Human Intercourse

You realise that when you're told that CEOs read sixty books a year there's an implicit statement there that those are worthwhile books, for some value of worthwhile?  Ah, I wish you weren't looking so puzzled.  Yes, yes, you're reading books, but they're books aimed at children.  Rather young children, in fact.  No, I think you'll find that the expected age for someone reading Mr. Bump is three.  I'm sure it is very educational, but reading sixty Mr. Men books in a year is not something to shout about unless you're still of an age when you haven't learned not to shout.  Hmm.  Well, it's odd you should ask that actually, since I do know someone perhaps a little older than you who would have genuinely benefitted from reading the Mr. Men books.  Well, perhaps having them read to him.  No, he's a Director of Technology... ah, I see that pride and hubris are the ways to your heart.  Yes, you're quite right, someone who wants to be CEO shouldn't be picking their books from a mere Director's reading list.
I'm Buddy.  No, I don't work for you. And no, security won't come up and throw me out, they let me in.  Yes, I'm expected, although perhaps not by you, and that's usually the case.  I'm a life-coach, a guru of sorts, a transcendental meditationalist... no, not a transformational medalist, though I was one of those briefly as well.  One of the Olympic Games.  No, I'm not telling you which country I represented, but I am mildly flattered by the asking.  Put your phone away – photographing me was uncalled for.  Well I'm glad it's not come out clearly.  Don't try again or I'll break your wrist.  What?  Some secret guru trick, obviously.  It took me sixteen years in the wilderness to learn it, seeking out an ancient and wise teacher and submitting to humiliation, punishment and heartache.
Well if you must know the Wilderness is a club in LA, but all the rest is right.  Well ok, years might be hours, and wise might be drug-addled and heartache might be heartburn.  It's the thought that counted in this case and I can still break your wrist.
So I'm here to talk to about human intercourse.  Yes, yes, I was expecting you to say that.  And that.  No, I wasn't expecting you to show me that, please put your phone away now.  I believe you.  Of course I believe you, you've just shown me the picture.  Thank-you.  Human intercourse, or the ability to hold a conversation with someone.
Yes, and that's the problem; you can't manage people if you can't relate to them, and you can't relate to people if you can't talk to them, and you seem pathologically incapable of saying the right thing.  I've seen the list of complaints made about you and frankly, if I were your HR team, I'd be sending you in for biological salvage and reprocessing.  What?  What year is this?  Damn, I could have sworn it was... never mind.  I'd have had you sacked and evicted from your home, then hunted from city to city by killer-clown and murder-hobos.  Yes.  Yes they're a thing.  They're going to be very big in a couple of months.  Anyway, your HR team have asked me to intervene a little.
Thoreau said something useful here, but I don't like quoting people other than myself as it dilutes my brand, so I'm going to tell you a little parable instead.  This is the parable of the parrot and the dermatologist.
Once upon a time there was a parrot that lived in a cage that was located on the 26th floor of a very expensive building somewhere not too far from Manhattan.  The parrot had an owner who was blind, both physically and mentally.  Every day the owner would clumsily fill the parrot's feed dish, and add water to the cage, and then, in the silence of the parrot's feeding, would call her son and believe the lies he told her for anywhere up to an hour on the phone.  After the phonecall was over the parrot was always quiet while it digested its food and considered the side of the conversation that had been audible to it, and so it would listen contently while its owner talked some more and debated with herself if she was good enough mother and what she could do to be more loving.  On one occasion she sent a large basket of sweaters, gloves and legwarmers to her son to surprise him, and on another she ordered a hundred bouquets of flowers to be sent to all the staff in his office with a small card attached containing a random quotation from Dorothy Parker.  The parrot would silently approve, and the owner would feel validated.
One day the owner felt that while she was doing everything she could for her son she was perhaps neglecting the parrot a little, and so she called a dermatologist to come and exfoliate the parrot and perhaps provide it with a little massage.  She considered her finances, and decided that the parrot could even request a 'happy ending' if it was so inclined.  The dermatologist arrived at the appointed time and was led, stumblingly, to the parrot's cage.
"Oh dear," said the dermatologist.
It transpired that the owner had weighed the parrot down under the load of birdseed and then waterboarded it repeatedly until it drowned, all unaware that her attempts to care were mere murder.
What?
The moral of the tale is that lying to your mother will cause your staff to stop working and ponder why eternity should be a man, a woman, and a ham locked in a room.
Ok, how about, the moral of the tale is that tragedy happens when silence is misunderstood? Or possibly that you shouldn't sell parrots to blind people?
Your takeaway from this?  If you have to ask, you didn't listen hard enough, did you?  Well... no, I don't think I want to tell that tale again.  OK, so your takeaway should probably be that staff like gift baskets, but that legwarmers won't be back in fashion again for another twenty years. Go with that, I'm sure it'll help sort the complaints out.

Right or happy?

