State of the Company

I have worked for many dumb asses in Cube City, but the dumbest of them all was the CEO of a company a few Cube Cities ago. He had a background in sales and that's really all he knew how to do...and he didn't do that very well. He sold the unsuspecting investors on keeping him at the helm year after year, even as product sales continued to dwindle. The investors didn't see him surfing ESPN and making multiple trips to Starbucks on a daily basis, so they were easily snowed.

At the end of the year, the dumb ass CEO always did the same oppressive things:

• Shut the company down for the last two weeks of the year (you had to use your own PTO, even if you didn't want to)
• Scheduled a low-budget, buy-your-own-drinks (even tea and cola) holiday party the third week of January so that people couldn't use their spouse's holiday party in December as an excuse to ditch
• Held a mandatory State of the Company meeting for all employees

At the State of the Company meeting, he always said the same things:

• "We've had a slow year, but end-of-year sales will hopefully pick up and sustain us like they usually do."
• "People are catching on about how great our product really is. Really."
• "We project $20 million in sales next year, even though we didn't meet our projected $10 million in sales this year."
• "We're in the black, but we're not out of the woods yet."
• "Because we're not out of the woods yet, there will be no holiday bonuses this year or raises next year."

I never believed anything positive he had to say, but I always scanned the room and was amazed to see the gullible wide-eyed nodders who believed what he sold. It made me sad.

I was always pretty sad that I didn't believe him. I wanted to have hope. I wanted to be sold. Instead I got wise and worked for as long as I felt like I was adding more value than negativity. That's the real price we pay in Cube City.