Ask me anything

From today’s newspaper, “Traffic studies have shown that when traffic starts and stops, it moves slower than if it never stops.” Who woulda thunk?

And, how much did we spend on that study? $200,000? $400,000? I’m sorry, did I say “study?” The quote cited “studies.” Maybe the first outcome wasn’t believable to some.

An associate of mine received a grant of $127,000 to do a study about if alcoholism affects productivity of employees. Probably hasn’t been looked at more than five hundred times before, so let’s pour some more bucks into it.

Let’s see, are impaired people with associated health and mental issues going to be more or less productive, or about average? Don’t tell me, I’ll guess. Less productive.

The envelope, please. Less productive. Move over, Kreskin.

I was interviewed by someone doing a grant-funded study to determine if a mental health court would be more effective locally than running the people through the present system. Mental health courts have been around for over ten years and are operating in numerous locations. How about if we just look at their actual outcomes instead of asking non-participants to guess what results would be?

It’s not just that the money is wasted. It’s money that could’ve gone toward identifying unknown problems or alleviating them.

Here’s my proposal to solve this dilemma. You want to know if stoplights slow traffic or if addicts are less productive, don’t spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and unnecessarily duplicate research. Just ask me. Flat rate of $25,000. I’ll tell you.

Spend the excess on real issues.

Through the Seinfeld looking glass

Sam and Ty asked to meet me for breakfast. They are producing a documentary on an aspect of development of the city and wanted background information. Couple of enthusiastic and nice young men.

I was surprised to learn that I was in the script they had roughed out and offered to play myself. “I’ve done TV, so I’m not afraid of a camera.”

They looked at each other. “Uh, we had Sam in mind to play you. We’re low budget.” Nice guy, but nowhere near handsome enough.

“What budget? I play me every day for free anyway. Are you saying that Sam can play me better than I can play me?”

“Well, it was over twenty years ago. No offense.”

None taken. “I’d wear a wig. Makeup.”

“That only goes so far.” Okay, now we’re bordering on offense.

It’s a little weird being told you’re not the best person to portray you.

Gratification

A gratification of management is seeing results from your coaching. Success comes in varying degrees, but any sign of growth is relished.

The icing on the cake is when someone discerns your efforts and expresses some thanks. In this case, it was from a former employee (a couple decades former). He found me on the web and related how he still uses my little talks to convey how mentoring, teamwork and fun make an organization more productive.

This came a bit as a surprise. During my “little talks” to the troops, Dave would frequently be parodying me. Think SNL when Belushi came out on stage with Cocker. That was Dave’s nature and I’ll put up with a lot when an employee is productive. Dave was extremely productive and used this currency to the max. I just didn’t realize how much he was soaking up while he was having his fun.

Now, I’m trying to figure out exactly what he took from the experience. It was a business I had downtown, in the Carew Tower. It was a start-up in which we worked and fought hard for every percent of market share. And, we played hard.

At 5:00pm, most of the younger office crowd in downtown was wending its way to the trendier bars up in Mount Adams. We were still hard at work and would be for another two or three hours. From there, we went down, not up.

Down to the dingy west end of Third Street to a seedy dive called Miss Kitty’s, our “night office.” Dimestore psychology would lead to the conclusion that, as the upstarts, we were the underdogs and this was definitely an underdog bar. This was Rocky, not Apollo Creed. Most of the patrons looked a bit rocky.

On the surface, the main attraction was cheap drinks, usually pitchers of beer. Tommy the bartender was another draw. An endless supply of jokes and he was an artist in fashioning obscene balloon animals.

A couple nights a week, Live Bait played. They were a hard driving band led by a guy who was Jack Black well before Jack Black was Jack Black. I would tip them to play “Satisfaction” over and over so we could join them on the dais. Mick Jaggers in sports coats.

It may have looked like just a bunch of young people out partying, but there was a lot of mentoring and bonding going on. No one failed to answer the bell the next morning. You never let down your wingman.

I also recall that every summer we’d do a three-day houseboat trip on Brookville Lake. The first year, the girls said they’d furnish snacks, board games and books. The guys were stockpiling beer, cigars and fireworks. The girls decided not to go that year. Or, any other. Bonding has its limits.

You adapt to survive and succeed. One of the greatest management observations of all time was made by Bum Phillips about Don Shula. “He kin take his’n and beat your’n. Then, he kin take your’n and beat his’n.” When Shula had Larry Czonka and Jim Kiick, the Dolphins ran and won. When he had Dan Marino, they passed and won.

