Stupid Corporate Tricks - #6

Time for yet another story from the front lines in the ridiculous world of business. This one is at the same company as the Stupid Corporate Tricks - #5, and involves the same two guys. Will had asked Doug about some research he had asked him to do a couple of months previous. Doug realized he had totally forgotten about the project, and had done absolutely nothing toward getting it done. So he says to Will, "Don't you remember, you sent me a memo telling me to forget about it?" Will looked puzzled and said, "No, I don't remember that." So Doug says he will try to find it.

He goes over to his desk and writes a memo to himself, ostensibly from Will, and backdates it by a few weeks. He was pretty good at forging signatures too, so he printed the memo and put a reasonable facsimile of Will's initials on it. He then wrinkles it up a little and stuffs it into his file drawer in a bunch of other papers.

The next time Will came walking by Doug's cubicle, Doug shouts out, "Oh Will, let me see if I have that memo you sent me." He opens his file drawer and shuffles through the papers and says, "Oh, here it is!" He hands it over to Will who says, "Hmmm....I guess I forgot about this. Okay then."

HOLY SHIT! It worked!! I could not believe it, and it was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud. I suppose Doug has had to update his repertoire of trickery now that email has largely supplanted printed memoranda.

Stupid Corporate Tricks - #5

Today, let us continue the series of stupid corporate tricks. For this tale of workplace merriment, we will go back to the early 1990s. This particular story is more of an employee tale than something done by the company itself. One of my coworkers (let's call him Doug here) was always at odds with our boss (we'll call him Will). This boss will play into several tales before we are done.

To the point of this story, you need to know two things about Will. His desk was always piled high with so many papers that he could never find anything. The other thing is that he had a beloved HP 12C calculator. These used to be very common in business, and used RPN, or Reverse Polish Notation. This allowed for complex calculations in the days before calculators could use pure algebraic order of computation. Will had this one since his business school days, and he was quite fond of it.

One particular morning, we came to work and found a lost and found poster taped to the wall at every elevator landing in our building. Will's calculator had gone missing, and he was quite distressed about it. Now Doug always enjoyed Will's distress, so as you might imagine, he was enjoying this immensely. But then things took a nasty turn.

Will approached Doug and asked him if he had taken his calculator. Doug took great offense at the suggestion, and it didn't take long for him to find his response. As he was walking past Will's cubicle, he noticed the 12c was visible edgewise underneath a huge pile of papers on Will's desk. Doug said, "If I am accused of taking it, I will!" He took it from under the pile and hid it in his desk. He then proceded to create some ransom notes from an anonymous calculator kidnapper. leaving them where Will would find them. Will was going nuts trying to figure it out before Doug tired of the game and put the calculator back, where Will eventually found it.

The story doesn't end there however. A few years later Doug was working in another state for another firm. As fate would have it, I was again working for Will, but at a different company. During this time, Will again misplaced his calculator. I mentioned this to Doug, who immediately created another ransom note and faxed it to Will anonymously. Even though I was quite amused by it all, I also didn't have the heart to tell him what was going on. A couple of days later, Will found his calculator...in a pile of papers on his desk!

Stupid Corporate Tricks - #4

The same boss that pulled the antics in my previous post, Stupid Corporate Tricks - #3, was well known around the office for another reason. It seems he had some kind of disorder that caused him to doze off at inappropriate times. For example, all of us who worked in the group would watch him when we were in meetings, because invariably the longer the meeting, the more likely it was that he would fall asleep. You would notice his eyes growing heavy. Then he would begin nodding off a bit, and finally, with eyes closed, his head would go down and he would be sound asleep.

While this was a bit amusing to witness, it was also kind of sad, because I am sure it must be some type of medical condition. But the thing that made it most annoying is when he would do this while with you in the office of a customer. The company required our managers to accompany us on the occasional sales call to evaluate and improve our selling skills. This man, who I shall call John, did this on several occasions while with me. One instance I distinctly recall, involved him not only falling asleep in the customer's office, but he began to snore loudly as I made my sales presentation. The customer looked at me and said, "I think John must not have gotten enough sleep last night."

Still, that isn't the worst part. On the way back to the office, John had the audacity to critique my performance, all of which he slept through. He had absolutely no idea what had transpired.

