Chapter Four. Stepping Over Your Co-Workers

   Okay. Now you can take phone messages. You can go to meetings. In short, you can do everything that can be reasonably expected of an employee. If you want, you can spend the rest of your professional life very comfortably doing these things. Ultimately, you can look forward to getting a couple of small promotions, followed by retirement, followed by death, followed by having your body eaten by insects and bacteria and then excreted in the form of basic chemicals that will serve as fertilizer for unattractive plants with names like “duckweed.” Is that what you want?
   I didn’t think so. Because you’re the kind of person who wants to be Number One. Not in the sense of being bacterial excrement, but in the sense of having POWER. We’re talking about CLOUT. We’re talking about having a staff so large that when you have a dental appointment, you send an aide to get his teeth drilled. We’re talking about CLAWING YOUR WAY TO THE TOP.

Getting Promoted

   You can’t expect to get a promotion right away, of course. You should wait two, maybe even three days before you start pushing for it. This will give you time to look around to see who your serious competitors are, to size them up, to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, and to crush them under the freight elevator.

Ethical Question: Do You Have To Be Scum To Get Ahead?

   As the famous baseball codger Leo Durocher was fond of saying before he died: “Nice guys finish last.” There is some truth in this. Take the example of Attila the Hun, who was an unpleasant person but an extremely successful Hun, one of the top Huns in the business. His lesser-known brother, Bob the Hun, was a nice guy, but a failure. Bob would show up with this horde outside a medieval village and say, “Listen, would you folks mind if we raped the women and stole everything and killed everybody? You would? Oh my gosh! Sorry!” And off he’d slink, very embarrassed. His was by far the lowest-ranked horde in the league.
   But that is just one isolated incident. There are plenty of examples of nice people who DID get to the top. Just look around! There’s, ummmm, there’s ... ah, hmmmmm. Ha ha! I’m sure there are lots of examples, and for some reason I can’t think of a single ... wait! I’ve got one! Mother Theresa! That’s it! Here’s a very nice person who nevertheless rose to the top of her profession. So the moral is: even in this dog-cat-dog, highly competitive world, you can be a decent human being and still attain a career position where you kneel in the Third-World dirt trying to help the wretched and diseased. But if you want to succeed in a large modern corporation, scum is definitely the way to go.
   Okay, let’s talk nuts and bolts. In most corporations and organizations, a person gets promoted via a five-step procedure:
   1. He works diligently and competently at his job for several years.
   2. His superiors gradually start to notice him.
   3. Somebody above him in the organization dies, retires, leaves, or is promoted, thus creating an opening.
   4. His superiors, after carefully considering all the qualified candidates, promote him.
   5. An announcement of the promotion is put up on bulletin boards throughout the building, and his co-workers gather around and pound him on the back
   (many of them aim for his kidneys).
   This procedure is all well and good for most people, but you are not “most people.” You are a highly motivated individual who wants to be on the fast track, and you cannot afford to fritter away valuable time working diligently and competently at your job. So your best bet is to skip over steps 1 through 4 and go directly to the only really essential step: the bulletin board announcement. Type it on a quality typewriter, using the format shown here.
   I am very pleased to announce that (YOUR NAME) has been promoted to the position of (NAME OF POSITION YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE PROMOTED TO) and will henceforth receive a much larger salary. He will report to me, in the unlikely event he ever has anything to report.
   (NAME OF RANDOM VICE-PRESIDENT) post
   That’s it! All you have to do now is put it up on the bulletin boards and wait for the congratulations to pour in from your co-workers. Don’t let them circle around behind you.
   Okay, I know what some of you are thinking. You’re thinking: “Dave, doesn’t this particular method of career advancement carry with it a certain element of risk?”
   Yes, it does. For one thing, you have to be very careful about what position you promote yourself to. If you pick a position with a highly specific name such as Auditor, people might expect you to actually “audit” something. You want to pick a position involving words that could mean virtually anything, such as Coordinator and Administrator. If you promote yourself to Coordinating Administrator or Administrative Coordinator, nobody will ever be able to pin an actual job responsibility on you. You can devote full time to deciding on your next promotion.
   Another possible problem is: What if your company uses the kind of bulletin boards that are covered by little locked glass doors? What you have to do here is find the person who has the key—this is going to be a low-level employee, of course—and make friends with him and explain that if he will let you use the key, you will promote him to a much, much better job than screwing around with bulletin boards. Like, if your company has a fleet of corporate jets, you could offer to make him a Senior Pilot.

How To Act Like An Executive

   As you gradually work your way up through the organization over the course of, let’s say, a week, you’re going to have to change. You’re going to have to become an executive. This means showing maturity, integrity, and leadership. It means having the foresight to know what needs to be done, and the courage to do it. It means not picking your nose in group situations.
   Did you ever see Lee Iacocca pick his nose? Or, for that matter, anybody’s nose? Of course not. Lee Iacocca didn’t get to be one of the top executives in the history of the world by publicly engaging in personal nasal hygiene. He got there by wearing sharp clothes and smoking expensive cigars. He got there because he had executive style. You need to get hold of some, too.
   I do not mean to suggest for a moment that all it takes to be a top executive is a custom-tailored European suit. You also need the correct shirt and tie. And for women executives, there is the whole issue of hosiery. This is why I have devoted an entire chapter later in this book to the crucial matter of your wardrobe. But for now we’re going to talk about the human side of the executive’s job, by which I mean the side where you use humans for various purposes.

Dealing With Your Subordinates

   Always remember this: your subordinates are not machines. They are human beings, with the same needs, the same wants, and the same dreams as you. Okay, maybe not all the same dreams. Probably they don’t have the one where you’re naked in a vat of Yoo-Hoo with the Soviet gymnastics team.
   But they want to get ahead, just like you do. They, too, are part of the Carnival of American Capitalism. Like you, they want to reach out from the Carousel of Hard Work to grasp the Brass Ring of Success. And when, after riding ‘round and ‘round, they finally get their shot at realizing this dream, your job, as a caring and concerned superior, is to give them that extra shove they need to pitch forward off their horses and land headfirst among the Discarded Candied Apple Cores of Failure. Because there are only so many Brass Rings of Success, and you sure as hell don’t want a bunch of subordinates barging past you and snatching them all.
   So the trick, with subordinates, is to keep them happy, productive, hopeful, and—above all—subordinate. Here’s how you do this:
   1. MAKE THEM THINK YOU’RE THEIR FRIEND. The way you do this is by engaging in casual office banter with them to indicate that you are just a Regular Person Who Really Cares for Them as Human Beings. Keep a little file with a three-by-five card for each subordinate, on which you’ve written personal details such as the subordinate’s nickname, hobbies, sex, etc. Review these cards regularly, then go out and make personal remarks to your subordinates:
   YOU: Hello, “Bob.”
   SUBORDINATE: Hello.
   YOU (glancing at your three-by-five card): So! You’re still a white male with an interest in photography, eh, “Bob”?
   SUBORDINATE: Yes sir.
   YOU: Ha ha! Good. Let’s engage in casual office banter again sometime soon, “Bob.”
   SUBORDINATE: Yes sir.
   YOU (moving along to next subordinate): Hello, there, “Chuck.” I am very...
   SUBORDINATE: Excuse me, sir, but my name is Mary. Chuck left last year.
   YOU (testily): Not according to this three-by-five card, he didn’t!
   SUBORDINATE: Yes sir.
   YOU: As I was saying, “Chuck,” I am very sorry your wife, Edna, died on October 3, 1981.
   SUBORDINATE: Thank you, sir.
   2. GET RID OF THEM IF THEY START COMING UP WITH IDEAS. Remember the old saying: “A subordinate capable of thinking up an idea is a subordinate capable of realizing that there is no particular reason why he or she should be a subordinate, especially your subordinate.” This is why dogs are so popular as pets. You can have a dog for its whole lifetime, and it will never once come up with a good idea. It will lie around for over a decade, licking its private parts and always reacting with total wonder and amazement to your ideas. “What!?” says the dog, when you call it to the door. “You want me to go outside!!? What a great idea!!! I never would have thought of that!!!”
   Cats, on the other hand, don’t think you’re the least bit superior. They’re always watching you with that smart-ass cat expression and thinking, “God, what a cementhead.” Cats are always coming up with their own ideas. They are not team players, and they would make terrible corporate employees. A corporate department staffed by cats would be a real disciplinary nightmare, the kind of department that would never achieve 100 percent of its “fair share” pledge quota to the United Way. Dogs, on the other hand, would go way over the quota. Of course they’d also chew up the pledge cards.
   The point I’m trying to make here, as far as I can tell, is that you want subordinates who, when it comes to thinking up ideas, are more like dogs than like cats. Ideally, you should determine this before you hire people, by giving them a test, as explained below.