Dave was part of staff of young fire breathers. My current organization is comprised mostly of middle-aged, touchy-feely women. We do touchy-feely picnics, not dive bars.

In a juicy tidbit of irony, we also organized a houseboat trip. They planned to bring yoga mats, relaxation CDs and berry wine. I decided not to go. Bonding has its limits.

I’m looking at an old photo of the staff that Dave was a part of. They’re all happy and tight-knit. I can pick out more than a few who have become very successful in their chosen career paths.

There’s gratification in coaching employees.

Equal representation

With the announcement of the newly nominated supreme court justice, noting that she is a graduate of Princeton University, something begs to be calculated. Of the ten justices, 90% would hold degrees from Harvard, Yale or Princeton (heart of the Ivy League). In fact, 60% belongs to just Harvard. The pariah of the group graduated from Northwestern, which is hardly your basic state U. If you think these are bastians of equal opportunity, just try to beat out a Kennedy or Bush for enrollment accepetance.

The three aforementioned ivy-covered colleges comprise just a tenth of a percent of the four-year institutions within the U.S. So, .001 equates to 90% representation in the body that dictates interpretation of what equal opportunity and representation are?

You gotta laugh.

Your tax dollars at work

Like I need some politician telling me that paying taxes is patriotic. Aside from the fact that his highly ranked colleagues don’t pay theirs, when did patriotic become synonymous with wasteful?

Let’s take just one edition of the daily newspaper as a microcosm. Yesterday’s is sitting on my desk.

The headline deals with the supervisor of the city’s pension plan. He has his own financial problems and in spite of a salary of $98.000, has declared bankruptcy twice. Who better to manage a $2 billion fund?

He’s made loans to himself and others in violation of regulations, has failed to retrieve funds issued to dead people, left uncashed checks pile up around the office and frittered away more than half his work hours surfing the web.

But, his supervisor assures us he is confident no theft has occurred. Oh, that makes us feel better. Your employee has had his hand in the till for years when he wasn't mousing the internet while on the payroll right under your nose, so you’d know about any theft. Right.

Further back in the newspaper, the county auditor criticizes other public officials for authorizing funding of a riverfront project, which he characterizes as spending our money on government bureaucracy as opposed to competing economically, accelerating our slide into financial ruin. You mean the $91 million could be even less effective than the $42 million to move the Davidson Fountain a few feet?

In the statement he just issued, he says he’s compelled by law to sign the certification. He doesn’t say where all his fervent protests of wasted funds have been for the years since the plan was drawn up. A watchdog is useless after the robbery, so spare us the defender of the faith act.

Back in the second section, we have the article about a federal fraud indictment of a man who was granted money to do construction projects for victims of Hurricane Katrina through his company, Built by Brothers. He ran the funds through a leasing company and back to his personal accounts, with the projects never completed.

However, they did find their way into other things, including his opening a bar here called D’Zire Ultra Lounge. He’s got a flair for names, I’ll give him that. But, here are the kickers.

The years of rerouting of the funding weren’t detected by the feds. The leasing company caught it in their audit. Where was the government oversight? You give a guy a couple million to do construction projects and they don’t get done. How diligent does your stewardship of public money have to be in order to detect that?

Even better, the perp was already on parole from a prior fraud conviction in which he was ordered to pay back $900,000 in restitution. That was ordered around the same time he was issued the $1.7 million.

Help me follow the logic tree here. Hey, this guy was just convicted of fraud and ordered to pay restitution of $900,000. Why don’t we double the amount he gets this time and not bother to see what he does with it?

Bear in mind, that’s just one day and a fraction of what transpired in those 24 hours. I don’t mind paying taxes to finance the competent management of the country. However, I do find it objectionable for assets to be confiscated to flush down the toilet.

The big kids in the neighborhood

Through whatever algorithm drives it, a networking site threw Angela and me together. I was about to dismiss it as extremely fuzzy logic when some things in her profile looked like they could connect to my roots. I tried a question.

“Is your father named Chris and does he have one sister, Linda?”

“Yes! How did you know?”

I smiled as memories flooded back. It not only clarified the site’s workings, but shed some light on an email I received last year.

That came from Steve the Weaz, from the old neighborhood. He was several years younger and just one of the little gnats always buzzing around on the periphery of our teenage world. I barely remembered him.

