Corporate Confidential

Never Go To the Men's Room with a CEO...and Other Bad CEO Behavior

A CEO stepping over an associate having a stroke and wondering why everyone isn’t coming to his meeting; the new AIG CEO going on vacation after one day at work; workplace suicides at an all time high – and this is just in the last few days.  I don’t know where to begin.

 

But I think I’ll start with the story that may become the title of my new book:  “Peeing on Other People’s Shoes.”

 

It will be, obviously, a chronicle of CEOs behaving badly.  True story.  Let’s change his name and call him Bob.  Bob was at a company function and at a certain point had to use the restroom.  As it so happens one of his employees, an engineer, wound up next to him at the urinals.  Men are so communal that way.  So Bob thought it would be a hoot to “miss” and peed on the engineer’s shoes.  The poor guy didn’t know what to do (other than make a beeline to Payless) and was momentarily struck moist and speechless.  This was his boss, after all.  And they’d all had a bit to drink.

 

Except wait, they hadn’t.  It turns out that the miscreant in this story is a Mormon and had imbibed nothing stronger than Sprite.  He couldn’t even blame alcohol for his bad behavior just a childish sense of humor.  If you can call it that.

 

In other news of the weird and humiliating – how would you like to find a dildo in your coffee at a company meeting?  Unfortunately, another true story.  This one perpetrated by Paul Pereira, former head of the Fraternal Dental Group, the Fraternal Travel Group, and the Fraternal Insurance Group, all of which were based on North Main Street in Fall River, Massachusetts.

 

According to a lawsuit filed by two of his former employees, Pereira called his staff into his office every Monday morning to regale them with descriptions of "his various alleged sexual exploits." During one such gathering a female employee left to take a call and returned to find that Pereira had slipped a dildo into her coffee.

 

Another time he asked a female employee if she’d like to see pictures of his “pet.”  The first two were indeed pictures of his dog.  The third was, well, I’ll leave that to your imagination.

 

I can name names because this case, unlike most, wound up in court.  You see, unlike our poor peed upon engineer these victims were women.  I never thought I’d say this but apparently there are times that it’s worse to be a man in the workplace.

 

"There's no requirement that people be treated well in the workplace," says Dahlia Rudavsky, a Boston employment attorney quoted in the article. "We tell people you can have a boss that yells and screams, throws things, and reduces people to tears. But unless he does that only to women or minorities, you likely don't have a case."  So sorry Bob targets.

 

Read the entire story here.

 

Now, as far as that new AIG guy…I think I’ll save that for tomorrow!

 

If you have tales of CEOs behaving badly I’d love to hear them.  Click on the email Susan link and make sure and tell me if it needs to be kept confidential or not.

Out of the Muck...Briefly

I wrote about something slimy last time – or should I say someone?  At any rate, I thought I would blog about something more uplifting this time.  It’s Sunday, so I was catching up on my reading.  This is from last Sunday’s New York Times:  It may be a good job, but is it ‘Good Work’?

Howard Gardner, a psychologist at Harvard, is cited in the article for his “influential theory of multiple intelligence.”  That is, there are abilities beyond math and verbal skills which really lead to success in life. “Good work” is defined as a calling which combines:

·         Excellent performance

·         Expressing ethics

·         Engagement

If you don’t have all three you have a job or profession but it’s not good work.

This really hit home with me in light of my current experience at work with the psycho slut beast.  Especially the questions to ask yourself about a job:

“Is this the kind of place where I can see myself in others?”  God, I hope not.

“Are my colleagues people I’d admire or people I’d prefer to avoid?”

‘nuf said.

A good job is one which fits your values as well as one which enables you to be competent and effective.  The article says to ask yourself if your work brings you joy.

In light of all of my rants against corporate greed I like articles like this which lay out different criteria for success.  It’s really not about status or fortune.  I make good money at my current gig but I feel impeded from achieving excellence and I certainly don’t admire some of my colleagues.  As a result I have no desire to engage.  And joy?  At this point I’m not sure if I’d recognize joy if it hit me over the head with a two by four.

As I move on in my career – and I will move on – I hope to find this elusive good work, work that combines excellence, ethics and engagement.  It makes me sad that I don’t have it now.  I hope to in the future.

One Way to Do It

How to get a new computer in corporate America:

1.       Spend time researching what you need and preparing purchase requisition

2.       Get your request turned down by the finance department

3.       Find an existing unused computer as requested

4.       Junk up the old computer

5.       Shame management into letting you have a new one

 

This actually happened to my boyfriend.  He was starting a new job.  When told he could not have a new laptop he went and found one that was no longer in use.  It was already pretty junky, with makeup stains and some scratches.  He further “distressed” it and then went in proudly to show the comptroller that he’d found a computer.