Test To Find Out If A Potential Employee Is The Kind Of Person Who Thinks Up Ideas

   Show the person three forms, marked A, B, and C. Tell him that part of his job would be to fill out the three forms, then throw Form B away. Stress that this is company policy. If he nods and says, “Okay,” or if he asks you a question like, “How can you tell which one is Form B?” hire him. But if he says something like, “Gee, it seems kind of inefficient to fill out a form you’re just going to throw away,” get rid of him. This is the kind of person who will eventually, no matter how much training you give him, come up with an idea.
   You should also check the person’s references for telltale statements like: “Ellen comes up with a lot of good ideas.” Or: “Ellen is a real innovator.”
   What these people are trying to tell you is: “Ellen will get your job, and you’ll wind up on the street licking the insides of discarded chicken gumbo soup cans.

How To Fire People

   This is the most painful part of being a supervisor, except for the part when you slam your finger in a file drawer. You never want to fire anybody, but sometimes you have an employee who has done something totally unacceptable, such as stealing, or drinking liquor on the job without sharing it, or coming up with an idea, and you have no choice but to let this person go.
   There is no good way to fire an employee, but there are some things you can do to make it easier. You can have compassion. You can have understanding. You can have two large security guards named Bruno standing next to you and holding hot knitting needles. Call the employee in and say, “Ted, your performance has been unsatisfactory, so I’m afraid these two Brunos are going to have to poke out your eyes with hot knitting needles. I hate to do this, but the only alternative is to fire you.” At this point, Ted will beg you to fire him. He may well confess to the Lindbergh baby kidnapping.
   That about covers how you should behave around your subordinates. Now for the really important issue, which is:

How You Should Behave Around Other Executives

   Years ago, corporation executives tended to be middle-aged white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males with as much individuality, style, and flair as generic denture adhesive. Today’s corporations however, thanks to a growing awareness of the value of diversity and of avoiding giant federal lawsuits, have opened their executive ranks to people of all races and sexes, provided they are willing to act, dress, and talk like middle-aged white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males. This is what you need to learn how to do.

List Of Topics That Middle-Aged White Anglo-Saxon Males Talk To Each Other About When They’re Not Talking Business

   1. SPORTS.
   As we can see from the above list, if you want to get along with the other executives, you have to learn how to talk about sports. This is pretty easy, if you know certain key phrases, as shown in the chart.

Chart Of Key Phrases To Use When Talking About Sports

   SPORT SEASON KEY PHRASE
   FOOTBALL July to February “They got some really bad calls.”
   BASEBALL March to October “Some of those calls they got were really bad.”
   BASKETBALL August to March “I can’t believe some of those calls they got.”
   ICE HOCKEY Eternal “Can you believe some of those calls they got?”
   To you, these phrases may not seem to have a whole lot of meat on them, but believe me, middle-aged white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males can use them to keep a conversation going for hours.
   Here’s an interesting Ethical Question you might care to think about: if you go to a meeting of executives, and just by chance it happens that not a single one of you is a middle-aged white Anglo-Saxon Protestant male, do you still have to talk about sports? Or could you, in that one meeting, without telling anybody else, switch over to another topic, such as the theater? (“I can’t believe some of the reviews they got!”)
   My personal feeling about this is, it’s not worth the risk. Somebody might report you.

Joining A Club

   At some point, if you really want to make it to the top, you have to join a club. Actually, you have to join two clubs: one should be in the city, and it should be very old and have big dark drafty rooms where deceased members sit and read the paper all day. It should also have really bad food. The idea is, when you want to make a deal with an important client, you take him to your club for lunch, and eventually he realizes that unless the two of you reach an agreement, you’ll take him to your club again, so he gives you whatever you want.
   The other club is your country club. This is a place where during the day you can relax by putting on ugly pants and golfing with other executives, and at night you can hold social affairs where you give each other golf trophies and, if everybody is in a really funky mood, dance the fox-trot. This is called “networking,” and it is very valuable because in the business world, a golf trophy creates a lifelong bond between two people.
   Of course most clubs have certain requirements regarding who they will allow to become a member. I don’t mean to suggest here that they don’t admit minority groups. Ha ha! Don’t be ridiculous! After all, these are the eighties! Today’s clubs are more than happy to admit any minority person whatsoever, provided this person is also a member of the U.S. Supreme Court. But even if you don’t fall into this category, you should apply for membership. What’s the worst they can do? Laugh at you? Blow their noses on your application? Foreclose your mortgage? Have you fired and see to it that you’ll never again get a job, anywhere in the country, better than Urinal Cake Replacer? Don’t be intimidated! Go before the Membership Committee and explain to them that you really, sincerely want to join, and that you will work hard to be the best darned member they have ever had, and that you have photographs of them entering and leaving rooms at the Out-O’-Town Motor Lodge and Motel in various interesting groups of up to six people and two mature female caribou. They’ll welcome you with open arms. Don’t let them kiss you on the lips.

Computers In Business

   You won’t last long in the modern business world if you’re not comfortable with computers. Computers are involved in every aspect of business from doing the payroll to running the elevators, and if they don’t like you, they can make your elevator drop like a stone for 20 floors, then yank it up and drop it again until your skeletal system looks like oatmeal. So you damn well better read this chapter and get comfortable with them and become their friend.

Glossary Of Standard Computer Terms

   BUG: A cute little humorous term used to explain why the computer had your Shipping Department send 150 highly sophisticated jet-fighter servo motors, worth over $26,000 apiece, to fishermen in the Ryuku Islands, who are using them as anchors. DATA BASE: The information you lose when your memory crashes. GRAPHICS: The ability to make pie charts and bar graphs, which are the universal business method for making abstract concepts, such as “three,” comprehensible to morons like your boss. HARDWARE: Where the people in your company’s software section will tell you the problem is. SOFTWARE: Where the people in your company’s hardware section will tell you the problem is. SPREADSHEET: A kind of program that lets you sit at your desk and ask all kinds of neat “what if ?” questions and generate thousands of numbers instead of actually working. USER: The word that computer professionals use when they mean “idiot.”

How Computers Work

   The first computers were big clumsy machines that used vacuum tubes. By today’s standards, they were extremely primitive. For example, they believed the sun was carried across the sky on the back of a giant turtle.
   But the modern computer is much more sophisticated, and far smaller, thanks to a device called the “micro—chip,” which, although it is less than one-thousandth the size of a moderate zit, is capable of answering, in a matter of seconds, mathematical questions that would take millions of years for a human being to answer (even longer if he stopped for lunch).
   How does the computer do this? Simple. It makes everything up. It knows full well you’re not going to waste millions of years checking up on it. So you should never use computers for anything really important, such as balancing your personal checkbook. But they’re fine for corporate use.

How To Use Computer-Generated Pie Charts And Bar Graphs To Make Abstract Concepts Understandable To Morons Like Your Boss

   Let’s say you have to write a Safety Report. The old-fashioned, pre-computer way to do this would be something like this:
   In March, we had two people who got sick because they forgot and drank coffee from the vending machine. Also, Ed Sparge set fire to his desk again. Ed has promised that from now on he will put his cigar out before he dozes off.
   But now, using the graphics capability on your computer, you can produce a visually arresting and easy-to-understand report.

Chapter Five. Business Communications

   No modern corporation can survive unless its employees communicate with each other. For example, let’s say that Stan, who works in Building Administration, notices that the safety valve on the main steam boiler is broken. If he doesn’t communicate this information to Arnie, over in Maintenance, you are going to have little bits and pieces of the corporation spread out over three, maybe four area codes. So communication is very, very important. It should not, however, be confused with memos.

