Don’t Kill The Magic

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Our office is really heating up. Literally, heating up, because apparently this whole place is on steam heat ala 1919, what with the Freddy Kreuger boiler room and the asbestos wrapped piping and multi-columned, ornately decorated cast iron radiators making awkward banging noises as if two Midwest teenagers were catching a drive-in movie in a 1982 Chevrolet El Camino.

The problem is no one can figure out how to turn the heat down. All the radiators have this little dial thing at the base which we assume regulates the amount of steam/heat that fills the grates, but apparently no one around here is strong enough to get any of them to budge. Not even our new ruggedly handsome intern Mel, who both attended Brown University and played lacrosse for Brown University, as he makes readily apparent by exclusively wearing Brown University paraphernalia. Including (of course) his beat-up, old lacrosse t-shirts which barely contain his massive, polished, now-perpetually-glistening biceps.

God, we got to get this heat fixed.

So we sit here and sweat and secretly wonder how we can get Mel to either chill out or leave. Plus we don’t have the heart to tell him that on the West Coast nobody cares about Ivy League education. Sure, West Coasters may be unduly impressed, fawn, or even cower, but behind the cowardice, timidity, and constant stoned-ness, they don’t really care.

Excluding, of course, anyone who attended Stanford.

The Trouble With Stanford

As soon as a Stanford graduate hears someone’s pedigree that even remotely sounds like it could be from a bluer blood-ish, grossly more elitist institution on the East Coast they get all squirrely and paranoid and start talking about famous Stanford alumni like (sigh)…

· Sundar Pichai

· Chelsea Clinton

· Phil Night

…or even Elizabeth Holmes—the convicted felon—because they’re so worked up they just stop thinking straight and forget the liability associating oneself with a sociopath creates.

The good news is we’ve brought on some talented, inspirational folks to help us out, none of whom have Ivy League educations or even lessor Stanford educations because we can’t afford it. Maybe that’s also why we collectively can’t figure out how to turn the heat down.

For full disclosure, we’re not sure if any of these people graduated high school, let alone college, or held the job their resume claims they held, because who has time to check? What are we supposed to do, call their professors/former managers and ask them what kind of student/employee they were?

Okay, Panama offers a resounding “YES” and is just beside herself over our cavalier attitude toward the whole corporate HR process thing, but we keep reminding her that you can bring in the top-tier pedigrees and impressive resumes and still end up with a train wreck of a culture and organization, because amidst all the performance no one bothered to teach these kids real skills like listening, perpetual learning, adaptability, empathy, and courage.

Anyway, here are a few employee bios worth mentioning. There are others worth mentioning of course, but we’re just not that interested in those people right now, plus we figure if we could create a real tense environment and show favoritism from the outset the team will perform better in the long run. Nothing motivates better than toxic manipulation like excluding key stakeholders from important conversations, prescribing tasks, admonishing feedback, championing the loudest in the room, and ultimately creating a Squid Game-type survival of the fittest work life situation.

Hey, who’s idea was all that gaslighting stuff again? And why is Panama storming into our office? Better get to it.

Meet Your Leadership Team Those Deemed Leaders By The System You’re In

Laura Eddlehaur, Chief Technology Officer

Laura graduated summa cum laude from, ah, Toyota Technical Institute of Chicago? Come on you guys that’s not even a real…oh.

“TTIC is known for its high-quality research and graduate programs in areas like artificial intelligence, theoretical computer science, and robotics.”

That’s good, we need all that stuff. What’s weird is during her interview when we asked Laura for her take on chat-based communications, specifically the preponderance of workplace chat via Slack and all that rather than email, or the never-ending ubiquitousness of texting via mobile phone, her response was, “Yeah, they say it’s faster, but it’s really just an excuse to think less.”

You’re hired!

Roland Fishladen, Chief Financial Officer

Roland’s resume was rejected from Indeed, which we figure is a first, and we’re all about trailblazers here. Especially given that the problem with starting a business like ours is deciding how to cheat on our taxes just enough that we save some money, but not enough that we go to jail.

Roland is a former mob accountant who got busted for paying a 19-year-old Romanian kid to hack the IRS database, which is why we got Roland at a discount. Although he consistently recommends we do the “cash only thing,” and proudly admits that he cheats on his weight loss app, so we’re reconsidering the wisdom of this key hire.

That being said, Roland’s brimming with ideas, which is key to working here. Our favorite is his idea for a Crime Spree Evasive Driving course for younger criminals who, quite frankly, pose quite a danger on the road. We’re kind of egging him on given the U.S. driving school market is estimated at $1.5 billion with a 2.3% compound annual growth rate. All we need is a measly .4% of that.

