My Own Private Idaho

After such a spirited discussion regarding corporations and those who run them / profit from them I drove home (30 minutes back to Arlington) and was thinking about a comment made by Mike O'Malley in class one evening.  Someone asked a question as to his view on some topic and he replied "Well, you must understand my personal narrative".  Mike is very quotable sometimes.  ;-)

So I began to think of my narrative as relates to these issues and came up with several stories regarding interactions with corporate executives, both at the small, medium and mega-corp level.  Now, I don't think all corporate execs are bad or even evil or even amoral.  In fact, I would be hard pressed to find more than one or two that would be Cowperwood's.  My basically positive view of life (believe it or not I do have a pretty positive outlook generally) allows me to see some good even in people that have worked long and hard to destroy me and the people I work with.  After all, it's just business.  But one story still stands out, for some pretty obvious reasons.

Many years ago I worked for a medium size defense firm here in DC.  I won't say the name of the company but its name is really close to C@CI.  I was a Director, a mid-level line manager.  After several years of frustration a friend and I decided to start our own company, with our business goal being to make enough money to pay our bills but to have the freedom to not work for bozos. 

My partner and I had made all the plans to quit and start up on July 1.  My wife had been sick for some time and in late June she was severally injured and in a coma (I remember the date because she was in ICU next to John Wayne Bobbitt.)  My partner and I decided to resign anyway, we had started down the path and couldn't turn back.  The President of the division of C@CI that I worked for (he was employee number 2 and the largest stockholder of the company at the time) called me on 2 July. 

The conversation was interesting.  Now, this guy wasn't a bad person, just a really confused (I think) person.  Simply put he said "Wayne, this is a really tough time for you."  I replied, "I guess that this should tell you how bad things are here that I would feel it necessary to quit under these circumstances."  He replied "Starting a business is really hard."  My response - "Joe, I'll tell you what is hard.  Holding your wife's hand on your 9th anniversary while a doctor tells you she is brain dead.  That's hard.  Business ain't shit."  He hung up the phone.  My partner looked at me and said "He'll never forgive you.  This company is the proudest achievement of his life."  He never did. 

To prove his point he threatened litigation and legal blackmail for over a year, forcing us to team so his firm wouldn't lose contracts, etc.  Luckily, my wife wasn't brain dead, although she never recovered.  And our business was a success and we drove them out of the market we were in.  Revenge can be sweet!!

So yes, I do have a bit of an agenda.  And this guy wasn't nearly as bad as some folks I worked for in a much larger firm about a decade later, who I can't discuss due to legal agreements. (But you will note that I work for a firm of which I am a founder, started after leaving unmentioned firm, and we've done quite well.  So being right can actually work in this world, even when faced off against a multi-billion dollar firm.)  But I have always thought that if your job is one of the ten most important things in your life, you need a new life.  And most of the execs I have met need new lives.

Comments

[Dianne Foster]

Wayne! This is a great blog. Up til now you had been a man of mystery!! Now, like Gypsy Rose Lee you reveal a little more about yourself. I always like it when folks talk about themselves because you do get a sense of where they are coming from as Dr. O'Malley suggested.

Personal narrative indeed. That is one reason I read so much biography and autobiography. (To heck with fiction, the 'truth' is far more interesting.)

For example, the story of Yerkes life is much more intriguing than Dreiser's fictional character based on Yerkes. For one thing, when he died it was discovered that he had used most of his fortune for various community efforts. He did not personally need a subway in Chicago or an observatory so folks could study the heavens. I have spent countless hours in the London Underground, and marvel that the thing was assembled over a century ago, and that hundreds of lives were spared during the Blitz, because of the subway.

Although many folks simply use the new York subway, the Paris Metro or London underground to get around, they are works of art. I was so pleased when I took my two oldest granddaughters (via Amtrak) to NYC six months after 9-11, and the thing that made the biggest impression on them was the NYC subway system.

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