The Corporate Visit

Between management and customers, I'd rather deal with the customers.

I’ve had several storylines that have dealt with upper management visiting, and there’s a good reason for that. No matter where I worked staff would respond to a corporate visit by acting, oh how can I phrase it, like adult children. Suddenly we were all back in school and the principal’s boss was in town. You better behave yourself in front of Superintendent Chalmers or you just might get expelled.

I worked at a place where bigwigs were flying in from bigwig headquarters for some bigwig reason and the story was that they might visit a few locations in the metropolitan area. Managers acted very professionally by excusing themselves so they could cry in the bathroom and then proceed to lose their minds. They developed a crack management team that visited each store to make sure everything was in perfect order, then a phone team was established so that they could warn store managers that the bigwig motorcade procession was headed their way. It was a solid week of panic, planning, and tidying up.

The bigwigs didn’t visit any stores. They went to a bar after their local bigwig event.

My favorite CEO interaction was with the director of a very large library system. He wasn’t a CEO until he renamed his position from “Director” to “CEO”, but by golly he was a CEO by the time I interacted with him. He spoke to me about the downtown library eventually becoming the hub of a “Silicon Valley” of information, the envy of the world. This guy thought a lot of the library. And himself.

For some reason he eventually didn’t like me. I’m not sure why. Sure, I made fun of him in cartoon form and in emails, but I think it was because (as the British would say) I’m a Ginger. That had to be it. Too much red in my hair.

One time I had to attend a late night event that was with the City Council and the CEO. There was also a television reporter and a small camera crew. Afterwards, the CEO went down the line of people and shook everyone’s hand. Without batting an eye, he passed right over me as he shook the hand of the person before me and then the person after me. I responded by bursting out laughing and making his smile falter a bit. I think we bonded that day.

I decided that most CEOs have some sort of untreated mental illness. Leadership draws the power hungry, and power hungry is a symptom. Maybe it’s narcissism, but it could also be something that’s responsive to treatment. The guy I described above was ultimately fired by the City Council. He recovered quickly, became the CEO of another major library system in the middle of the country, and then he was fired again. His career arc was over and I considered that a form of treatment.

We really need a crack telephone team to inform the customers when higher ups are coming to visit. We’d all get the best customer service we’ve ever had.

There’s always somebody who has a personal relationship with a higher up. It may or may not help their career path, but in this CEO’s case I’d be nervous around April Bloom.

Here we go. William, or perhaps Billy. You may think that I overdid his hair. I can assure you that I did not. William/Billy is based on a bigwig with the most outrageous hair I’ve ever seen on a man with grown children. I think he used whatever money that normally goes to car purchase for a mid-age crisis on his hair. It was amazing. Whatever we spoke about is forgotten to me. I was too stunned by the magnificence and perfection of whatever the hell he did to his hair.

A lot of wrong things are said by the person in charge and a lot of people who know better let them say it. Are the yes men thinking of the big picture or of themselves? I think we all know the answer to that.

Tabby is clearly making no effort to act differently. To expect otherwise is not to know Tabby.

See K in the background? That’s me today. I’ve had enough interactions with CEOs.

I’ve said it a million times, but if you’re really good at your job and they want to make you a manager of that job, don’t think that it’s the same job with additional responsibilities. Managing a job that you like is a good way to no longer like that job.

I stand by this. Some jobs just attract the best people. Call them weird if you wish.

I’ve seen a lot of people try to introduce new, great things, and most of them were just above horrible on the ol’ New, Great Things scale. I’m just a spectator on this one, but if you want a fun read Google “Who is the CEO who ruined JC Penny?” That guy, unfortunately, tried to reinvent the wheel.

There’s always a sigh of relief when the bigwigs are gone. It really is no different than being in school. We can relax, release the Berle, and focus on more pressing matters. Like toilets.