Go Roland!

Oh, he holds several fast track certificatesfrom Paradise Valley Community College. Which fit the bill just fine as far as we’re concerned.

Yvette Roland-Smith, Chief Operating Officer

Yvette hails from New York City, and like Mr. Brown University, her East Coast social norms ruffled some feathers at first. Yvette did that classic thing New York People do when they move to the West Coast and start work, which is talk relentlessly about how they’re “from New York” or “lived in New York “so [insert reason why they’re better than you here – i.e., we’re direct/we get to the point/we’re not afraid to argue/we’re used to only the best food,” etc.].

The only reason the situation calmed down was (to our surprise) Comptroller Ed Quackenbush finally heard enough, popped out of his Herman Miller Aeron Chair and told Yvette, “If it’s so great, just move back.”

Love that guy.

Yvette graduated from Niagra University with a Master of Science in Management and Systems, which means we’re all likely to be fired in a year. And she’s highly cross-functional: we keep catching her coaching the junior salespeople into not being so timid by comparing their utter lack of confidence and neurotic insecurity to “Being a shy stripper. It just doesn’t work.”

Which she of course stole from Chris Rock, which in turn is why we’re liking her more and more.

Paul Newton, Chief Marketing Officer

Oh man, this guy’s so nice it makes us uncomfortable.

1. He posted all the awards his mom saved from his childhood on his website and LinkedIn profile…lots of Most Improved Player: 1987 Pee Wee T-Ball, Handsomest Boy: Third Grade-type stuff. And it’s not to be ironic, he’s genuinely proud of them…and his mom.

2. During his interview when asked to describe his hobbies he replied that he sometimes willingly drives in rush hour traffic just so he can stay in the slow lane and let people who need to merge from the onramp in.

3. It gets worse: he was, no joke, the only person born on his birthday. We checked. Panama won’t let us share the date, otherwise we would.

4. On his first day he entered a prompt to create a process improvement document into ChatGPT and it wrote the Bible.

It’s like the dude crawled out of a tripped-out science fiction novel. We’ll get over it. Eventually.

For the boring stuff, Paul attended Washburn University and majored in symbiotics with a focus on mutualism while getting a minor in marketing automation. Which basically makes him both the most wholesome and most effective marketer on the planet.

We take some solace in the fact that Paul is constantly pulling at his khaki pants to get his (we hope) underwear out of his butt, so he’s not perfect.

And we’re pretty sure we heard him take a business call while on the toilet, so he’s fitting in nicely.

TeeJay Tiefton, Chief Revenue Officer

TeeJay is a girl which we apparently get in trouble for saying but it’s not to be genderists, it’s for precision. We don’t envy her gig: developing and executing growth strategies, forecasting and managing revenue, overseeing pricing strategies, and contributing to strategic planning? No problem. Aligning sales, marketing, and customer service and support teams? Smoking hole in the ground. You’d have to be insane to be responsible for that. But that’s why TeeJay garnered the highest salary of anyone on the team, $275,000.00. Which apparently we’re not supposed to disclose so forget we said that.

Teejay got an MBA from the University of Georgia, worked for Rivian, then went through Wharton Executive Education’s Chief Revenue Officer Program. She’s quite demure despite all the stripes. In her interview she said, “My superpower is that I have really smart friends,” which pretty much sealed the deal as we knew we needed someone kind, grounded, and empathetic to balance out all the crazies and crackpots we have in this joint.

It Could Be Worse

That’s the short list of who’s in charge around here. To ensure everything stays on track and nobody goes rogue with a bunch of corporate posturing tomfoolery as we get ready to launch, we force every employee to enroll in our professional development program, Don’t Kill The Magic. (Enrollment includes a $250 “registration” fee which we definitely don’t use for anything administrative…registration fees are pure free money oh Lord it’s great.) Don’t Kill The Magic is basically a mini version of the Marine Corp Boot Camp where we tear you down then build you back up into the visage we need.

Sure, the building back up is no fun, but the tear down is simply delightful. We ban PowerPoint, recurring meetings, working after 5:00 p.m., unscheduled Zoom calls, buzzwords, acronyms, verbal explanations of strategy, instructions, or feedback, and all the other useless tools of the corporate industrial complex’s trade. You should see the look on their faces when they realize we’re serious, and the WHINING oh goodness it’s unbelievable…from grown adults!

But in about 6.5 business days (we timed it with a stop watch), people realize it feels much better to stop hiding behind things, and simply get to work.

Especially when the work matters.

 

Thanks for reading. If you know someone who needs to look busy at work, send them this story. But we mean tell them they have to scroll the bottom to sign up and stuff…help them out a lil’bit…get them ready for it…you know?

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