What Makes A Good Business Memo

   Ask any business school professor, and he’ll tell you a good memo is clear, concise, and well organized.
   Now ask him what his annual salary is. It’s probably less than most top executives spend in a month on shoe maintenance. What you can learn from this is that in your business correspondence, you should avoid being clear, concise, and well organized. Remember the Cardinal Rule of Business Writing (invented by Cardinal Anthony Rule, 1898-1957): “The primary function of almost all corporate correspondence is to enable the writer to avoid personal responsibility for the many major bonehead blunders that constantly occur when you have a bunch of people sitting around all day drinking coffee and wearing uncomfortable clothing.”
   There are big balloons of blame in every corporation, drifting gently from person to person. The purpose of your memos is to keep these balloons aloft, to bat them gently on their way. This requires soft, meaningless phrases, such as “less than optimal.” If you write a direct memo, a memo that uses sharp words such as “bad” to make an actual point, you could burst a balloon and wind up with blame all over your cubicle.

Standard Format For The Business Memo

   1. ALWAYS START BY SAYING THAT YOU HAVE RECEIVED SOMETHING, AND ARE ENCLOSING SOMETHING. These can be the same thing. For example, you could say: “I have received your memo of the 14th, and am enclosing it.” Or they can be two different things: “I have received a letter from my mother, and am enclosing a photograph of the largest-known domestically grown sugar beet.” As you can see, these things need have nothing to do with each other, or with the point of the memorandum. They are in your memo solely to honor an ancient business tradition, the Tradition of Receiving and Enclosing, which would be a shame to lose.
   2. STATE THAT SOMETHING HAS BEEN BROUGHT TO YOUR ATTENTION. Never state who brought it. It can be virtually any random fact whatsoever. For example, you might say: “It has been brought to my attention that on the 17th of February, Accounts Receivable notified Collections of a prior past-due balance of $5,878.23 in the account of Whelk, Stoat, and Mandible, Inc.” Ideally, your reader will have nothing to do with any of this, but he will think he should, or else why would you go to all this trouble to tell him? Also, he will get the feeling you must be a fairly plugged-in individual, to have this kind of thing brought to your attention.
   3. STATE THAT SOMETHING IS YOUR UNDERSTANDING. This statement should be firm, vaguely disapproving, and virtually impossible to understand. A good standard one is: “It is my understanding that this was to be ascertained in advance of any further action, pending review.”
   4. END WITH A STRONG CLOSING LINE. It should leave the reader with the definite feeling that he or she is expected to take some kind of action. For example: “Unless we receive a specific and detailed proposal from you by the 14th, we intend to go ahead and implant the device in Meredith.”
   The beauty of this basic memo format is that it can even be adapted for sending personalized communications to your subordinates (“It has come to my attention that your wife, Edna, is dead.”).
   In addition to writing memos, every month or so you should generate a lengthy report. This is strictly so you can cover yourself in case something bad happens.

Standard Format To Use For Lengthy Reports To Insure That Nobody Reads Them

   I. SUBJECT. This is entirely up to you. If you follow the format, it will have virtually no impact on the rest of the report.
   II. INTRODUCTION. This should be a fairly long paragraph in which you state that in this report, you intend to explore all the ramifications of the subject, no matter how many it turns out there are.
   III. STATEMENT OF PURPOSE: This is a restatement of the Introduction, only the sentences are in reverse order.
   IV. OBJECTIVES: This is a restatement of the Statement of Purpose, only you put the sentences in a little numbered list.
   V. INTRODUCTION. By now, nobody will remember that you already had this.
   VI. BACKGROUND: Start at the dawn of recorded time.
   VII. DISCUSSION. This can be taken at random from the Encyclopedia Britannica, because the only people still reading at this point have been able to continue only by virtue of ingesting powerful stimulants and will remember nothing in the morning.
   VIII. CONCLUSIONS: You should conclude that your findings tend to support the hypothesis that there are indeed a great many ramifications, all right.
   IX. INTRODUCTION. Trust me. Nobody will notice.
   X. RECOMMENDATIONS: Recommend that the course of action outlined in the Discussion section (Ha ha! Let them try to find it!) should be seriously considered.

How To Write Letters

   There are various types of letters you write in business, each requiring a different tone.

Letters To Customers Or Potential Customers

   The basic idea here is to grovel around like a slug writhing in its own slime. For example:
   Dear Mr. Herckle:
   It certainly was an extremely great pleasure to fly out to your office in Butte last week, and even though I didn’t have the enormous gigantic emotional pleasure of meeting with you in person to discuss our new product line, I was certainly extremely pleased and grateful for the opportunity to squat on your doorstep, and I certainly do want to apologize for any inconvenience or blood-stains I may have caused when your extremely impressive dog, Bart, perforated my leg.
   Your humble servant,
   Byron B. Buffington

Letters To Companies That Owe Your Company Money

   In these cases, you want to set a tone that is polite, yet firm:
   Dear Mr. Hodpecker:
   In going over our records, I note that you have not responded to our invoice of January 12, nor to our reminders of February 9, March 6, April 11, May 4, and June 6; and when we sent Miss Bleemer around to discuss this matter with you personally, you locked her in a conference room with a snake.
   Mr. Hodpecker, we of course value your business, and we very much want to keep you as a customer. At least that is what I am trying to tell my two top collection assistants, the Bulemia brothers, Victor and Anthony. They, on the other hand, would prefer to keep you as a pet. They even bought one of those little cages that airlines transport animals in. To me, it looks just barely big enough for a cocker spaniel, but Victor and Anthony believe they can make you fit.
   Expecting to hear from you very, very soon in regards to this matter, I remain
   Sincerely yours,
   Byron B. Buffington
   P.S. Victor has a complete set of auto-body tools.

Letters Of Recommendation

   You have to be thoughtful here. See, anybody can get a nice letter of recommendation written about him (“Mr. Hitler always kept his uniform very clean”). So most prospective employers tend to discount what such letters say. This means that to make any kind of impression at all, you must exaggerate violently.
   Let’s say, for example, you’re writing a letter of recommendation for a good employee named Bob, and you tell the simple truth:
   “Bob Tucker is by far the best foreman we ever had. He never missed a day of work, got along well with his subordinates, and increased our productivity by 47 percent.”
   If a prospective employer saw such a ho-hum letter of recommendation, he would naturally assume that Bob was an arsonist child molester. You should spice up the letter with statements such as: “Working on his own time during lunch hour, Bob developed a cure for heart disease.” Or: “On at least three separate occasions, Bob sacrificed his life so that others might live.”

The Basic Rules Of Business Grammar

   1. USE THE WORD “TRANSPIRE” A LOT. Wrong: The dog barked. Right: What transpired was, the dog barked. Even better: A barking of the dog transpired.
   2. ALSO USE “PARAMETER.” Wrong: Employees should not throw paper towels into the toilet. Right: Employees should not throw paper towels into the parameters of the toilet.
   3. ALWAYS FOLLOW THE PHRASE “TED AND” WITH THE WORD “MYSELF.” Wrong: Ted and I think the pump broke. Right: Ted and myself think the pump broke. Even better: It is the opinion of Ted and myself that a breakage of the pump transpired.
   4. IF SOMETHING IS FOLLOWING SOMETHING ELSE, ALWAYS LET THE READER KNOW IN
   ADVANCE VIA THE WORDS: “THE FOLLOWING.” Wrong: We opened up the pump and found a dead bat. Right: We opened up the pump and found the following: a dead bat.
   5. ALWAYS STRESS THAT WHEN YOU TOLD SOMEBODY SOMETHING, YOU DID IT VERBALLY. Wrong: I told him. Right: I told him verbally.
   6. NEVER SPLIT AN INFINITIVE. An infinitive is a phrase that has a “to” at the beginning, such as “Today, I am going to start my diet.” You should not split such a phrase with another word, as in “Today, I am definitely going to start my diet,” because it makes you sound insecure about it. It sounds like you know darned well you’ll be hitting the pecan fudge before sundown.
   7. NEVER END A SENTENCE WITH A PREPOSITION. Prepositions are words like
   “with,” “into,” “off,” “exacerbate,” etc. The reason you should never end a sentence with one is that you would be violating a rule of grammar. Wrong: Youse better be there with the ransom money, on account of we don’t want to have to hack nobody’s limbs off. Right: ... on account of we don’t want to have to hack off nobody’s limbs. Even better: ... on account of we don’t want to have to hack off nobody’s limbs with a chain saw.
   8. AVOID DANGLING PARTICIPLES. A participle is the letters “ing” at the ends of words like “extenuating.” You want to avoid having it “dangle” down and disrupt the sentence underneath: There appear to be some extenuating circumstances. Hey! Get that participle out of here!! Ted and myself feel that these ...