 

“That’s disgusting, I can’t let you go around and visit customers with a laptop that looks like that!” she exclaimed.

 

Voila.  His request for a new computer was approved.

 

How much time went into researching the purchase?  How much time went into his exchange with the comptroller?  How much is their time worth?  Corporate culture in most places does not, unfortunately, put much of a premium on their human capital.  But if you want to buy something you better watch out.  Strange.

Indispensable

Everyone, sing along with me, to the tune of that Nat King Cole classic:  Indispensable, that’s what you are.

45% of U.S.workers did not use all of their vacation time in 2006.

The average number of paid vacation days in America is 9, not including holidays, which adds an average of another 6 days.  What’s even more disturbing is that almost 1 in 4 Americans have no paid vacation and no paid holidays.

I can’t imagine not using the measly 10 or so days most workers get.  As a consultant, I routinely build 5 to 6 weeks of vacation into my schedule, and last year took a 3 month break to write.

I haven’t had very many “regular” full-time jobs, but at the end of each of them I invariably wound up not receiving a full final paycheck because I was always in the hole for vacation time.  I considered myself lucky if I didn’t owe the company money.

So these recently published statistics, courtesy of sources such as Expedia.com and The Center for Economic Policy Research, are mind boggling to me.  I knew I was different, but 45%?  That’s not just a few.  That’s not some small minority.  That’s almost half of the U.S. work force.

Why?  The reasons cited in a recent article from The Christian Science Monitor run the gamut:

• Loyalty
• Too much to do
• Hard to coordinate family schedules
• Not wanting to return to an overwhelming workload
• Not wanting to be the “first one” in the office to do it

Some companies do maintain a use-it-or-lose-it policy, with which I wholeheartedly concur.  When I had my start-up in the nineties I enforced such a policy.  I also endorsed a paid time off plan, instead of segregating time into vacation or sick days.  My employees got 15-20 days to use as they saw fit.  If they weren’t sick, it was that much more vacation.  I am proud of the fact that, when I had the opportunity, I did put my money where my mouth was.  If it had been only up to me, I would have probably provided even more time off a la the European model, but I had three partners who kept me in line.

Do you wonder if my company was productive?  One of my partners did the math and used to love bragging that our productivity in dollars per employee was higher than Microsoft’s at that time.  We were such a profitable little entity, in fact, that it made us an attractive acquisition target, and the company was bought in 1997.

So there.

Starving For Success

Starving to get ahead is no longer a good career move for only supermodels and actors.

An article in the Sunday Styles section of the New York Times on February 18^th discussed ways in which managers are now using employees’ eating habits as criteria for evaluating them.

“Why would a co-worker or manager trust you with responsibility at work if they see you making bad decisions in your self-management enterprise during meals?” an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Philip N. Cohen, was quoted as saying.

Your self-management enterprise?  It used to simply be called “lunch.”  Except, as I’ve noted previously, no one gets the old-fashioned lunch hour anymore.  The reason managers and co-workers can so easily asses your dietary self-management is because everyone is eating in the office.  Yet another good reason to leave the office for lunch!

“Lunch” can get downright competitive at some workplaces.  For example, at Food & Wine magazine employees try to outdo one another by bringing in lunches such as duck terrine, according to the Times article.

And the most bizarre quote came from a headhunter named Stephen Viscusi:  “When I’m interviewing someone and I see their bones protruding, I know it’s a good hire.”  Because, Viscusi explained, it means they’re extremely disciplined.

Wow.  Starvation as a career enhancing tactic.  I thought I’d heard everything.  What’s next?  Hair shirts and branding oneself with the company logo?

Challenging Corporate America

Ownership is a Myth

I started writing this after several conversations with my boyfriend.  He’s just started in a new position at his company and from the way he describes it he is absolutely swamped.

I’m trying – and most likely failing – to be understanding and supportive.  But I’ve never understood how important work is to men. Or to anyone else for that matter.

It’s just a stupid job. That’s why I like being a ‘hired hand.’ I come in, do my job, and then move on. Nothing emotional invested. And I like it that way. I don’t understand that personal identification with a job. I don’t understand the concept of “taking ownership” at work.

And then it hit me why:

It’s a complete myth that you could ever own anything in corporate America

I really figured the corporate world out a long time ago, and I believe I am much better off for it.  So I watch people – people I care about – killing themselves for a corporation that could care less about them and I just don’t get it.

