As Luck Would Have It (4 page)

Of course there were no questions; what were they going to ask, how the
hell did I
get you for my boss? 
But
I had a lingering question that
would also not be verbalized;
w
hat business school would teach
an
organizational theory that at
its
core questioned the moral
competencies
of managers?

Lucy’s worthlessness and my
questionable moral character notwithstanding,
the meeting ended without tangible results and only vague direction from me about what I was expecting my staff to do when the
y
returned to their cubicles.  Report back to me this afternoon with what you have, was about the only request I made.  My head was pounding still and I was going to have to go outside for a cigarette.

Smoking anywhere on the premises was outlawed.  This included the walkways outside and the parking area as well.  Let me see if I can possibly describe to you in the event that you are a non-smoker, or even if you aren’t, how insane this was.  Ostensibly, the company prided itself on implementing
policies promoting employee wellbeing
,
p
rofessional and personal growth opportunities
,
and otherwise giving
back
to the community
in which we worked and
lived.  These self-serving
goals were in evidence everywhere; the company website, advertisements, employee manuals, even on posters scattered through the office, including on the entrances to the restrooms.  I’m fine with this sort of propaganda
, but is the organization so desperate that it needs to shamelessly sell itself even to people who just
need to
go to the bathroom
?

Let’s
take a couple of minutes to
consider the non-smoking policy.  We’re in a Chicago suburb where the current wind chill temperature is minus two.  Our complex is a large on
e, with over 950 employees and more than
3
0
acres of space.  Approximately 23 percent of the adult population smokes
.  For those of you who are fortunate not to be addicted to Lucky Strikes, are you starting to follow this?  It gets better. Smoking outside on company property had previously been allowed, until just one of the 950
of
us decided to complain to Human Resources because he or she supposedly smelled smoke outside one of the entrances
,
and this horrific experience
was an insult to his or her sensibilities, health and I’m
not sure
what
else.  Because of this one complaint, legitimate or not, and because of
a
paranoid obsession with
the possibility of
facing unwanted litigation, it was decided that no smoking would be allowed anywhere on company property.

I’m a smoker, but I don’t like to admit it and in reality I’m against it in principle.  It’s a nasty habit and I’d like to quit, but if and when I do, I will stand firm with the smokers against this
brainless
policy.  Now we have to walk at least 200 feet across icy or salt encrusted sidewalks and parking spaces to what I assume then becomes public property and over which the company has no official jurisdiction.

I was standing out there in
the
frigid wind trying to get a match to stay lit, imagining what the rest of this miserable day would bring.  After fi
ni
shing
my Pall Mall
and feeling too numb
from the cold to stay there wasting any more time
,
and after contemplating what the consequences would be if I just got in the car and headed south to some place warmer
, I decided that
t
he wiser choice would be to go back inside.

By the time I collected my thoughts and got back to my
de
sk
, there was an email from my boss asking me to stop by his office as soon as possible.  He look
ed
frazzled and overworked.  I
thought I’d heard him wrong when he said the audit had been called off.  The team of accountants that everyone feared so much had been called away on Friday evening to some sort of emergency in our St. Louis office.  He had just found out
about it this morning.  The audit was cancelled and there
had been no mention
of it being rescheduled.

By now, given my history as described, this
rather significant
bit of good luck should not have come as much of a surprise.  But if destiny intervened on this cold morning to give me a reprieve that I did
not
deserve, what happened next had me questioning
both my sanity and Mr. Finnernan's. 
I emailed the rest of the staff to let them know, but wanted to talk to you personally
and
thank you for your efforts. 
Is he serious?
 
Your
team
went all out to get
things together
on time and you should be commended.
  I should be
executed, more appropriately.
 
I’m going to pass this along to the Vice President next chance I get.

And apparently he did just that.  Ten days letter I received a letter of appreciation from our Home Office and with it, a $10,000 performance bonus. 
Should I make even a token effort to set the record straight or do anything to correct this extreme injustice?  I decided that I would.  I called Joseph and told him the trip was all paid for.   

Shortly after we finished the
seventh
grade, Joseph announced that his parents were
sending him to summer camp for three weeks in July.  He was very excited about it and when I saw the literature that his parents had, I could see why.  The place looked absolutel
y amazing.  Mr. Klein was involved in some sort of dry good
s
importing business that must have paid handsomely because three weeks in this place was going to cost him. 
The camp would “unleash your child’s spirit of adventure” according to the pamphlet we kept leafing through. 
Joseph was anything but athletic, but he did like to swim.  The camp was on a lake and also had two large swimming
pools
complete with
trained
instructors. 
It had everything else that you could imagine from arts and crafts to
Zen
meditation.
  It was obvious to Joseph that I was
very
j
ealous
,
who was
sure
that if we came up with a compelling enough case, we
would
be able to convince my parents
that my s
pirit of adventure could use some unleashing as
well.