Common Grammar Questions

   Q. When’s it okay to say “between you and I”?
   A. It is correct in the following instance: “Well, just between you and I, the cosmetic surgeon took enough cellulite out of her upper arms to raft down the Colorado River on.”
   Q. What is the purpose of the apostrophe?
   A. The apostrophe is used mainly in hand-lettered signs to alert the reader that an “S” is coming up at the end of a word, as in: WE DO NOT EXCEPT
   PERSONAL CHECK’S or: NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY ITEM’S. Another important grammar concept to bear in mind when creating hand-lettered signs is that you should put quotation marks around random words for decoration, as in “TRY” OUR HOT DOG’S or even TRY “OUR” HOT DOG’S.
   Q. When do you say “who” and when do you say “whom”?
   A. You say “who” when you want to find out something, like for example if a friend of yours comes up and says, “You will never guess which of your immediate family members just lost a key limb in a freak Skee-Ball accident,” you would reply: “Who?” You say “whom” when you are in Great Britain or you are angry (as in: “And just whom do you think is going to clean up after these elk?”).
   Q. Like many writers, I often get confused about when to use the word “affect” and when to use “infect.” Can you help me out?
   A. Here is a simple pneumatic device for telling these two similar-sounding words (or “gramophones”) apart: just remember that “infect” begins with
   “in,” which is also how “insect” begins, while “affect” begins with “af,” which is an abbreviation for “Air Force.”
   Q. I have a question concerning the expression: “As far as Fred.” I would like to know whether it is preferable to say: “As far as Fred, he always gets the hives from that spicy food”; or, “As far as Fred, that spicy food always gives him the hives.”
   A. They are both preferable.
   Q. What do they mean on the weather forecast when they say we are going to have “thundershower activity”?
   A. They mean we are not going to have an actual thundershower, per se, but we are going to have thundershower activity, which looks very similar to the untrained eye.
   Q. I think my wife is having an affair.
   A. I wouldn’t doubt it.

Making Speeches And Oral Presentations

   Most people, no matter how competent they are, break into a cold sweat when they have to speak in public. This is perfectly natural, like being afraid to touch eels. But once you learn a few of the “tricks of the trade” used by professionals, you find it’s surprisingly easy, and can even be fun! I’m talking here about eel-touching. Public speaking will always be awful.
   There are, however, some standard techniques you should be aware of:
   1. ACT VERY NERVOUS. A lot of inexperienced speakers try to act cool and confident, which is a big mistake because if your audience thinks you’re in control, they’ll relax and fall asleep. So you want to keep them on their toes. Have a great big stain under each armpit. Speak in a barely audible monotone. From time to time, stop in mid-sentence and stare in horror at the water pitcher for a full 30 seconds. Try to create the impression in your audience that at any moment they may have to wrestle you to the conference table and force a half dozen Valiums down your throat. After a while, they’ll start to feel really sorry for you. They’ll help you finish your sentences. At the end, if you ask for questions, the room will be as silent as a tomb. If anybody even starts to ask a question, the others will kick him so hard he may never walk again.
   2. ALWAYS START WITH A JOKE. Probably the most famous example of a good opening joke is the one Abraham Lincoln used to start the Gettysburg Address. “Four score and seven years ago,” he said, and the crowd went nuts. “What the hell is a score?” they asked each other, tears of laughter streaming down their faces.
   3. USE QUOTATIONS FROM FAMOUS DEAD PEOPLE. You can obtain these in bulk from Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, a book of quotations nobody is familiar with.
   4. USE A PIE CHART. This is pretty much a federal requirement for making a business presentation. It has to have the words “market share.”
   5. IF YOU HAVE TO SCRATCH SOMEPLACE LIKE YOUR CROTCH, DRAW THE AUDIENCE’S
   ATTENTION AWAY FROM YOURSELF VIA A CLEVER RUSE. Like, you could suddenly point at the window and say, “Hey! What the heck is that!”
   Now let’s see how you’d put all these elements together. Suppose you’ve been called upon to make a presentation to top management from all over the country to explain how come a new product, Armpit Magic Deodorant Soap, is not selling well. Here’s what you’d say:
   “Good afternoon. A priest and a rabbi are playing golf. The priest hits an incredible shot, and ...”
   (30-second pause)
   “Staring at this water pitcher, I am reminded of the Bartlett’s familiar quotation by the ancient dead Chinese painter, Ku Kai-Chih, who said: ‘Of all kinds of painting, figure painting is the most difficult; then comes landscape painting, and next dogs and horses.’”
   ...
   “But as this pie chart shows ... Hey! What’s that over there, away from my crotch!!??”
   “Ha ha! My mistake. But as this pie chart shows, our ‘market share’ for Armpit Magic Deodorant Soap is not going to improve in a day, or even two days. It’s not going to improve until we figure out some way to make it stop causing the consumer’s skin to develop oozing craters the size of Susan B. Anthony dollars. Thank you, and you’ve been a wonderful audience.”

Chapter Six. Giving Good Lunch

   When you’re trying to get a prospective client to sign a big contract, it’s a good idea to get him away from the formality of the office and into a relaxed dining environment that is more conducive to getting liquored up. But you must select the restaurant carefully: it could destroy the whole effect if his entree were to arrive in a colorful box festooned with scenes from Return of the jedi. No, you must select a classy restaurant, the kind with valet parking and dozens of apparently superfluous personnel lounging around in tuxedos. You can tell this kind of restaurant by its name.