From my perspective, knowing what I know about corporate America, this behavior looks pretty stupid.  But I don’t believe my friends and loved ones are stupid.  (Well, not most of them anyway.)  So it must be something else.  Either some personal pride or other personal standards that they embody, or perhaps in some cases simple fear.  I can understand needing your job.

Well, no, I really can’t, except possibly on an intellectual level.  Years and years of observation as well as personal experience has taught me that there is always another job.  Always.

I know a lot of people would argue with me about this.  And maybe it’s less true if you’re a 60-year-old COBOL programmer.  But it is true.  It may require re-training, and it may require re-locating, and it may require re-allocating your resources.  Most of all, it will require change.  And there’s the rub for most people.

I have never been afraid of changing jobs; but then again I have never been afraid of change.  Most people hate change. Not me.  Change is, in fact, almost an addiction, which is probably a different kind of personal problem.

I have never been afraid of interviewing, or networking, or making phone calls, or sending out emails, or using the internet – or doing any of the myriad tasks involved in finding my next gig.  All of these skills seem to have come very naturally to me.  And I had a great mentor in my father.    Plus, I think the grass is always greener somewhere else so I love looking around and seeing what else is out there.  Love it.

I joke that my two happiest days on a job are the day I get it and the day I leave it.  And it’s true.  There’s a thrill from winning, from being wanted and from scoring the new gig.  And then there’s relief and euphoria about being free again.  I am my happiest when I’m unemployed or, in my case, between contracts.  The world is my oyster.  It’s wide open and anything can happen. What will I do next?  Who will I meet?  Where will I go?  What challenges will I face?  What will I learn? It’s exciting.

But I’ve had many friends tell me how much they hate job hunting.  They view the tasks I listed above as terrible drudgery.  Plus there’s all that fear of rejection.  I wish I could bottle my perspective, or at least write about it in a meaningful way that might impart something useful to others.

Extreme Work

Extreme sports give us a new context for thinking about work.

Apparently the qualities required to survive in today’s workplace are similar to those needed for shredding a halfpipe or performing an Eskimo roll:  focus, psychological stamina, risk tolerance, self-reliance & etc.

Some of this is covered in a new book by Eileen P. Gunn, “Your Career is an Extreme Sport.”

Extreme sports are about looking fear in the face and life in corporate America is…um, I see her point.

Those who participate in extreme sports don’t really have a death wish.  They are actually good at minimizing danger.  Of course, they put themselves in that danger voluntarily while most of us –let’s be honest – wouldn’t work if we really didn’t have to.

Gunn says that those who easily tolerate risk need to at least give the simpler, safer options a try instead of habitually seeking out the most risky solutions.  My ex-husband comes to mind here.

The man never met money he couldn’t spend, his or anyone else’s.  Not to mention the man has the attention span of a gnat.  No sooner had he spent untold thousands of dollars and hours of his time starting, say, a new web site, then he was moving on because after 47 seconds or so it wasn’t producing the results he expected.  Back when we had our start-up the employees had betting pools on how long it would take him to abandon each new idea.  Not the best for morale.

Of course, in order to make this risk-loving personality trait useful to others you need to make sure you’re serving yourself, your employer and your co-workers at the same time.  Risk for risk’s sake, or simply to draw attention to yourself, is bad.  Unless you’re the CEO.  Although she does point out that some, such as Jeffrey Skilling of Enron, love to plunge into the kamikaze zone.  Which can be bad.

Maybe my ex was just ahead of his time.

Right up until that second bankruptcy (not to mention 6^th wife – but I haven’t checked in with him for a few months, it may be more by now) those start-ups, and houses, and offices on boats, and $1,500 dinners out were a blast.

Gunn actually says things like you should be getting “stoked about what you do, embrace risk, go for big air.”  We should all embrace the “obstacle course that is today’s business world.”  Uh huh.  Sounds simply like yet another way to get employees to love working hard for less money under more arduous circumstances.

Plus, I didn’t think people said “stoked” anymore?

Thank God for Work

No really.  According to one author, that's exactly what you should do.

“Imagine a company where people love coming to work every Monday,” the ad began.  I have a good imagination but this seemed hard to do.

Promoting a new book titled, “Joy At Work,” the ad said the author, Dennis Bakke, set out to “create the most fun workplace ever.”  Nowhere in the copy did I see the word “oxymoron.”

So I checked it out on amazon.com.  Apparently there’s a companion volume, “Joy At Work Bible Study Companion.”