And yet, his email went on and on about the exploits of me and the crew I ran with. Details I didn’t even recall. I wondered how they had left an impression on him.

My vivid recollections of Chris brought this into focus. He was the big kid in our neighborhood. What I must’ve been to Steve.

Chris wasn’t the only major star in our galaxy. There was also Gino. Almost a ying and yang. You watched the cool big kid for your cues. Whichever one you emulated tended to plot your course. Your clothes. Your expressions. Your interests. They were the gods of cool.

Chris was the epitome of clean cut. Like a Clark Kent. He was an altar boy and perfect in almost every respect. Stood ramrod straight with a flawless flattop haircut and starred in all sports. The iconic all-American boy.

Gino was more like The Fonz. His uniform was the black leather biker jacket over a white tee shirt and ragged jeans. He was usually languidly slouched on the hood of a car or on a stoop, keeping an eye on his domain from under a greasy DA crown. He appeared as muscular and athletic as Chris, but applied his prowess to enforcing his will or chasing the girls.

We were the little kids, observing and cataloging their every move. We were also young males, without a brain cell among us. So, the conversation inevitably turned to the question. If Chris and Gino locked horns, who would come out on top?

It wasn’t as though we were the only ones thinking about it. They studiously ignored each other, but consciously circled outside of each other’s sphere of influence, wary of the ultimate confrontation.

The tension was always there, until they graduated from their respective high schools. Chris was the valedictorian of his parochial school’s class and went on to college. Gino skipped public school graduation and was off to parts unknown. The torch was passed. From that point on, we were the big kids in the neighborhood.

“I grew up two doors down from your dad.”

“Sweet! I tell him I ran into you.”

“That’ll be nice.” Not that he’ll remember.

The time has come

For the four-day weekend. I'm looking at my schedule for this holiday and it's booked solid. All good stuff, but not a minute to veg out. It seems to have been trending this way.

You can't expect people to toil at eating, drinking, dancing, partying, biking, paddling, swimming or whatever for three straight days and just waltz into work. It's inhumane. It's like the water boarding of the working class.

This abomination will not stand. It is decreed that we will take Tuesday off for recovery. Let me know if you want me to write a note to your boss.

So, ya wanna be the CEO

I’ve negotiated a merger that will ensure the long term viability of the entity I run, but will eliminate my job. Why I would do that is grist for another day.

I haven’t decided what to do next, if anything, but someone approached me with a potential position as CEO of another organization. I told him I didn’t think it was a good match.

“Why not? It’s another CEO position.”

Exactly. Been there, done that, possibly just enough times.

I’ve done my share of public speaking to college students and young business people. When it comes time to discuss their goals, a lot say they want to run something. I wonder how many have given it any thought.

I recall sitting in the sumptuous office of a bank president, high atop a downtown office building. He looked wistfully at the panoramic view. “You know what scares me about this job, Henry. There are a few thousand people out there working for me. They’re happily cranking through their jobs, content and comfortable in the thought that I’m up here and know exactly what to do next to ensure the future viability of this bank and their jobs. Half the time, I have no idea.” I would’ve guessed more than that, but he was the host so I let it go.

It’s like being the parent. Something you thought you’re supposed to aspire to, fun at times, but…. When the kids are playing, blowing off their chores and not giving a thought to the budget or future, it’s all on your head.

That can be a plus. But, it also engenders stuff that I don’t especially enjoy. Do we renew the benefit package or shop it out? Go to a four-day week? Lease or buy the next generation of computers?

Do you really want to be a CEO? Can your read the current and wind down the river and have certainty what to do to navigate successfully through the changing waters? Can you discern possible threats and opportunities, or potential countermoves of your competition? Are you capable of reading the entrails and formulating the perfect plan, and then entrain a multitude of employees whose paramount concern is what they’re going to do Friday night?

If you aren’t up to it, stay where you are. Just surf the web, copy your tax returns and anything else that keeps you out of the way of hindering real progress. There will be a few zealots who will see what’s involved and position themselves for it. They’ll be noticed and considered to captain the ship.

If you can handle and enjoy it, do it. Do it right and few things are more rewarding.

No opening available? Here, take my spot. I don’t think I want to be the parent anymore. I want to do what I enjoy and am good at. Doubt if those things are in the job description, but I haven’t begun to go out and sell that.