On another occasion, John walked into a customer's office with me. After we shook hands, John sat down in a chair and immediately let out a very loud blast of flatulence! He chuckled and told the customer, "Hey, it sounds like you have a frog problem out here."

Needless to say, when John indicated he wanted to go on a sales call with me, I was not happy, nor did I know what to expect.

Stupid Corporate Tricks - #3

In the early 1980s, I worked in outside sales for Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, then an operating company of the original AT&T. I mention the company here because it is pertinent to the story I am about to relate.

My job at the time was selling commercial accounts on leasing large, corporate telephone systems, called Private Branch Exchanges, or PBXs. I also sold local exchange services, long distance, and what were called WATS lines. WATS stood for Wide Area Telephone Service, and was basically dedicated lines with prepaid blocks of discounted long distance.

There was one company that was located along the Houston Ship Channel that still had an old "cord board" PBX. These are the type where an operator used cords to patch through calls coming in to the appropriate person's telephone (see photo). These were rare at the time, as most companies had moved to more modern systems.

This was early in the era of interconnect equipment, or non-Bell System equipment being available for connection to the phone company's lines. We were proposing a Bell Dimension 400 electronic PBX to replace the old system. There was a competing bid in from a company selling a popular system of the time, the Rolm CBX. This particular business had a huge campus with buildings located over a large area, and trucks coming in and out from all over the facility.

My boss had worked for Southwestern Bell for his entire career, and would be best described by the term "Bell Head", a phrase used to describe someone who had been working at the phone company for so long that they couldn't see any perspective other than that of Ma Bell. During the course of the visit to attempt to finalize the deal, the customer asked us if we had any references he could call. My boss stood up, walked over to the customer's credenza, picked up his Houston telephone directory, opened the rather large book to a random page, tossed in on the customers desk in front of him, and said, "Here is a book with our customers listed. Pick some out and call them."

Surprisingly, we did not get tossed out at that point, but when the customer stated that the Rolm CBX quote was quite a bit less than ours, the boss told the customer, "I hope their quote includes tearing up your entire facility to lay new conduit and cables. You know all the underground cables here are telephone company property, and we will not allow them to use our cables for their system. If you go that way, we will come out and stretch the cables very tight, cut them off short, and then fill the conduit with concrete. So you need to go back to them and get a quote for that. Would that disrupt your business any?"

Wow! Talk about a heavy handed close! If I had not witnessed it myself, I would not have believed it. But to some degree it worked. We did not get the customer to lease the Dimension system, but the customer did not take the Rolm bid either. He ended up keeping the old switchboard system in place. He also got to continue paying Southwestern Bell for the privilege. No wonder Ma Bell had her reputation!

Stupid Corporate Tricks - #2

Today, let's continue with recounting some of the stupidity that rises to the top of the corporate heap. This particular episode took place at the same company involved in my previous post, Stupid Corporate Tricks - #1. This one was done by the branch manager for the Houston sales office.

Our offices had moved to a new building and along the way, we also got a new branch manager. This position was over the entire sales organization in the city. The new guy was hired after having spent a few years at our major competitor. The rumor mill had it that when he was fired from the competitor, the people who were under him on the organization chart all stood up and cheered. Then when they learned our company had hired him, the did the same thing again. Of course, I cannot confirm that, but it would not surprise me.

This particular guy was definitely a few tortillas short of a full enchilada plate. For example, he came over to my desk, totally out of the blue, with a porn magazine and opened it up to a picture of a young black woman who was, shall we say, quite under dressed. He said to me, "Hey take a look at this! That'll drive any prejudiced bones out of you, wont it?" So you get the idea of the type of person we are talking about here.

In any case, this particular sales office had one fax machine to support the entire office. It was very heavily used as you might imagine. This was also before the prevalence of email, so faxes were much more important than they are today. This machine was used for various documents coming in and going out of the office. One of the most prevalent types of documents that would arrive on the fax were orders being sent in by customers that all of us sales people had been working with. After all, this was a sales office, and this was a very efficient way to get things done. Otherwise, we would spend several hours travelling across town just to pick up the orders.

The branch manager was getting tired of waiting on the fax machine when he wanted to send something. So rather than getting a second one, he issued an edict. No more orders would be permitted to be faxed in, because they were tying up the fax machine when he wanted to use it. Pardon me? This was a sales office, and he actually shut down a major way that orders came into the company. Oh the stupidity of it all!! Or as Bugs Bunny might say, "What a maroon! What a nincompoop!" Rather than being responsible for getting new customers, perhaps he should have been put in charge of the Sales Prevention Department!