One look at the place and my parents said no.  They could not afford to send me to overnight camp and besides, I had already signed up for Little League, our first practice scheduled for the very next Saturday.  I wasn’
t
too
sure about their
m
otivations and
was not totally convinced that camp was beyond our means.  I suspected it had something to d
o
with the fact that Camp Tomahawk was a
primarily a
Jewish camp and my parents cringed a bit at the thought of the kosher meals,
Sabbath observances,
Hebrew
songs
and the rest. 
Did they really want their 13
-
year
-
old Protestant boy singing
Shalom Aleichem
at the Friday evening meal?

I think Joseph may have been more disappointed than I was, and at some level I understood that he was afraid to go to camp alone.  And you really couldn't blame him for that; we were only 13 and neither of us had ever been away from home for more than a couple of nights.  Now he would be on his own for the seven hour bus ride to Chippewa Falls Wisconsin, where he would not know anyone and would be stuck way up there for three weeks sharing a bunk with eight to ten teenage boys who just might find Joseph an easy target to pick on.  Neither of us, never in a million years, would verbalize such fears, though it frightened me a little bit to think of it.  It will be great Joseph; you will have so much fun there
, you'll be OK
.  I know Clifford; I just wish you were going too.  The coach would kill me if I missed three weeks of the season; I'm the best outfielder on the team.  I didn't know for sure if he would like camp or not, be homesick or not either, but I knew this much for certain, I'd miss having him around for so much of our summer.

*****

Flanders and Associates was
very big on management training seminars.  They spen
t
enormous amounts of money sending people like me to these multi-day events, often in far away cities.  The topics span the range of areas that managers should presumably know something about
; t
eam building, leadership, managing conflict, motivation, time management, breaking down barriers, and everything else you can imagine.  The seminars are very nicely packaged and the instructors present themselves as experts in these very important topics.  In reality, the people that put them on are mainly expert in duping companies like ours with a lot of fluff and window dressing, with nicely printed brochures and handouts
,
and with slick PowerPoint presentations.

I have attended several of
these management training
seminars over
years
with the company, and you may be wondering, particularly if you are lucky enough not to have any first hand experience with them yourself, what they are all about and why companies would actually invest countless thousands in them.  Typically, they start out in much the same way.  Picture 30 to 40 sharply dressed professional men and women seated in groups of about five or six, at let's say six or seven round tables in a room large enough to comfortably hold them, as well as the lecturer's podium, sufficient audio/visual equipment to insure maximum pizzazz, and the very important snack table, stocked for the entire two and a half days with assorted cookies, chips, soft drinks and of course, an industrial size coffee pot.

This would be a good place for me to pick up where we left off earlier concerning our discussion of the many benefits of coffee, since when we were last considering it, if you remember, the events in the office were causing me to experience a mild panic attack, and the last thing you need in response to a panic attack is drinking or even thinking
of drinking
coffee.  But in most other situations, coffee has many advantages which contribute to its being the most popular drug on the planet, with approximately 52 percent of the adult population consuming between two and four cups every day.  If this number seems to you to be an exaggeration, let me point out that there are more than 11,000 Starbucks coffeehouses in the United States alone, most of which have people lined up throughout the day anxiously waiting to reach the counter.  What other drug, legal or illegal, within just a few minutes of consumption will sharpen your mind, elevate your mood, improve verbal fluency, enhance athletic performance and make you a genuinely more sociable person?  All this
with
virtually no risk of harm to the body.  At our fictional motivational seminar that I have just begun describing, coffee is very important and the people that put on the programs understand this perfectly and keep the pot full.  This is because nearly all of the attendees at these seminars stay out very late at the bars the night before; so now you know that alcohol is also an extremely important part of the program.

Forgive me for getting somewhat off the topic of the management seminars, but it is good to understand their context and setting, which is getting smashed at night and sobering up quickly in the morning so that your mood and fatigue levels will be commensurate with what you will be doing during day.  You might wonder why the people
are
arranged
in small groups at round tables instead of how you
would normally
be seated at a lecture.  That is because the lecturer will tell you that they are a facilitator, not a lecturer, and that you are participant, not a listener.  Hearing that, the sick feeling that you had from staying out late drinking is made worse because you have been told right upfront that you will not be able so just sit there and pretend to be listening.  You will have to actually listen because you will be called upon to participate, or more likely, to look stupid.  The participants are arranged
at round tables
in small groups so that they can easily work together on their group projects, which for some reason I cannot figure out, are essential to these programs, regardless of the subject or objective.