CEOMG

A long long time ago in 2006 CEOs were a strange breed. Always were and still are but they were allowed to hit peak nutbag before the financial crisis. I’ve worked for many. Nice ones, nasty ones, louds ones, quiet ones, introverts, extroverts, all sorts. One thing they all had in common was an ability to function at a very high level and obsessively drive the company forward while dealing with a level of pressure the rest of us mere mortals can only imagine. I say, all. One was useless and this is her story. We’ll call her Lisa.

So how did Lisa fuck things up so quickly? One of her first initiatives was a companywide live Q&A in which she would stand on a desk and read out and answer pre-submitted questions in-front of the whole company. Best bit – she didn’t read the questions first! All in the name of honesty! The result was fantastic. The very first question was:

“Who do I go to if I’m being bullied by someone in HR?”

Boom!

After we’d all turned around to look at the HR department for a speedy game of bully-Cluedo (my money was on Claire, in the kitchen, with the kettle) we’d moved on to question 2.

“Can we drink wine in the office if we are working late?”

The answer was yes and it was met with cheers of support – a reaction Lisa was not used to but clearly enjoyed. Her brief (and possibly solitary) moment of success was cut short by the next question.

“Someone keeps hiding wine in the ladies toilets, this is not hygienic, can you make them stop?”

Shit! Who would have thought that this sad revelation of someone with an obvious problem would come straight after the former question and the jovial reaction to allowing wine after hours. We all noticed it but weirdly Lisa didn’t and started laughing. She was the only person laughing and we all noticed that too because she was standing on a desk.

“Now I know we all like a drink and this job can drive you a bit crrrrrrazy”

“Oh fuck me no! – Really?” The whole room thought. Even Claire in HR was horrified and she’d just been outed for steeling some graduate’s lunch money.

Lisa had no empathy. An instinctive lady – she spoke first and though occasionally which often resulted in catastrophe. He prided herself on being a shoot from the hip kinda gal but she frequently shot herself and others with the lack of aim that she was so proud of. She could be amazingly offensive without realising it, sometimes being even most offensive when she was trying not to be. This weakness was universal but particularly acute when she was speaking to people who weren’t white. Let the record reflect that there was no evidence of racism but her brain and she were on different sides and the latter could rarely rely on the former in social discourse.

Example.

Random black person on the street: “Excuse me – do you have the time?”

Lisa: “It’s 4:30 and by the way if I’d been alive 200 years ago I wouldn’t have been OK with slavery even if I could afford one of you and had some jobs I needed doing. Have a good day”

Admittedly a made up story but a plausible one as I’m sure you’ll agree once I explain what happened when she was introduced to a black woman who also happened to be one of the most senior and important figures in our company’s global organisation.

For all of Lisa’s faults and to her credit, she was quite happy to talk about them (or this story might not have seen the light of day). That said – because she didn’t realise they were faults which is obviously worse, it was only a matter of time before she said something stupid to someone more senior than her.

Are we sitting comfortably? Than I’ll begin.

On the afternoon in question the whole company was on edge as we were effectively being inspected by our American overlords. Floors were polished, inductions were written and Claire was on hand with the kettle in case anyone said anything they shouldn’t.

Staff and examples of work were paraded past the Americans like North Korean missile carriers before they addressed the troops with “Hey Guys”, “Good jobs” and “Awesomes” from the one and only American work-place speech that was available at the time.  The “I’m a Maverick” and “Sustainability rocks” speeches wouldn’t be written for a few years yet.

Someone had made the wise move to lock Lisa away in her office while all of this was going on knowing full well that she would probably greet the Americans with “That 911 was a bit shit wasn’t it” before regaling them with stories of our company’s alcohol addition and HR flushing people’s heads down toilets. This plan was a good plan but it only bought time. We all watched terrified as the aforementioned powerful lady was led into Lisa’s office.

Lisa jumped to her feet and her brain left the office. She successfully introduced herself without bringing up the Iraq War or Rodney King which for her was some achievement. Sadly her success was short-lived and with completely undeserved confidence she searched for something innocuous that she could use to create empathy between the two of them. She noticed the lady in front of her was holding a pair of black gloves. She had a similar pair of black gloves. Before she knew what she was doing she had reached into her draw and was putting on her similar black gloves. This was the point where normally one’s brain points out the lunacy of what you are doing and steps in but as I said her brain and she were not on speaking terms and the former was not invited to the meeting.

The gloves were on. Lisa was waving. Fuck knows why.

Lisa broke the silence with what she thought was a tension relieving jovial observation while continuing to wave.

“Look at us, we are two black ladies of the night”.

Fuck me – she’d just called her African American boss a black prostitute while waving at her.

She’s meant “We ladies have got the same black gloves” which was inane and stupid but so so so much better than the racial hooker reference.

Obviously Lisa was completely unaware of her mistake but to her credit she did realise she was still waving and wisely decided to stop. She removed her gloves, put them back in the draw and smiled across the table hoping that it was someone else’s turn to speak. It was but no one did. Her boss simply left the room, building and country with the correct assumption that the UK office was under questionable leadership.

When she told us of the story she thought the mistake she made was simply putting the gloves on and that because they were too small, they took a while  to take off. Maybe she was right. If the gloves don’t fit you must acquit.