all) but my eyes are less bright and more bloodshot than they used to be.  Also, I have an eye-patch.  Not sure why that’s important but I thought I’d mention it anyway.

As I was saying, in my younger days I recall being intrigued by the varying strategies being employed by the business.  I was ever-curious of those closed door sessions with senior executives.

I’d watch as my manager or director was shuffled away to an impromptu meeting with senior VP’s and find myself imagining the wondrous things they spoke of.

Perhaps a crisis was at hand and contingency plans were being implemented to mitigate our losses.

Or maybe there was a huge business opportunity within striking distance and they were discussing how to close the deal.

During these closed door sessions, occasionally my boss would come over to my desk and ask for some data or a small analysis.

These requests would give me a snippet of insight from which I try and deduce the situation.

I remember being excited by the prospect of contributing a small piece to these efforts, thereby gaining favor and credibility with my bosses.  I was an eager young lad and frustrated by not being a part of the private discussions that seemed to take place so often.

“Perhaps next time,” I’d think “I’ll be in that closed door session, helping them strategize on how to move the business forward.”

My time came eventually.

I remember the day I was finally deemed worth enough to sit at the big boy table.  The day my identity shone brightly enough to be asked to play an integral role in a key business decision at the company.

My boss came to my desk and began to ask me various questions about our sales history, recent trends, etc.

We spoke for a time, and just as I am in the middle of a impassioned soliloquy regarding a rather complex analysis I’d done, my boss stops me short.

“Can you come in to the board room and explain that to Jerry and a few others,” he asks?

“Sure thing,” I say trying to hide my excitement.

I gather myself and follow my boss to the conference room, giddy to finally get a piece of the action.

I enter the room, am introduced by my boss, and asked to explain my complex analysis.  I do so with as much brevity and clarity as I could muster.

The three men in the room nod their approval.  Then, the lead character, Jerry, says “Tire Shop, I wonder if you can expand on your sales analysis a bit.”

“Certainly,” I say with vigor.

Finally I would be trusted to carry the day by delivering an analysis that can truly impact the success of this business.

“What we’re trying to figure out,” he continued with a very serious demeanor, “is how much the snowstorm last week impacted our sales.”

Jerry pauses and looks at me expectantly.  I stare at him for a moment with furrowed brow, my head turning to the side like a confused puppy dog.

“The, uh, snowstorm,” I ask puzzled?

“Yes,” Jerry continued.  ”There was a snowstorm in the Northeast last week that drove our sales down by at least twenty percent.  We’d like you to confirm that for us.”

“Confirm it,” I ask unsteadily, wondering just how in the hell I’m going to confirm the sales impact of an act of nature.  Not to mention that I don’t recall any snowstorm in the Northeast aside from the normal winter weather.

“Yes,” Jerry says.  ”We need an explanation for the our year over year drop in sales.  We need to report on that for the ops review meeting on Monday.  The snowstorm is the obvious explanation.”

“Will do,” I say trying to hide the combination of fear, shock, and disappointment in my voice.  ”I’ll have that to you by the end of the day.”

I exit the room swiftly and slip back to my desk.  Quickly I look up recent weather related news for the Northeast corridor of our great country.  A few reports of snowfall in the greater Buffalo-Rochester area, nothing more.

A couple of hours later, my boss comes by to check on my progress.

“How’s it going,” he asks with a nervous tweak to his voice.

“Jeff,” I say wide eyed, “there was no snowstorm last week in the Northeast.”

“I know,” he says lowering his head with dejection.

“You know,” I exclaim!  ”Why didn’t you say anything in the meeting?  I’ve been sitting here digging through weather reports trying to find a phantom snowstorm for two hours.”

“I didn’t know what to say,” Jeff says beginning to panic.  ”Jerry is convinced that the snowstorm is why sales are down and wants to sell that story to the senior executives during the ops review next week.”

He lets out half of a sob and slumps down in the chair next to me.

“I guess Jerry’s aunt lives in New Hampshire in some little town,” Jeff continues shaking his head.

“She called him last week and told him that a snowstorm had blanketed the area.  Masthead or Mumford or some shit, “he chuckles half heartedly.  ”The bitch must be senile.  There was only like a half an inch of snow in that town in the last month.”

We stare at each other for a moment not knowing what to do.

“Why has Jerry gone off the deep end all of a sudden,” I ask confused?

“All of a sudden,” Jeff shrieks!  ”Are you kidding?  Last month I had to help him prove that a breakout of West Nile disease in Nashville was the cause of the sales drop in the South region.”

“What,” I exclaim!  ”Is that why you had me pull all that sales history for the South last month?”

“Yeah,” he says.  ”I was up until midnight reviewing statistics from the Center for Disease Control.  It was a nightmare.”

“Does this happen every month,”  I ask?  ”Like some new paranoid fantasy he creates about why sales numbers change?”

“Ha,” he spits out a dejected laugh.  ”Every month would be like a dream come true.  He calls me in his office every day with some psychotic question about natural disasters or conspiracies or rampant transvestite infestations.  I’m a nervous wreck.  I’ve been getting explosive nosebleeds every night at dinner.  My wife thinks I have the Black Plague.”

“Dear God Jeff,” I say with concern.  ”Should you think about quitting and finding something else?”

He looks up with shock on his face.

“No way,” he says with consternation.  ”I mean, this is a really good job.”

————————————————————————————–

So that’s the story.

Now I know what goes on behind those closed doors.  A lot of meandering about it fantasy land, searching for excuses.

I also learned that the definition of a “really good job” for some people is pretty much agnostic of crippling mental and physical disorders.

I mean, whose nose doesn’t bleed at dinner once in a while.