Want to be the school bus driver? Fine, have it. When you change your mind, I’ll be at the back of the bus having fun, selling, marketing or whatever doesn’t entail reading twenty pages of a maintenance contract.

The test of time

Orange cones narrowed us down to one lane, so I settled in for a long wait. After a few minutes of staring at the car in front of me, I feel it tugging at me. Nothing extraordinary about it except it’s picking at something in the recesses of my mind.

Finally, the lid comes off and I’m back almost five decades, standing in the aisle of the auto parts store where I earned my gas money. What product here would be so utile as to endure that test of time?

Amber bulb dye? Not a chance. It was a fad. When the 1963 models changed from clear to amber turn signals, people wanted to appear to be on the cutting edge. Painting the signal bulbs on your Hudson wasn’t going to convince anyone that it just rolled off the showroom floor. But, if that’s what they wanted, I’d ring it up. Thought it was the silliest thing I’d ever see in that vein, but was wrong.

How about that continental kit? True, putting your spare tire in a decorative casing mounted on the rear bumper was an affectation. But, there was the practical value of additional trunk space. It would fade away.

Next to them, the suicide knobs. The swivel knob that mounted on the steering wheel so you could be stylin’ with your drivin’. May be the progenitor of the Detroit Lean. They would be legislated out of existence.

I look further down the aisle in my vision and we may have a winner. Curb feelers. The stiff wires that projected from the passenger side of the car and issued an audible warning before you scraped your rocker panels. Now there’s a useful product with long-term possibilities. Not.

What’s this I see on the end cap? A cardboard poster with cellophane envelopes stapled to it. Inside the envelopes are cardboard silhouettes of pine trees impregnated with the most gawdawful scent this side of Pine-Sol. If your body odor is more eye watering than this stuff, you have problems that can’t be solved in a parts store. These things would never last.

But, they did.

The only way to fly

I received a thank you from someone who accompanied me on a recent trip. But, it was more for posting video and photos of the event on the web. She said for reliving the moment, it beat the heck out of dragging out the projector and screen like back in the olden days, if I could relate. I could relate.

My wife would often get it in her head that the family should re-experience various events, usually coinciding when the kids or I had something else we were about to do. That meant getting the projector and screen out of storage and digging through a mountain of slide magazines to locate her selections. Then, I’d have to set all this up and go hunt down the inevitable replacement bulb. By the time this came together, we’d have to round up the kids who were bouncing off the walls somewhere. As they would be each time the projector jammed.

Now, it’s so much easier. Hard day at the office? Click, I’m on a beach in Florida. Click again and I’m in a canyon in Utah. Click and it’s the mountains of Costa Rica.

The only way to fly.

And he leads Otis Campbell by six

Police are seeking to arrest Timothy Akers on charges related to stolen credit cards. If successful, this will be #102 for the 40-year old criminal. The system works!

Even if you don't do the math, you might assume that he gets arrested as often as you pay your estimated taxes, but doesn't get convicted. You would be wrong.

He does get convicted. He also gets paroled. I'd love to have been a fly on the wall at the parole hearing after arrest number...oh, say 91.

"Have you learned your lesson, now?"

"Oh, yes, this time I have."

"Okay, we believe you. Parole granted."

I'll take "Primates" for $300

I opened up my email at the office this morning and saw one from the managing partner of the law firm we use. Good grief, what now? Usually, the news comes from one of the associates, so I braced myself for a real kidney punch.

Quite the opposite. I received a distinction for which I would trade all my imitation walnut plaques and imitation gold plated imitation plastic trophies.

She had attended a banquet last night. The emcee posed a question to the audience about who was the first to do something and offered a gift certificate as the prize. She answered correctly and won it. I was the answer.

I don’t think I’ve ever been the answer to a trivia quiz before. At least one that didn’t involve extradition law or evolution.

I told her she owed me the certificate or at least a split. I had turned down an invitation to the banquet. If I had been there, I probably would’ve guessed the answer.

Paint your way to a better future

Another blast from the past, courtesy of Facebook. And, another thing that had less significance to me than the other person. In this case Bill, a friend from the college days, emailed his favorite memory.

Bill, Tom and I were freshmen and had joined the same small organization on campus. Tom came back from classes one day with a flyer about the upcoming Sigma Sigma Carnival. Sigma Sigma is an honorary organization at the University of Cincinnati that recognizes students who make significant contributions to life at the university. Part of their funding comes from the annual carnival. It consists of booths put up by numerous other organizations. Their incentive is the competition for generating the most income with whatever product, game, etc. their booths offer.