Well hello there once again! I heard that you've been missing me when I'm not here; I have to tell you to stop that. Stop it at once. Naughty boy! Bad!
It's like this, you see, I'm not your own personal Buddy. This isn't a Depeche Mode song, you can't put my picture in the little pocket in the sun-visor on the passenger side of your car... well, I'm afraid you'll have to take it out and give it back to me. How did you get hold of it anyway? Look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way, but either way I get my picture back and you get something broken.
But like I said, this isn't a Depeche Mode song, and you should probably do something about your hair. That much grease can't be good for it, even if it is Premium Lard. Actually, no, I don't think Asda do Premium Lard. Well, at that price, it has to be their Economy lard. You have to scrape it out of the hole yourself? Then I think it's just fat from the sewers and it's probably hazardous to your health even to collect. I certainly wouldn't put it in my hair. Definitely not my chest hair. Nor even – actually, I think you should stop talking now. And sit further away from me.
I'm Buddy, I'm your guardian angel, at least as far as corporate culture goes, and I have wisdom to impart.
Would you rather be right or happy? Obviously we'd all like to be both, all of the time, but that isn't always possible. Being right can make us very unhappy, and being happy is often a consequence of being oblivious to what's right. Let me explain with a simple parable. Ok, koan then. I didn't know you even knew that word.
Once upon a time there were two worker bees who were tasked with taking the toxic waste from the hive and disposing of it. The first worker bee was cheerful and always looked on the bright side of life; for him the glass was always half-full and the clouds had solid silver linings that could be sold for drug-money. He picked up the first of the barrels of toxic waste and flew happily away, pleased to be helping to clean the hive and make it a better environment for everybody to live in. But when he arrived at the designated dumping site he realised that it was a children's playground, and when he saw that his instructions were to put the old, leaky barrels into the paddling pool where the water could cool them he saw that the barrels wouldn't stay cool enough, and that the children would be poisoned by the gradual seepage.
And so he flew away and took the barrels home with him, hoping to find somewhere else to dump them, or to change his boss's mind about the dumping ground. But because he needed to fill his quota to get paid, he had to keep more and more barrels at his home, and eventually he got sick and his wings fell off, at which point he also lost his job. And so he ceased being happy, and the knowledge that he had done the right thing was no comfort to him at all.
The second worker bee was morose and grumpy; for him the glass was always someone else's and they were demanding to know why he'd been drinking from it and wanting him to compensate them for their loss. He also picked up a barrel of toxic waste and flew with it to the children's playground, and there he was cheered up by the realisation that children would sicken and die and there would be other people in the world as miserable as he was. And so he flew back and forth with alacrity, the smile on his face getting wider and wider until he'd met his quota and exceeded it and was, for possibly the first time ever, ecstatic with joy. So he was happy, but only because he knew he wasn't in the right.
The moral of this tale, is, of course, that when you buy a house you should always make sure it has a deep enough cellar to store barrels of toxic waste safely.
Now, which of those worker bees would you rather be?
Really? Well, that is interesting. I have to go now, and if you should happen to see me talking to a policeman, well that'd be about a completely unrelated matter. You can trust me. Really.

The wisdom of Buddy

Hi, my name's Buddy. I'll be your spiritual guide for a while. There's a lot I have to teach you before you'll become enlightened, but the journey's part of the learning process and trust me, it's going to be fun. But before we start, I want to tell you a parable.

Years ago, when I worked in an office for a while, I was stood outside a meeting room telling a group of colleagues how I'd managed to clinch a business deal the day before with an inspired use of judo when one of my colleagues, a tall man with a saturnine aspect, said distinctly, "I hate you, Buddy."

"Do you?" I replied. "Do you really hate me? Do you wake in the morning fresh from dreams of burying me alive in an unmarked grave in Epping Forest? Does your breakfast have an iron tang to it, because you know in your heart of hearts that it should be seasoned with my freshly spilled blood? Do you drive to work focused intently on the road ahead, hoping that I'll appear at the roadside so that you can veer to the left and run me down? Is your day spent planning in meticulous detail how to get me to electrocute myself in the washroom?"

"Or is your hatred of me the weak, insipid kind that etiolates your spirit, drags your mood down with your low-level revulsion, not only of me, but also of yourself for your inability to do anything about it? Do you earn yourself an ulcer for never releasing your rage? Do you deprive yourself of happiness, hoping that some spiritual voodoo will transfer it over to me, and that karma will kill me for you?"

"Where is your passion in your hatred? When I hate, I hate intensely, like the bright light of a supernova, and just like the supernova, my hatred explodes outwards in wonderful, fantastic luminence, slaughtering everything in its path."

"I don't hate you that much," said the tall man looking sulky and disappointed. He shuffled his feet and frowned.

"Do you hate like that all the time?" asked another colleague.

"Of course not," I responded. "But I carry my passion throughout everything I do. In the absence of hatred, other emotions may take the stage. When I love, I love so thoroughly that everything else ceases to matter. I never have to ask if the earth moved because if you'd even noticed the earth, then it wasn't me loving you. And when I set out to make a deal, I make my deal and the handshake that seals it is like the sonorous ringing of the judgement bell for all concerned."

We dispersed at that point and went back to our desks. The tall man continued to hate me in his small, mean way for another two days, after which time he unaccountably opened a window and stuck his head out while the trees outside were being pollarded. The chainsaw sliced messily through his neck, and I looked up just as his head fell past the window, and I know I saw recognition in his eyes.

The moral of this parable is, of course, that tall men can always be cut down to size.