It’s a Marshmallow World in the Winter

When I was a kid, maybe seven or eight years old, I recall my biggest fear was that someone was going to break into our house and steal all the Christmas presents that sat under our tree.

This wasn’t as much a selfish fear born of consumerism (i.e., I’m not going to get my presents) as one based on a lack of security and invasion of privacy.  The thought of some stranger in a black knit stocking cap and a black mask sneaking around my house really disturbed me.

Interlude

Why is it that everytime I think of a burglar I get that Keystone Cop image of a man dressed like a raccoon, tip-toeing through an alleyway?  If I caught a real burglar in my house dressed like that, I’d just laugh heartily and then shoot him.

I think the reason I got scared was a story I saw on the local news about a family losing all their Christmas presents to a burglary.

Funny the things that effect you as a seven year old.  You can get terrified by a story on the news, or a scary campfire tale, or a nun coming at you with a bull-whip while screaming the Lord’s prayer.

As an adult, when I see a similar story on the news, I would tend to project fault on the victim.

“They obviously didn’t lock their door,” I’d think.  Or “the dumb bastards probably left a window open.”

This is called a self-enhancing bias.  Meaning that all good things that occur are the result of my doing and all bad things that occur are the result of someone else’s doing.

But really, we were just a susceptible to burglary at my house than anywhere else.  Crappy neighborhood.  Lots of windows at ground level.  No dog (he died).  Dad was absent a lot at night (I’ll bet you were thinking he was a drunk, but no, he was a firefighter – shame on you).

So at seven years old, I was deathly afraid that someone would sneak into our basement and steal my presents.  As if a burglar would really want my toys, like Stretch Armstrong or Sticky Wall Walkers.

Interlude:

These were possibly the two worst toys in history.

Stretch Armstrong was a doll that looked sort of like Hulk Hogan.  You and your friend could grab Stretch Armstrong by his arms and legs and stretch the living hell out of him.  I am not sure if this toy was meant to help little kids practice medieval torture methods or what.

Invariably Stretch would start to lose his elasticity after a time and we, being boys, would invariably cut the bastard open to see what was inside (a gooey substance that was probably made with lead and asbestos).

Sticky Wall Walkers were a gel filled toy shaped like an octopus.  The toy had sticky tentacles and you could hurl the Sticky Wall Walker at a wall or refrigerator and it would stick and then walk down the wall.

That was the version on the commercial.

In real life, Sticky Wall Walkers stuck to the wall for 1.3 seconds and then fell to the floor with a splat.  After a spell, the Sticky Wall Walker got dirty and lost his stickiness.  So, being boys, we would cut him open to see what was inside (again a gooey, cancer causing substance that Sixty Minutes would later do a show about).

Why do I tell you about this?

I think this is my version of a Christmas story.

Break

When I was in grade school, many days at recess we used to play a playground game called Break.

Interlude:  That is, when we actually had recess.  If I were to guess, I’d say of the 1,376 times my classmates and I should have gotten a recess over nine years of grade school, we actually did get a recess about 84 times.  This is because recess was the benefit the nuns took away when we were bad (along with chopping off our fingers).  And we were bad quite often.  Only in my later years have I realized what terrible children we were.  I recall one instance where the entire class was caught cheating on a test.  We had stolen the test answers from the teacher’s desk and came up with signals, a series of coughs and knocks, to announce the answers to the group.  This experience taught me both efficiency and teamwork (for what is cheating other than being efficient).

Okay, back to Break.  It was a simple game, the setup being that one person is It while the rest of the kids line up on one side of the playground. When the word “Break” was yelled out, all of the kids ran to the other side of the playground while attempting not to be tagged by It.  If you happened to get tagged, you also became It and joined the original It in trying to tag the other kids in the next round.  This went on, back and forth across the playground, until there was only one kid left who was yet to be tagged.  He or she was the winner.

Now you can imagine how this went.  The person chosen to be It was usually one of the more athletic and popular boys in the school.

In a normal game, the first kids to be tagged were always the ones that didn’t move too well.

Early victims included the overweight kid named Huey, the foreign kid who didn’t understand the rules and just kept laughing and running in a circle, the girl of questionable morale fortitude who liked to be tagged, and other assorted gimps and ninnys.

The game progressed slowly this way.  With every pass, more weak and slow kids were tagged and join the It group.  The faster kids easily avoided the gimps and ninny’s, usually only concerned with the original It.

In fact, the original It seemed to be the only one who was actually tagging more players in.  Huey would make valiant efforts to tag a kid or two, but they always seemed to end with him falling on his face.

After a time, critical mass was reached and kids started getting tagged in larger volumes.  I recall that the turning point always happened when the original It stopped tagging the slow kids and went after the other athletic boys in the school.  Once he had one or two athletes in the It group, the rest of the kids started dropping like flies.

As the years wore on and we had played the game many times over, the original It began to automatically seek out the second best athlete in the school as his first tag, ignoring the slow kids altogether.

Whether this was a strategic move or not is up for debate.  Perhaps the original It just wanted a little bigger challenge (after all, how gratifying is it to tag the kid in the wheel chair every time).

The point is, the game was over much more quickly this way.  Once even a small consortium of athletic kids were It, the rest of the school hadn’t a chance.

This, I think, is a rudimentary analogy of how ideas take hold in an organization.

The idea might be good or bad, it doesn’t really matter.  The important thing is the competency of the originator of the idea.

And when I say competency, I’m not referring to his or her understanding of the business problem or opportunity.  I’m talking about competency in the sense of selling the idea.  An understanding of the strategy, i.e., building a consortium of the right people to help “tag” people into buying the idea.

So maybe I did learn something in grade school.

Never tag Huey first.