Tom suggested that we enter the competition. We enthusiastically went before our organization’s council to propose that and got slam dunked. We’re small. We don’t have a chance against the big organizations. They have all kinds of resources and always put up elaborate stuff. Forget it. Waste of time and money.

We left the meeting deflated and stood in the outer hall. “Heck with them,” I said. May not be an exact quote. “Let’s just do it. We’ll kick butt. If they want the trophy, they can reimburse us.” I said it as fervently as I could to catch up Bill and Tom in the emotion. They told me to get lost. May not be an exact quote.

I talked them into coming up to my room and pulled out a pencil to write ideas on the wall. This was the college years. “Forget about booth ideas. What gets everyone excited? If we can’t take the competition with bucks, let’s outthink them.”

It was the late 60s. The summer of love. Tie-dyed shirts and bellbottoms. Black light posters. Strobes. UC was a little closer to the mainstream of the movement than Quakers, but the student body was anxious to get into the swim. How could we help them?

I suggested that the buzz word for the booth be psychedelic. Tom proposed we sell LSD. I didn’t see myself signing the entry form, taking responsibility for that. Had “Exhibit A” written all over it. Didn’t believe in messing with brain chemistry anyway, except maybe with some 3.2 beer.

I won’t go through the details of the thought process, but the basic strategy was to beat the budget constraints by taking something prosaic and dressing it up as psychedelic. Almost every cornball carnival I had seen around that era had a “paint booth.” That is, a trash can with an electric motor in it. The motor had a frame on it that would spin a piece of white cardboard. There were plastic squeeze bottles (the kind you see in restaurants for ketchup and mustard) that held paint of various colors. The patron would hit the switch to spin the cardboard and then squirt paint onto it. The motion would spread the paint in spiraling patterns. What I rechristened, psychedelic patterns.

It wasn’t just that. I recalled this as being addictive. You’d crank out one and want to try to do better on the next. And, the next. And, the next.

For a backdrop, we found a used piece of canvas and painted a pink and black spiral on it. The sign was a board painted flat black. We glued sugar cubes on it for the lettering. Tom got his LSD reference after all.

There were 70 booths. Of that, 69 finished behind us.

It was good to win, but not all that big of a deal to me. Apparently, not so for Bill.

In his recent email, he said it was a turning point in his life. From then on, he never assumed something couldn’t be done and he’s been pretty successful and happy as a result.

Okay, now it’s a big deal to me.

Lovin' this Facebook thing

I am lovin’ this Facebook thing. For some reason, hooking up with distant relatives and old friends seems to flow better than through other web alternatives.

One fascinating aspect is what things people find memorable and I don’t, and vice versa. This is especially true with friends from my childhood.

Leads was a recent reconnection and he surprised me by bringing up something I hadn’t thought about in a long time. He and Klep were waiting on me to finish fixing something on my car so we could go out bombing around. Our nomenclature for cruising.

I had my head tucked under the hood and they were sprawled out on the ground, talking about who knows what. I somehow arced a plug with a tool. The plugs are downstream from the coil, which jacks up the battery current from 12 volts to about 40,000, to the best of my recollection.

I also arced, across the driveway, much to the delight of my pals. I will admit, in the pantheon of guy humor, a buddy getting fried and going airborne ranks pretty high.

I could hardly be critical of Leads. When Wally Pock contacted me, the first thing I thought of was an episode in gym class. He bounded high off the trampoline, if a bit off center, executed a flip and plummeted down into a straddle of the frame. We found it hilarious. I don’t recall him dating much after that.

Along the same lines, Fizz brought up an encounter I had with Mr. Prither, our physics teacher. He looked like a physics teacher sent over from central casting. And, five minutes into his class, you just knew he’d been on the receiving end of wedgies from grades one through twelve.

No crime in having been that, but get over it. He apparently was stained with a lifelong mania against anyone who wasn’t a fellow pariah and singled out all in his classes who appeared to have anything going for them.

One day, it was my turn in the barrel. That night, I was walking to my car with Fizz after a basketball game. The weather was subzero. A car beeped from behind and we got over to the edge of the parking lot. As it drove past, I saw that it was Mr. Prither and muttered something that cast doubt upon the legitimacy of his parentage.