I was amused to find among Amazon’s “statistically improbably phrases” (or SIPs – see below) were:  “most fun workplace” and “great workplace.”  J  It seems I’m not the only one.

But I don’t know, I read some excerpts, and the reviews (even from Publishers Weekly, who’s not known for being especially soft) and some of the things Bakke is saying don’t sound half bad.

For example, profit is not the point of work.  He wants “values for values’ sake” because he believes they are an integral part of the human experience. Bakke was co-founder and eventually CEO of AES, a large energy company which grew to over $8 billion in annual revenue and over 40,000 employees. Bakke's Joy at Work is in part, a CEO memoir, as it chronicles AES's growth

I’m not sure about the religious angle, but some of this doesn’t suck.

And at the very least it’s refreshing to read a story about a CEO that doesn’t involved phrases like “ravenous greed” “outrageous gluttony” “incomprehensible hubris” and “wanton extravagance.”  Those are phrases, I’m afraid, that wouldn’t make it onto any of Amazon’s improbable phrase lists.

Amazon.com Statistically Improbable Phrases:

Amazon.com's Statistically Improbable Phrases, or "SIPs", are the most distinctive phrases in the text of books in the Search Inside!™ program.  SIPs are not necessarily improbable within a particular book, but they are improbable relative to all books in Search Inside!

Just Say Yes!

A recent blog post by a Microsoft program manager hinted at a corporate culture in which telling the truth, if it involves saying, "no," at least, is decidedly frowned upon.

I would provide the link but apparently he pulled it...then posted it again to prove he wasn't being pressured by "the man"...then pulled it again.  I hope it comes back because I'd love to read the post in its entirety.

Parts of it were carried by the media, and I like the guy's style:

"When a vice president in Windows asks you whether your team will ship on time, they might well have asked you whether they look fat in their new Armani suit," he wrote.

The individual in question was identified as Philip Su, who managed development teams in the Windows group for five years -- and who still works for the Redmond, Wash. company. He was writing about the many reasons for the delay of Vista, Microsoft's new, improved version of XP.

In the now-gone entry, Su said that at Microsoft, telling the truth about a deadline, and how impossible that deadline is, gets you nowhere. 

"Every once in a while, Truth still pipes up in meetings. When this happens, more often than not, Truth is simply bent over an authoritative knee and soundly spanked into silence."

Here is one link if you would like to read more.  Vista has been delayed numerous times -- and now is not expected to reach consumer's hands until at least January, 2007.

And btw, enough with the spanking references!

Gag Me

The Financial Times reported on the festivities at the annual Wal-Mart shareholder meeting. Select groups of its 1.8 million workers in the US and from the retailer's global operations attend a three-day celebration of its corporate culture, interspersed with free evening concerts and culminating in an early morning event at the Fayetteville arena.

"It's like our family reunion," said Sue Eidson, 25, from the jewellery department of a Wal-Mart in Charleston, South Carolina, attending the second annual meeting of her career.

Um, OK. Maybe she doesn’t have a family of her own?

In a departure from their customary stinginess, Wal-Mart spares no expense on this extravaganza. This year's show featured an appearance by Taylor Hicks – winner of Fox television's popular American Idol pop talent show. A speech by Lee Scott, chief executive, that set out Wal-Mart's global goals led – via a deafening Wal-Mart cheer – into a three-song performance by Beyoncé.

On a stage equipped like the aisles of a US store, actors in blue Wal-Mart vests played out a series of Broadway-style sketches that dealt both with popular complaints – that the stores are too hot when the air-conditioning is turned off – and celebrated the management's messages, sometimes in rhyme:  "When you see a customer searching and they don't know where to go, step up and say hello."

Ick.

According to the Financial Times, the performance included a soupy ballad by a supposed Wal-Mart worker recalling how a meeting with Sam Walton – who died in 1992 – had transformed her view of Wal-Mart: "He smiled at me and spoke my name the day I met Mr. Sam".

Double ick.   I hope Wal-Mart has rolled back the prices on Pepto-Bismol.

Wal-Mart brags on the low-cost health insurance plans they offer employees – as low as $11 a month in some cases. What they don’t mention is that those plans often have high deductibles – as much as $1,000. And that is quite a chunk of change for a minimum wage "associate" in Alabama.

Joyce Gill, who works at a Wal-Mart in Thunder Bay, Ontario, apparently left the meeting all fired up. According to the Financial Times, she said, "It heightens the enthusiasm. It makes you want to get back to your store – to get things going."

Wouldn’t she rather go home with good health insurance than a cheesy song in her heart?

If you would like to read about this in all its nauseating detail, click here.