Examples Of Classy Restaurant Names

   Eduardo’s
   La Pleuve en Voiture
   Ye Reallie Olde Countrie Manour Downes Inne

Examples Of Non-Classy Restaurant Names

   Booger’s
   The Chew ‘n’ Swallow
   Commander Taco
   When you arrive at the restaurant, turn your car over to the youthful narcotics offender in charge of valet parking and promise him a large tip if he doesn’t drive it over any preschool children. Now go inside, where you’ll be approached by the maitre d’hotel (literally, “man who run de hotel”). He will ask: “May I help you?” They’re always making this kind of snotty remark.
   This is where you get to show your prospective client that you have a great deal of savoirfaire (“five” dollar bills”). Hand the maitre d’ some money. Make sure the prospective client sees this; you might have to snatch it back and hand it over again several times, just to be on the safe side. Then say: “A table for two, my good man.” Wink at the prospective client when you say this, so he will realize that you are “slipping” the maitre d’ a little something” to “grease his palm.”
   At this point, the maitre d’ may say something like: “But sir, it’s 11 A.M. and we don’t open for lunch until noon.” He is indicating here that he would like several more five-dollar bills. This kind of thing goes on all the time in classy restaurants. Give your prospective client a knowing elbow in his rib cage, then stuff several additional bills into the maitre d’s breast pocket and say: “Oh, I’m sure you can find a table for us.” Don’t quit until he gives you one.
   When you are seated, your waiter will arrive with the menus and make the following three statements, all of which are required under the Federal Waitperson Control Act:
   1. His name is Thad.
   2. It will be His Pleasure to serve you.
   3. Would either of you care for a cocktail.
   (By the way, this is an ideal opportunity for you to make a witty remark, such as: “What, exactly, is involved in ‘caring for’ a cocktail? Do they need special food?” This will cause Thad to roar with approving laughter. Tip him $5.)
   Now as regards cocktails: the days of the “three martini lunch” are long gone. In today’s high-pressure, brutally competitive business environment, you want a minimum of four martinis, and you want them before the salad comes. Order the same for your prospective client. If he balks, stress that you’re paying for them, but that he should not feel obligated because of this.
   Now it’s time to examine the menu. This requires a great deal of concentration, because you no longer see the simple American menus you knew as a child. In those days, you’d mull over the menu for a while, then you’d say, “I’ll have the chicken or fish,” and the waiter would say, “Excellent choice,” and that would be that.
   But the modern restaurant menu is much, much more complex, consisting of two or three dozen totally unintelligible items.
   Don’t panic. Examine your menu carefully, trying not to let on to the prospective client that the only word on it you understand is “Menu” and wait for Thad to return with your drinks. Here’s what he’ll say:
   “Today we are out of everything on the menu, but we do have some very nice specials. For our appetizer, we have an excellent Tete de Chou au Sucre Flambe, which is a head of cabbage covered with sugar and set on fire; we also have a very nice Poisson Sacre Bleu, which is a Norwegian fluke that has been minced into tiny little pieces, then defiled in lemon sauce and stirred until dawn with attractive utensils; we have a superb Coquille St. Jacques au Lanterne, which is a pumpkin stuffed with live writhing scallops; we have a traditional Merde aux Tuilles, which is of course a beef which has been chipped, served with a white sauce on bread which has been toasted; we have a very popular Papier du Oiseau dans la Cage, which is ...”
   And so on. Thad will keep this up for maybe ten minutes, after which you should tip him $5 and tell him, “I’ll have the chicken, and my prospective client here will have whichever menu selection is the most expensive.” Stress to the prospective client that this will cost him nothing, as you are paying for it. In fact, it would be a good idea to reassure him on this point several more times during the meal, with such phrases as, “It’s on me” and “I’m paying for your food.”
   After you’ve ordered from Thad, the wine steward will come around and give you the wine list. The correct wine to select, of course, depends on the kind of entree you order, as shown in this handy chart:
   Entree
   Correct Wine
   Meat
   The appropriate wine here would cost at least $45 a bottle
   Fish
   With fish you want a bottle of wine costing a minimum of $45
   Poultry
   You should spend $45 or more for this bottle of wine.
   If you have trouble remembering all this information, don’t worry. Your wine steward will be more than happy to help you make your wine selection:
   YOU: How is this wine that costs $12 a bottle?
   WINE STEWARD: We use that primarily as a disinfectant.
   YOU: I see. Then we’ll have something much more expensive.
   WINE STEWARD: Excellent choice.
   When the steward brings you the wine, he’ll show you the label; you should examine it closely for spelling and punctuation errors (see The Basic Rules of Business Grammar). He will then pour a little into your glass. Taste it, and if necessary, have him add a couple of packets of Sweet ‘n’ Low.
   At the end of the meal, be sure to make a lighthearted remark about the size of the check, such as: “My God! This check is so large that unless I sign a big contract with a prospective client soon, I’ll never be able to afford the operation that will restore the precious gift of sight to my three-year-old daughter, Little Meg, ha ha!” This is your humorous signal to the prospective client that it’s time to “talk turkey.”
   “Ed,” you should say (if his name is Ed), “this meal has been a tremendously tax-deductible pleasure for me personally, but let’s get down to brass tacks. Looking at this thing objectively, I think it would be a big mistake for you not to sign this contract, especially if you want a ride home.” Now give him some time to think it over. Maybe even sprint for the door a couple of times, as if you’re running off without him. Better yet, offer to stay there until night falls and buy him dinner. He’ll come around.

Entertaining At Home

   The first question, of course, is: whose home? I think we can rule out your home, since, let’s be honest here, nobody in your home has ever made a really sincere effort to clean the toilets, and it’s far too late to start now. A much better bet would be the client’s home. Call him up and explore this possibility with him:
   YOU: Ed, Denise and I are wondering if you and Trudy would be free to have dinner with us at your home Friday night.
   CLIENT: What?
   YOU: How are your toilets?
   CLIENT: What?
   YOU: Cleaner than ours, I bet!
   CLIENT: You want to have dinner at our home?
   YOU: Sounds good to me! Eight o’clock Friday it is!
   You should arrive a bit early, say fiveish, to rummage around and make sure there’s plenty of pre-dinner liquor on hand. When Ed and Trudy come out of their bedroom, your first responsibility is to make them feel at ease. I suggest you get a copy of the Complete Book of Games and Stunts published by Bonanza Books and authored by Darwin A. Hindman, Ph.D., professor of physical education at the University of Missouri. This is an actual book, available at garage sales everywhere. I especially recommend the “Funnel Trick” described in chapter 4 (“Snares”), wherein you have the victim lean his head back and place a penny on his forehead, then you tell him that the object of the trick is to tilt his head forward so the penny drops into a funnel stuck into his belt. However—get this—while he’s got his head tilted back, you pour a pitcher of water into the funnel and get his pants soaking wet! Ha ha! Be sure to follow this with a lighthearted remark (“You look like a cretin, Ed!”) and offer everybody a swig from the liquor bottle.
   Now that everybody is loosened up, drop a hint (“God I’m hungry! Any food around here?”) that it’s time to move to the dinner table. Your goal at dinner, of course, is to somehow cause the prospective client to get a wad of food caught in his throat and start choking, so you can leap up and dislodge the food by means of the “Heimlich maneuver,” thus causing the client to be indebted to you for the rest of his life. This means you have to startle him just as the food is going down his throat. The most reliable way to do this is to have a pistol hidden under the table, and fire it off just as he starts to swallow. You should of course use blanks, as bullets would be irresponsible.

The Heimlich Maneuver

   Stand behind the victim and put your arms around him. Make a fist with one hand and grab it with the other, then yank your hands sharply into the victim’s abdomen, thus causing the wad of food to be expelled.

Heimlich-Maneuver Hockey

   Have two opposing players, each holding a victim, stand about six feet apart. Each player tries to expel his victim’s food wad into the other victim’s mouth.

What To Do If A Client Or Business Associate Dies

   Send a flower arrangement that does not have little pink or blue rattles in it. Wear black clothes to the funeral. If you don’t have black clothes, wear the darkest clothes you have. Tiptoe up to the next of kin during the service and explain this fact to them. “These are the darkest clothes I have,” you should say, taking care to whisper. Next you should tell them how awful you feel. “God!” you should say. “I feel terrible! Just horrible!”
   Next you should go up and examine the deceased, then go back and inform the next of kin how good he looks. “Ed looks great!” you should say. “You can hardly even tell he’s dead!” Unless Ed is in an urn.

Chapter Seven. How To Dress Exactly Like Everybody Else

   Take a moment to consider the way the world’s truly successful people dress. They dress like mental patients. Your prime example is Prince Charles. Here is one of the world’s top princes, if not the top prince, yet he is constantly showing up in public wearing ludicrous Sergeant Pepper-style outfits featuring hats with enormous feathers. Or you’ll see a picture of him visiting some remote fungal nation and cheerfully wearing ritual native vegetation around his neck. There are plenty of other examples of highly successful people who dress absurdly: Mick Jagger, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Ronald McDonald, to name just three. And of course you can’t find a really successful world religious leader who doesn’t wear a comical outfit.
   So what does this tell you about how you should dress if you want to succeed in American business? Nothing. Because the way we dress in American business is not based on the way the world’s truly successful people dress. It is based on the way John T. Molloy says we should dress. Molloy is the author of the best-selling books Dress for Success, The Woman’s Dress for Success Book, Live for Success, and Success in the Afterlife. He openly admits to practicing a science called “wardrobe engineering.” He has done extensive wardrobe research, wherein he tested the reactions of thousands of groups of people to the way different individuals were dressed. What he found, after years and years of study, was that the groups always liked it best when the individuals were naked. So he pretty much gave up the research and decided instead to author best-selling books containing incredibly detailed instructions on how to dress and what accessories to carry, instructions that were so slavishly followed by the business community that they briefly resulted in a worldwide shortage of Cross pens.
   The bottom line is, if you truly want to present a business wardrobe image that makes the all-important fashion statement: “I look exactly like everybody else in American business,” you damn well better dress the way John T. Molloy says you should. So listen up.

How Men Should Dress

   Basically, the American businessman should dress as though he recently lost his entire family in a tragic boat explosion. We are talking about a subdued look here. This doesn’t mean that you have no choice in what you wear. Au contraire. For example, you may wear two completely different colors of woolen suit: you may wear a dark gray woolen suit, or, if you want to get really crazy, you may wear a dark blue woolen suit.
   You may not wear a brown, green, or (God forbid) plaid polyester suit, because everybody will think you just tromped into town from rural Louisiana to attend the Live Bait Show. Men wearing these colors are very likely to be passed over for promotion, as is shown by this actual simulation of a scene that for all we know probably occurs every day in major corporations:
   (We are in the office of the president, who is meeting with a vice-president to decide whom to promote to director of the Research Department.)
   VICE-PRESIDENT: Well, there’s Barkley, of course. He’s the one who came up with the way to turn discarded wads of Kleenex into gold using only common household ingredients.
   PRESIDENT: What color suit does he wear?
   VICE-PRESIDENT: Brown.
   PRESIDENT: Well forget him.