His head whipped around and the car skidded to a halt. Why would I suppose someone would have his window down in that weather? It didn’t help that he leaped out, hit a patch of ice and went down hard on his butt. The memory of that wasn’t something foremost in my mind, but Fizz said the look on my face was something she’d never forget.

Not all reminiscences have been focused on my foibles and some even seemed to smack of cleansing of guilt. Or, so it seemed with Zat.

We lived on the same street. The bond was mainly that, in the fall of ninth grade, he had band practice after school and I had football. We’d walk the mile home together.

That era coincided with Sarah, the new girl in school. All the boys were making a run at her, including Zat and I, but she had her shields turned up to full power. Sarah was all Zat talked about on the way home from school. He described her as the archetypal girl-next-door. You’d have to have extraordinary luck with neighbors for that to be so. She was somewhere between Audrey Hepburn and Natalie Wood.

One afternoon, Zat was waiting for me in the parking lot. I was approaching him from the wrong direction because Coach Allison had been in a foul mood and gave us some extra nutcracker drills. Zat and I argued about whether he would wait for me to change into street clothes or just head home on his own.

In the midst of this, we heard a musical, “Hi Henry, is that you?” It was Sarah and about four more words than she had uttered to me since she had enrolled.

We bantered giddily while Zat chewed his lip and studied his shoelaces. She asked about an upcoming dance, as though she didn’t know, and I inquired if she was going with anyone yet.

At that point, Zat’s eyes came up to meet hers. “You do know he’s wearing shoulder pads under there, don’t you?”

Zat had carried that around for lo these many years? He was seeking absolution and I told him I had never given it a second thought. That was very big of me.

Of course, if she hadn’t agreed to go to the dance…

Four-doorness

My first “grownup” car was a 1971 Dodge Polara. Base model, nondescript blue, small hubcaps.

Actually, it was my wife’s car. She came with a car, but it got totaled parked in front of her parents’ house. She picked this out (used) as its replacement and I bought it for her. Up until this point, marriage had been a minor intrusion into my personal life. If this kept up, the arrangement could become a real annoyance.

I remember looking at the Dodge in the driveway in all its four-doorness. It looked like something the elderly gent across the street would drive. Had it come to this? Was I already on the downhill side? Shudder.

What prompts this is the unexpected death of an elderly friend. He handled everything in his marriage, so his widow is hampered by lack of experience and the shock of the event. I’m helping her handle the transition.

One of the first things she said she wanted to do was replace their car, an older Mercury Grand Marquis. Talk about stereotype cars. She said it was too big for her. Heck, it's too big for Shaq. I’m pretty sure the actual issue was the memories engendered in it, but that didn’t matter. It had to go.

She was going to take it to the salesman they got it from. She preferred a different brand, but they had been dealing with him for years and he knew how they took care of cars.

True enough. My friend was an engineer and anal-retentive to the extreme. The car had low mileage and was showroom condition. I wasn’t counting on that drawing a lot of water with the salesman and told her not to consummate a deal without checking with me.

He tried to pressure her into a buy, but she held firm and gave me the particulars. I had researched values of her car and the one she discussed with him.

I called him and he was thrilled to hear from the fly in his ointment. I discussed what the net should be and he responded he was already giving her full trade-in. Off sticker, not what the price should be. And, the market wasn’t exactly on his side. I was trying to negotiate a compromise and he was working on his Simon Cowell impression. When it became apparent that he was intent upon shooting himself in the foot, I told him that we’d let him know.

I called the widow and gave her a number to offer as a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. She was afraid he’d turn it down and be angry. His problem.

I asked what her downside was. She wouldn’t trade it to him and go get the car she preferred? She was afraid she’d be stuck with the Mercury. No danger of that. He needs sales badly. If worse comes to worst, I’d buy the car from her and she could get what she really wants. But, he won’t reject the deal. Unless he puts winning ahead of income, he’s got to take it.

That’s how I came to own the Mercury.

But, wait. It gets better.

I’m standing in the driveway, contemplating the car in all its four-doorness and who pulls up but the ex. She sidles up alongside me. “Whose car?”

“Mine,” I mutter without looking away from it.

“But…”

“I got a decent price.”

She chewed on that a bit. “When I called you last year about Vera’s, you said you didn’t want an old man’s car.” Vera, a business associate of hers, had died right after buying a Cadillac Coupe D’ Metamucil or some such thing. She called me to let me know it was available through the estate. Vera had outlived all her relatives.