Stupid Corporate Tricks - #1

People in corporate America take themselves way too seriously. Greedy and inept CEOs drive their companies into the ground while raking in gazillions of dollars in pay, perks, stocks, and bonuses. Clueless managers mindlessly bob their heads in agreement with whatever ridiculous idea or business fad du jour is being touted by their bosses as the next great idea. Of course, the people actually doing the work have nothing to do with how well the companies perform. If the firm does well, it is the executives' doing. If not, well it must be the workers.

In the forty-plus years I have been in the workforce, I probably have enough material to write a book. Perhaps I will. Still, it seems appropriate to share a few stories from the front lines of life in the corporate world here. While I have adapted myself to conform to the culture of offices akin to Scott Adams' Dilbert comic strip, I remain free spirited enough to see through the bullshit and recognize that the emperor indeed has no clothes.

So let's talk about a situation that happened when I worked at a telecommunications firm back in the late 1980s. I was in major account sales, and was doing rather well at it. During our annual meeting for the entire sales organization, it was announced that our “President's Club” for that year would be held at a resort in Hawaii. The top sales people in the company would be sent on an all expenses paid trip for two with awards and activities to reward overachievers. They showed us video of the resort, and all the terrific things that would be part of the trip for those whose sales qualified them to go.

During the course of the year, there was a change of plans announced. Instead of Hawaii, the trip was to be moved to Dana Point, California. Just as nice as Hawaii, we were told. Right! Well, as it turns out, when the time came for the President's Club trip, it was definitely not to Hawaii. Actually, it wasn't to Dana Point either. They ended up having the event at a resort in Scottsdale, Arizona on the outskirts of Phoenix. Nice, but definitely not Hawaii or Dana Point.

Now they did have some enjoyable activities lined up for us while in Scottsdale, but the highlight of the trip was an awards banquet to Pinnacle Peak Patio, a western themed steakhouse on top of a mountain. They put all of us top sales people and our spouses on buses to make the trip to Pinnacle Peak. Along the way, a staged hijacking by cowboy bad men occurred. They pulled the bus over, and a bunch of western hooligans came on board and “kidnapped” the executives. They went on ahead, and by the time we reached the venue, the execs all had on aprons and were serving up the chow. Nice enough.

However, once we were into enjoying the meal, the real reason we were there became readily apparent. The awards presentations began. Since all of us present were the top sales people in the entire company, assembled from all over the country, surely they were going to present some awards to us for exceeding our quotas and making money for the company. You might think that, but you'd be wrong.

The executives began giving speeches about each other, and what a wonderful job they did to motivate all of us to overachieve the goals set for us. They would then present each other with nice fat bonus checks for doing such a fine job. Then we were expected to applaud each of them as they received their checks and made their acceptance speeches. Obviously, they needed an audience to react to their awards ceremony. Once that was complete, it was back on the buses for the trip back to the hotel. Makes you really proud to work for a company with such motivating management! Well, maybe not.

Oh My Aching Feet!!

The last few days have been spent either in preparation for, or participation in, the annual convention for retailers who sell the products of my employer. The convention is always a major undertaking by many people, and involves training sessions, a trade show, and of course, entertainment. Thursday night, 80s rockers REO Speedwagon entertained the crowd. Last night's headliner to close the show was Howie Mandel (please excuse the poor quality of this picture...it was taken with my cell phone's camera). I got the lovely spouse a guest ticket to last night's performance, so we got to have dinner together and enjoy Howie's comedy act. This was particularly nice, since she suddenly was put in the hospital the night before the convention started.

Each year, the convention is held in a different venue, and this year I really appreciated the fact that it was held in the Colorado Convention Center in Denver. It was great to be able to go home to my own bed each night after a day of standing on my feet all day. Some days, I drove to Denver, and on others I took the light rail which stops at the Convention Center. The light rail is a good option, but on weekends it doesn't run from the station closest to my home to the venue.

Since my blogging is done in the evening, obviously this event caused me to not post for the last few days. I do have several ideas percolating in my head for future posts, so I look forward to fleshing those out in the next few days.

And speaking of days...Happy Mothers Day to all the moms out there!