Shirts

   Your shirt should be white, and it should not have the name “Earl” embroidered anywhere on it.

Ties

   The purpose of your tie is to suggest that you attended an Ivy League university, so the key is to select the right pattern.

How To Tie A Tie

   Face southwest, with the long end of the tie hanging down casually from your right hand (the audience’s left hand). Now bring the short end of the tie around the back of your neck and let it hang down your front, so that it just touches the scar you got ironing shirts naked. Now take the “wide” (or “long”) end of the tie and pass it three times around the “short” (or “long”) end, then up through the loop. (What do you mean, “What loop?” Check again!) Now pull everything snug, unless you have forgotten to put on a shirt, in which case you had best remove the tie, by force if necessary.

Shoes

   These are a “must” in most business situations. If you use “Odor Eaters,” they should be beige or navy blue.

Underwear

   No area of the male business wardrobe is as important as his underwear. Next time you’re in a room with a group of successful executives, take a few moments to examine their under-wear, and you’ll find they’re all wearing underwear with proven “power patterns” that have been shown in scientific tests to create a feeling of awe and respect in others.
   In situations where you really need to enhance your power image, you should wear your power underwear outside your pants. In extreme situations, such as you are arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court, you will want to wear them in an even more visible location, such as on your head.

How Women Should Dress

   In deciding how to dress for business, women must understand certain basic facts, the foremost being that all men are scum. If a woman, no matter how competent, gives off the slightest hint that she has any feelings that could be remotely construed as sexual, this is all that the men in her corporation will ever think about. That’s not just my opinion: it is a scientific finding based on years of extensively hanging around with guys and talking.
   What does this mean, in terms of your business wardrobe? It means you want to adopt a fashion look that has become the standard for the woman on the corporate fast track, a look that can best be described as: Modified Nun. All we’ve really done to the basic nun look is remove the headpiece. This conveys to the men in your corporation that you are not a sex object, but an authority figure who must be taken seriously because at any moment you might strike them on the hands with a ruler.

Hosiery

   This is mandatory. I realize you women hate to be constantly shelling out money for a product manufactured by an industry that pays its scientists huge bonuses if they can develop fibers even weaker than the ones they currently use. I realize you go around saying: “If we can land a man on the moon, why can’t we develop pantyhose that will last longer than a small vanilla cone on a hot day?” Well I’m sorry, but rules are rules. Also, we haven’t landed a man on the moon for a very long time now, and we probably never will again unless something urgent comes up, such as the Defense Department suspects there are Cuban troops up there.

Makeup

   A good rule of thumb is: if you can stick a pin more than a quarter inch into your face and still not feel anything, you’re wearing too much makeup for the business environment. Or else you have a medical problem.

Shoes

   The ideal shoe for the career woman is the basic pump with a “sensible” heel, by which I mean a heel that will just fit through the holes in a standard street grate

Chapter Eight. Sales

   What makes a good salesperson? In an effort to answer that question, I asked my research associates to interview the top 100 salespeople, based on dollar volume, in the nation. Naturally, my associates refused to do this. I wouldn’t have done it either. Life is hard enough without voluntarily subjecting yourself to top salespeople.
   What we can learn from this research is that if you want to become a top salesperson, you must develop drive, determination, and persistence such that people do not wish to be within thousands of yards of you. How can you become this kind of person? By BELIEVING IN YOURSELF. You must develop a FAITH IN YOUR OWN ABILITIES so strong that YOU DON’T FEEL THE LEAST BIT EMBARRASSED ABOUT ACTING LIKE A SCUZZBAG. You don’t get this kind of confidence from other people; it has to COME FROM WITHIN, from having a comprehensive, meaningful, and deep-rooted PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE based on TIMELESS TRUTHS, which you get from MOTIVATIONAL BOOKS THAT ARE ALSO AVAILABLE ON CASSETTE TAPES COSTING $49.95 PER SET.
   Without question, the number-one cassette thinker in the world today is Dr. Lance M. Canker, the man whose famous motivational tape “Dare to Be a jerk” is believed to be the single biggest factor in the historic decision by Coca-Cola executives to change the Coke formula so it tasted more like children’s cough syrup. Dr. Canker, who has had a lifelong interest in motivational thinking ever since 1963, when he had his name legally changed from “Lance Canker” to “Dr. Lance Canker,” has written a number of self-help books, including the hugely popular God, Are You Fat! But his greatest contribution to the business world is his classic how-to-sell book Buy This Book or You’ll Starve to Death, which is filled with true-life inspirational anecdotes such as these:
   Not long ago, I gave a dinner party attended by every major Western head of state and a young man I’ll call
   “Jon.” Although he is attractive, intelligent, and talented, “Jon” was a very unhappy person, and he was thinking of killing himself. So I took him aside.
   “‘Jon,’” I said. “Lighten up.” Today, he is the president of General Motors.
   Not long after that, I got a telephone call from a major world religious leader, whom I’ll call “the Pope.” Although he is attractive, intelligent, and talented, he was feeling tremendous anxiety about the fate of mankind.
   “Hey,” I advised him. “Forget it.” And today he, too, is the president of General Motors.
   Using proven techniques such as these, Dr. Canker shows in Buy This Book or You’ll Starve to Death how any member of the vertebrate family can develop powerful selling skills. In this chapter, we shall draw extensively on the information contained in Dr. Canker’s book, and by the time Dr. Canker finds out about this, we shall be long gone.

Rule #1: Maintain Eye Contact With The Prospect At All Times No Matter What

   This is extremely important. If the prospect tries to glance out the window, you must race over and stand in front of the window. If you hand him a document and he attempts to read it, you must place your head between the document and his eyes. If he goes to the bathroom, you must maintain eye contact as best you can from the adjacent stall or urinal. This may make you uncomfortable, especially if you and the prospect happen to belong to differing sexes, but if you don’t do it, you’ll give the impression that you’re not being totally honest and you don’t truly believe in your product, whatever the hell it is.
   COMMON QUESTION #1: What if the prospect is blind? ANSWER: Then you must maintain knee contact.
   COMMON QUESTION #2: Well, what if the prospect is blind and has a wooden leg? ANSWER: Well, then you would ...
   COMMON QUESTION #3: Also he’s in a coma. ANSWER: Hey! These aren’t common questions!

Rule #2: Call The Prospect By His First Name A Lot, Because He Might Forget You’re Talking To Him

   WRONG: “Bob, have you ever given any thought as to who would provide for the financial security of your wife and children if, God forbid, you were to be killed by falling cement?”
   RIGHT: “Bob, have you, Bob, ever given any thought as to who would provide for the financial security of your, Bob’s, wife and children if you, Bob, were to be killed by falling cement, Bob? Huh? Bob?”

Rule #3: Learn To Read The Prospect’s “Body Language”

   If you’ve ever driven on the Long Island Expressway, you know that people often communicate to each other “nonverbally,” which means rather than using words, they use fingers, arm gestures, facial expressions, teeth, knives, etc. As a smart salesperson, you must learn to “read” the prospect’s body language so you can take appropriate action, such as shielding your face.

Rule #4: Get The Prospect Into A “Yes” Frame Of Mind

   The way you do this is by making a series of statements that the prospect cannot help but agree with. Let’s listen in to this actual transcript of a top salesperson applying this technique:
   SALESPERSON: Hi, Bob! Great to see you! Bob, I want to thank you for giving me an appointment. Bob.
   PROSPECT: I didn’t give you an appointment. You got in here by sedating my receptionist with chloroform.
   SALESPERSON: Ha ha! Bob, Bob, Bob. I can’t put anything over on you, can I? But seriously, Bob, wouldn’t you agree that Adolf Hitler was a bad person?
   PROSPECT: Well, yes, but I ...
   SALESPERSON: And don’t you feel, Bob, that child abuse is wrong?
   PROSPECT: Of course. Sure. I mean ...
   SALESPERSON (swinging a watch back and forth rhythmically on a chain): And would it not be correct to state, Bob, that in a right triangle, the square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides?
   PROSPECT (getting drowsy): Whatever you say.
   At this point, if you have the prospect in a positive enough mood, you may be able to simply take his wallet. Otherwise you should go on to Rule #5.