“Yes, I did say that.”

“And now, you have one,” said the ex with an inflection she enjoyed more than I.

“Yes. Yes, I do.” Okay, now it’s complete.

You say tomahto...

I was researching some exotic locations for potential kayaking expeditions. One web site described the water as having "a beautiful cafe' au lait hue."

In Ohio, we call that "muddy."

Job opportunities in tough times

I was meeting someone for a breakfast this morning. Someone tapped my shoulder and I turned around to see the Johnnie smile. I couldn’t help but laugh. You can’t help it when you run into Johnnie.

Johnnie owns a business in town, but I haven’t seen him for many years. We first crossed tracks in college. An organization on campus was placing foreign students with various types of organizations that had their own living facilities (fraternities, religious groups, clubs, etc.) so they could acquire a more in-depth understanding of our culture. Johnnie was placed with us, and had absolutely no problem assimilating.

A few months after the placements, the organization held a meeting of their wards and asked each of them to stand up and relate what they’ve learned about the culture in their new homes. Johnnie told them about life with us.

They sent someone to get his things. They didn’t even let him come back for them. They just relocated him that night.

Johnnie and I stayed in touch up to graduation. He contacted me then with a proposition. Even though he had become enamored with the lifestyle here, particularly with his money, it looked like he’d have to go back home when his student visa expired. He was from a very wealthy family in a very poor country.

The economic disparity meant that rich families lived in walled compounds. They employed bodyguards, especially for leaving the compound.

The proposition was that I go home with Johnnie and be his primary bodyguard. He would provide me with a cottage in the compound, three women and “plenty peegs an’ cheekins.”

I graduated in the midst of a recession. “Exactly how many pigs and chickens are we talking about?” This might not be the worst offer I received.

I didn’t accept the job and Johnnie didn’t have to go home. He was able to get advice from some highly placed officials about how to get his visa requirements waived. Of course, he paid some very substantial “consulting fees” for that.

The lesson of history...

...is that man never learns the lesson of history. A friend read my blog about the credit card fiasco, recognized the bank and sent me a promotional letter he received from them last month. It was astounding enough for him to save it.

It was selling mortage loans with these features (and these are direct quotes from the letter):

"Up to 105% loan-to-value ratio...for instance, if your home is worth $100,000..." (I won't keystroke their entire example here, but if you have to explain that 105% of 100,000 is 105,000, should you be making a loan to that person for greater than property value?)

"No appraisal required on most single-family homes"

"No minimum credit score" (I will repeat, these are direct quotes.)

"Interest rates are at record lows"

And finally, drum roll please: "No employment, income or asset verification required"

My friend thought there might be a scam afoot, with someone replicating the bank stationery. So, he called. Nope, it's legit. It's part of the new stimulus package. Since the bank accepted federal bailout money, they are obligated to offer these terms, congruent with the Making Home Affordable Program.

Let's see, the government previously compelled banks to make high risk loans, which blew up in everyone's face and helped precipitate a financial crash. So, the solution is that you take money from productive taxpayers (who might've otherwise spent it on goods and stimulated the economy), give it to banks and require them to make even riskier loans?

I'm not seeing a lot of learning here. Then again, it probably has little to do with economic stimulus.

Line of the night

From a dinner debate tonight at a literary club I belong to:

"You can't tell me how India really is. You haven't even been there."

"Yes, but I've talked to most of them on the phone."

The fraternity of the blue stripe

I blogged that I turned down an invitation to a company party because I no longer knew anyone there and didn’t feel a connection. I may have erred in equating the two.

My schedule’s a bit askew this week, so I find myself swimming laps at varied times. There’s a different set of swimmers and the activity doesn’t facilitate much interaction. You’re basically staring at the stripe on the bottom of the pool for an hour, which doesn’t facilitate spontaneous interaction.

As I was toweling off, one of the others finished up dressing. As he walked by, he left one of the gym’s bottles of lotion on the bench by me, saving me a trip to the sink area. Pool water is hard on the skin.

The consideration is part of being in the fraternity of the blue stripe. (Most sororities refer to themselves as a fraternity of women in their charters, so the term isn’t exclusive). He didn’t know me, but there was a connection in the shared discipline of the activity.

The fact that we weren’t competing is irrelevant. My son swam for a university, and home team parents always went out of their way to accommodate opposing swimmers and their parents. That was ten years ago and he still often travels with little hotel or meal expense, staying with people he competed against back when. The fraternity endures.

