Making the Rounds

I used to work for a CEO/Founder in Cube City who got ousted from his brainchild. His choices were going out of business or trying to save the company by leaving and appointing a successor. He chose the latter.

The person who replaced him was much older, grayer, and stuffier -- your basic corporate nightmare. The guy would make the rounds every day, like a doctor visiting sick people in the hospital. He would come by every day at 8:00 AM to say hello. He'd stick his head into each person's cube and cheerfully say, "Hello, there!" He'd take a second to look around too, to see if he could catch you doing something that you shouldn't be doing. His approach never worked with me, due to my excellent hearing ability and the chronic swishing of his suit pants as he walked. I'm not sure if he came by later than 5:00 PM to say goodbye every night. I just know I wasn't willing to stick around after a long day to say goodbye to him.

I found his rounds to be more like policing. But I didn't want to get arrested, so I made sure I was sitting in my office chair with work-related documents displaying prominently and convincingly on my computer screen at 8:00 every morning. I would say hello to him and feel like my major work for the day was done.

It became very stressful to appear as though I was happy to be sitting in my cube at 8:00 every morning, and I really didn't get paid enough at that time in my life to humor a grossly overpaid suit. I didn't know much, but I knew his priorities were a little misplaced. He was supposed to be saving the company, not checking the temperature of each cube dweller's chair.

I left the company after a few months of the grossly overpaid suit making his rounds. I greatly enjoyed saying goodbye to him, mostly because I no longer had to say hello.