Rule #5: Ask For The Sale

   Be direct. Something like: “Bob, how about a large order for whatever it is I’m selling?”
   Usually the prospect will balk, offering any one of a number of standard excuses, such as:
   “I want to think about it.” “I want to talk to my husband or wife about it, depending on what sex I am.” “Get out of my sight before I kill you and feed your pancreas to rats.”
   This is normal sales resistance, and you must not let it faze you. Go back and repeat your presentation, very slowly, starting with “Hi, Bob! Great to see you, Bob!” Try to get the prospect to voice specific objections so you can overcome them (“Are you saying, Bob, that you think Adolf Hitler was not a bad person?”). Do this as many times as necessary, until Bob comes around. Remind him that if he doesn’t, you may have to take him to Lunch (see chapter 6).

Chapter Nine. How To Go Into Business For Yourself

   The story of America is the story of individuals—the Henry Fords, the John DeLoreans, the Speedy Alka-Seltzers, the Don Corleones—who started out alone, with little more than a dream and a willingness to work toward it, and ended up running large organizations and eventually either dying or getting indicted. Chances are that you, too, have an idea for a business percolating inside you, an idea you’re sure would work, if only you gave it a chance.
   Well, why not? What, really, are you getting from your company job, aside from a steady paycheck, regular raises, job security, extensive medical benefits, and a comfortable pension? Hey, if that’s all they think you’re worth, well, in the words of the popular country-and-western song: “Take This job and Let Me Hold onto It while I Start My Own Little Business on the Side.”
   Step one is to find out what legal requirements you have to meet to register yourself as a small business. In most states, this is a two-part process:
   1. You have several boxes of cheap business cards printed up with the wrong phone number.
   2. You go around and pin your card onto those bulletin boards you see in supermarkets and low-rent restaurants, the ones with 10,000 other business cards that look like the one shown here.
   Steve A. Clegel
   Accounting and Light Masonry
   “Since April 3, 1986, at about 4:30”

Tax Implications Of Going Into Business For Yourself

   The tax implications are that you can deduct every nickel you ever spend for the rest of your life, including on bowling accessories (see chapter 10, How Finance Works).

Three Surefire Business Concepts

   Over the years, I have thought up several business concepts that are so obviously brilliant that the only way they could conceivably fail would be if somebody actually tried them. This is where you fit in. Pick any one of the concepts below and invest your life savings in it. If you are not completely satisfied that the concept was not all that I said it was, if not more, then you do not owe me a cent. Sound too good to be true? Well just wait until you see these concepts!

Concept #1: The Electric Appliance Suicide Module

   This concept is based on the known fact that it is impossible to get electronic devices repaired. Let’s say you have purchased a videocassette recorder, and after a while, because of normal wear and tear such as your nephew Dwight stuck a Polish sausage into the slot and pushed the fast forward button, it stops working.
   Now you have two options. One is to take it back to the store where you got it, which will send it back to the “Factory Service Center.” Here’s what I have to say about this option: Hahahahahahaha. Because the “Factory Service Center” is in fact a giant warehouse containing hundreds of thousands of broken electronic devices, including 1952 Philco television sets. The staff consists of two elderly men, named Roscoe and Lester, who will poke around inside your VCR with cheap cigars and go, “Lookit all them wires in there!”
   Your other choice is to take it to a local “repair shop,” which will consist of a sullen person standing behind a counter with an insulting sign.
   Obviously, neither of these is an acceptable option. So the logical thing to do, when an electronic device breaks, is to just throw it away and get another one, right? But you can’t bring yourself to do this. You paid $700 for it, and you’d feel guilty. So you put yourself in the hands of incompetents and thieves.
   This is where the Electric Appliance Suicide Module would come in. It would be a device costing $29.95 and consisting of a small, powerful explosive charge, coupled to a tiny electronic “brain,” which the consumer would implant inside his VCR or television set via a simple procedure requiring only a screwdriver and three beers. They way the Suicide Module would work is, as soon as the brain sensed that the appliance was no longer working properly, it would set off the charge. For safety reasons, this would occur in the middle of the night, when the consumers were asleep. The consumer would be awakened by a large BLAM!! in his living room, and he’d come rushing out, and there, where his television set used to be, he’d see a grayish cloud of vaporized plastic, and he’d say: “Huh! Time to get a new TV!” Besides eliminating a lot of consumer guilt, the Suicide Module would probably provide a very powerful incentive for appliances to perform well. They would work their little diodes to the bone, for fear that otherwise the Suicide Module might think they were starting to come down with something.

Concept #2: The “Mister Mediocre” Fast-Food Restaurant Franchise

   I have studied American eating preferences for years, and believe me, this is what people want. They don’t want to go into an unfamiliar restaurant, because they don’t know whether the food will be very bad, or very good, or what. They want to go into a restaurant that advertises on national television, where they know the food will be mediocre. This is the heart of the Mister Mediocre concept.
   The basic menu item, in fact the only menu item, would be a food unit called the “patty,” consisting of—this would be guaranteed in writing—”100
   percent animal matter of some kind.” All patties would be heated up and then cooled back down in electronic devices immediately before serving. The Breakfast Patty would be a patty on a bun with lettuce, tomato, onion, egg, Ba-Ko-Bits, Cheez Whiz, a Special Sauce made by pouring ketchup out of a bottle, and a little slip of paper stating: “Inspected by Number 12.” The Lunch or Dinner Patty would be any Breakfast Patties that didn’t get sold in the morning. The Seafood Lover’s Patty would be any patties that were starting to emit a serious aroma. Patties that were too rank even to be Seafood Lover’s Patties would be compressed into wads and sold as “Nuggets.” Any nuggets that had not been sold as of the end of the month would be used to make bricks for new Mister Mediocre restaurants.

Concept #3: The “Bingo The Leech” Licensed Character

   If you have young children, you know how they tend to develop powerful attachments, similar to cocaine addiction only more expensive, to the toy industry’s many lovable and imaginative licensed characters such as (for girls) Rainbow Brite, Strawberry Shortcake, Wee Whiny Winkie, The Dweebs, and The Simper Sisters; and (for boys) He-Man, The Limb Whackers, The Eye Eaters, Sergeant Bicep, and Testosterone Bob’s Hurt Patrol. Once a child gets one of these characters, he or she suddenly just has to have all the others in the set, plus the accessories, all of which are—believe me when I tell you this—Sold Separately.
   So I have come up with this concept for a truly irresistible licensed character named Bingo the Leech. Bingo would be an adorable little stuffed leech with big loving eyes and a tube of industrial quick-drying epoxy concealed in his lips. When a child picked up Bingo at the store and squeezed him, Bingo would emit some epoxy and become permanently bonded to the child’s skin, and the parent would have to buy him so as to avoid shoplifting charges. Then the parent would have to buy all the other members of the Bingo family, because only by combining their lip secretions would you obtain the antidote chemical required to get Bingo off the child before it was time to go to college.

Chapter Ten. How Finance Works

   DETROIT—The General Motors Corporation reported today that it lost $64.6 million in the first fiscal quarter.
   “We have no idea what happened to the money,” said top GM officials, in unison. “One moment it was lying on the dresser, and the next moment it was gone! We could just kick ourselves! Ha ha!”

Who Should Read This Chapter

   At some point in your rise to the top, you may find yourself appointed to a job where you have to know something about finances, such as as Controller or Treasurer or Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. If this happens, you should read this chapter. But I warn you: this stuff is deadly dull, as is illustrated by accountants. You never hear people say: “Let’s have some fun tonight! Let’s go find some accountants!” So unless you have no choice, you should skip this chapter. I myself am going to require powerful illegal stimulants to write it.