This is true to varying degrees in other fields, but not always. A few years ago, I attended a 40th high school reunion. As some old teammates (not swimmers) leaned on a bar in the wee hours of the morning, one mentioned that his new neighbor had played against us for Woodrow Wilson High School. The motion was made and seconded that we go kill him. I’m not feeling the love here. Fortunately, the argument that there would be too much paperwork and legal expense prevailed.

A connection exists in many activities, professions and other subsets. I paddled with some other kayakers this weekend and there’s a definite bond. One of them referred to the membership we share in the brotherhood of the ink-stained fingers (publishing).

But, there’s something about swimmers. There are no adoring crowds at meets (aside from family and a smattering of friends), few paychecks, no fun gear and endless weeks of grueling practice to compete in a race that lasts seconds. Nothing comes easy. It certainly lacks panache, except for the scant occasions when a Mark Spitz or Michael Phelps spices it up for fifteen minutes. It’s not for everyone.

Someone asked me how I could stand the tedium and effort, given the alternatives that provide play, scenery and other amenities. Part of it is personal discipline. The rest is the connection to the fraternity of the blue stripe.

The best job in the world

A friend of mine was writing a piece on why he has the best job in the world. He polled his predecessors for thoughts on the position. I was one of them. He was surprised by the response.

I can’t say anything I’ve done is the best or even my favorite. They all had pros and cons.

My first professional position was with a Fortune 500 company when they were living fat and happy. The upside was the money flowed like water. You flew first class, ate at the finest restaurants and expense accounts were rubber-stamped. Even better, I seldom encountered resistance getting funding for interesting ventures I conjured up. The minus was that internal politics ruled. There was more emphasis on acquiring a bigger budget than the division on the next floor than on taking market share from the competition.

My next position was with a family-owned business, almost the antithesis of the prior situation. That rewarded me with the satisfaction of driving their profits up by millions. The flipside was that my compensation went up by thousands. A lesson in the rewards of ownership. Not a priority today, but it mattered then.

Another position was a very successful start-up and the pride that comes with pulling that off. The major letdown was when the investors insisted on cashing out with a buyer to whom price was no object. It was like putting your baby up for adoption.

I greatly enjoyed rapid prototyping and product development. It provided world travel and perspective, along with knowing what innovations were coming down the line before they hit the shelves. The travel was wearing. You jump six to twelve time zones every other week and your body doesn’t keep pace with the clock.

In another enterprise, I conceived and developed a product that changed the course of a few hundred million dollar industry, if only by degrees. That’s pretty heady stuff. However, when there’s a big pot on the table, things get ugly quickly. There were 800lb. gorillas on one side, who would do about anything to keep the product off the market, and partners on the other, who would readily cut a throat for another percent of the take.

There were other stops in between, but these stand out. Now, I run a nonprofit treatment center for the indigent population of mentally ill and drug & alcohol addicts. The good days are when you feel you prevented at least one adolescent from committing suicide or substance abuser from losing a job. Those are very good days. The bad ones are BPD group. Imagine those few people you know from work, church, a web chat room, etc. who are always at the root of 90% of the friction. It’s easy to ignore a few. Now, fill a building with them. Talk about your black holes of negative energy.

Here’s where my friend and I part ways. I don’t define myself by what I do for a living and don’t rely upon it for all my life satisfaction. Raising two children to fine adults is at the top of the list. One of the most fun things I’ve done is found and grow a paddling group to one of the best of its kind. Providing people with adventures and life experiences they might not have otherwise enjoyed is hard to beat. I taught adults part-time in a weekend college for twelve years, which I wouldn’t call a position. Hard to put a value on when someone comes up to you and tells you about their achievements with the help of what they learned.

I also think my friend puts too much weight on the position as opposed to the person. I was speaking with a carpenter and fabricator this past weekend, both of who take a lot of pride in their craftsmanship and work ethic. Maybe they have the best jobs, in terms of how they approach and execute them. If they’re happy, they do. I always advise my employees, you're spending most of your waking hours here. Are you going to feel better about your life if you just walk through the motions or go all out and see your part in the advancement of the organization?

Finally, he looks at it as what he is today. Today will be history tomorrow. I’m more concerned with what I will accomplish and be then.

Hope I didn’t rain on his parade with an answer that was incongruent with his theme. But, he asked.