How Corporate Finances Work

   You look at a big corporation, with giant expensive buildings filled with tasteful carpets and big desks and rental plants and well-paid employees making Xerox-brand copies of the crossword puzzle, and you wonder, “How on earth do they make any money?”
   The answer is, they don’t. They lose money hand over fist. Read the business section of any newspaper, and just about every day you’ll see a story like the one reproduced above.
   The reason these executives can afford to be so cavalier is that they know they can always get more money—any amount, any time—by means of a process so simple you are going to laugh when I tell you about it, unless you have already fallen asleep at this point. All they have to do is print up some “stock.” A stock is basically a piece of high-quality paper, similar to what certificates of appreciation from bowling leagues are printed on, except it has a nice border and a statement such as the following printed on it in an attractive and historic type style:
   Whe bearer, hereinafter beknownst as “the bearer,” is, excepting those provisions which shall causeth “the bearer” to be excepted from these provisions, notwithstanding, hereby—and we are by the way also talking about “the bearer’s” heirs and assigns here—entitled to one (1) share (share) of (of) “stock” in
   “the corporation,” and all that this doth entail, such as the VIP lounge, if any, and of course profits insofar as and to the extent that there are any profits after executives of “the corporation” shall returneth from
   “meeting” “Brazil.”
   Now you’re thinking: “Yes, but who would be so stupid as to exchange money for this piece of paper?” Well, I realize it makes very little sense to a person of normal intelligence, but it turns out there is a major financial institution devoted to this very purpose.

The Stock Market

   The Stock Market is what they are talking about on television when they tell you the “Dow Jones Industrial Average” is “up” in “active trading.” Sometimes they show you a picture of it: you see a lot of men with bad armpit stains yelling and waving their arms. These men are ordering lunch. The actual trading of stocks is done by computers:
   FIRST COMPUTER: HOW @lUC-’Il-l YC@U F’Gf—@ ‘i’HCJSE S[4ARE,@ OF’ STDCj,,.
   SECOND COMPUTER: ‘THESE:—’)RE VEF@@Y SH@)F,E@:’ ()I\4E@ T3ECAU(:jE WE P.F@E F@’F@IEI\lr.)S I @l@-’il::@E r-O.-@, f)E:AL—:t6(:%,(
   FIRST COMPUTER: YDLJ C@’,,@,ILL. A F—RIE@ND f.)NL) l-4ERE YC.)LI ARE L’-31NG @lE IN “I-HE i73ACI—’@ Tjt-iESt—SL-IAREE-@, I WCj’(JLI) NC)-i—FEED —1”O 0 IS—’.-[-!E i-:iES-1—I DO
   SECOND COMPUTER: 1,—FHE@ L-OWES’r I CAN GO I,!A’@ GC@D ME DE@@AD IF I ()!,’ I.-YING
   Of course all this takes less than a billionth of a second. At the end of the day, the computers divide the total prices of all stocks sold by the number of stocks, then they take the numbers of the horses that won the first three races, and.... No, wait a minute. That’s the “Trifecta” I’m thinking of. Well, somehow, they figure out the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and they tell the television news people about it.

Common Financial Questions

   Q. What makes one corporation’s stock more valuable than another one?
   A. The most important factor is what kind of hors d’oeuvre the corporation serves at its Annual Stockholders Meeting, which is when all the stockholders get invited to a hotel ballroom to hear highly paid executives attempt to explain how come the corporation is making less of
   a profit than it would if it had just sold all of its factories and machines and put the money in Christmas Clubs. If the corporation serves
   a cheap hors d’oeuvre, such as crackers and cheese, its stock will drop; if it switches over to, say, shrimp, the stock will rise. Of course the people on Wall Street don’t want to admit this, which is why they’re always making up preposterous explanations as to why stock prices rise and fall, such as “tension in the Middle East,” when of course there is always tension in the Middle East. When we finally have a nuclear war and there is no life left on Earth except cockroaches, the cockroaches in the Middle East will be tense.
   Q. Who is “Dow Jones”?
   A. A dead person.
   Q. What is the “options” market?
   A. This is a special market for people who are too stupid even to buy stocks. The way it works is, let’s say a farmer or somebody realizes he has 500
   pork bellies. Now I think we can all agree that no sane person would want to have even one pork belly, let alone 500 of them, so what this farmer does is look around for the stupidest person he can find, and he sells him a porkbelly “future,” which means that the stupid person gives the farmer some money and agrees to take delivery of the pork bellies at
   a later date. I know you think I’m making this up, but believe me, people actually do this. When the stupid person realizes what he has done, he of course tries to find an even stupider person to buy the
   “future,” and this person sells it to an even stupider person, and so on until the big day arrives and a person with no discernible brain whatsoever has 500 pork bellies dumped on his lawn and is immediately arrested by the Board of Health.

Afterword

   And so, here you are. Just a dozen or so chapters ago, you were a recent graduate or some other kind of low-life scum, and now, thanks to this book, look what you have become! A highly paid corporate executive! Or a convicted felon!
   I do not ask for your gratitude. I seek no reward. No, for me it is enough simply to know that I have, in some small way, helped to make you the kind of executive who can provide much-needed leadership as the corporation of today faces the challenges of tomorrow; the kind of executive who will not be afraid to meet these challenges head-on by means of innovative and far-reaching new management techniques such as bringing me in as a consultant
   for $2,000 per day plus lunch money. I’ll be calling you real soon.

Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up

Dave Barry

Dedication
Introduction
Reader Alert
Food For Thought
Father Faces Life: A Long-Overdue Attack on Natural Childbirth
Pumped Up
Dirty Dancing
A Left-Handed Compliment
Reader Alert
A Space Odyssey
The Newspaper
The Witnesses
The Story Spreads
The New Evidence
The Ufo People
The Man From Mufon
The Key Here
The Visit
The Videotape
The Questions
The Skeptic
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory
The Ray People
The Call
Reader Alert
Plumber’s Helper
Watch Your Rear
It’s A Gas
The Unkindest Cut Of All
Tarts Afire
Insect Aside
Invasion Of The Money Snatchers
Reader Alert
Hell On Wings
The Great Mall Of China
Haute Holes
Courtroom Confessions
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Reader Alert
Over His Head
Moby Dave
Shark Bait
Captains Uncourageous
The Living Bra
Reader Alert
Crime Busters
False Alarm
The World’s Fastest Lawn Mower
Reader Alert
Hearts That Are True
Jimmy Dale Green Sheriff
Now That’s Scary
Mustang Davey
The Whammies
The Worst Songs Ever Recorded
And The Winner Is ...
Reader Alert
The Old-Timers Game
Breaking The Ice
Consumers From Mars
Say Uncle
You’ve Gotta Be Kidding
Sexual Intercourse
Nerds ‘R’ Us
Uneasy Rider
Dave’s Real World
A Failure To Communicate
About The Author

Dave Barry.
Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up

Dedication

   To Earnest, who was a big help; and to Zippy, who was a small emergency backup help

Introduction

   People often say to me: “Dave, you are a leading journalism professional and not as short as I expected. What is your secret of success?”
   The answer is that, throughout my career, I have always kept one vital journalistic principle foremost in my mind: try not to leave the house. A journalist who leaves his or her house can run into all kinds of obstacles, including:
   * Editors.
   * Members of the public.
   * News events involving actual facts.
   All of these obstacles can seriously interfere with the basic work of journalism, which is sitting around and thinking stuff up. This is what I mainly do, which is why I have been able to achieve a level of high-quality journalistic productivity, as measured in booger jokes, that a guy like David Broder can only dream about.
   Nevertheless, every now and then a situation will come up wherein a story of major importance is breaking somewhere other than in my office, and I have no choice but to go and cover it. For example, in this book you will find a column concerning an incident in 1992 when I left my house and traveled, without regard for my personal convenience or safety, all the way to my yard, to see the World’s Fastest Lawn Mower. That’s the kind of dedicated professional I am.
   The result is that this book contains a number of columns based on real events. There are also some longer articles, most of which originally appeared in the Miami Herald’s Sunday magazine, Tropic; these also contain an unusually high (for me) level of factual content. That’s why this book is called Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up.[2] I want to stress, however, that this title does not mean that this is a serious book. This book also contains a lot of “tongue-in-cheek” social commentary and satire, by which I mean lies. I hope you don’t find this mixture of fact and fiction to be confusing. If, in reading the following pages, you are uncertain as to whether a specific statement is meant seriously or not, simply apply this rule of thumb: If the statement makes you consider filing a lawsuit, I was kidding. Ha ha!

Reader Alert

   The following section, which is mostly about family stuff, contains the article that pretty much launched my writing career: the story of my son’s “natural” birth. When I wrote it back in 1981, Beth and I were living in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania, and I had a job teaching effective business-writing seminars.[3] I wrote the article for the Philadelphia Inquirer, and it got reprinted in many other newspapers, including the Miami Herald, which ended up hiring me. So in a way you could say that I owe my job to my son. Although if you consider the amount of money I wound up spending just on He-Man action figures, I have more than paid him back.