Higgenbotham's Dark Age Hovel

[Higgenbotham]

When you worked for a company that was thoroughly immersed in Stacking in the early 1980s my best analogy was to think of myself as being in an all male prison, except the inmates in there were more clever.

One thing that was still fashionable at that time was to take the new "recruits" around to top management and have a brief, friendly conversation of maybe 20 minutes. Most all of the top managements at companies presented themselves a pretty nice people at these meetings. This company was a little different as in the majority of the top management still presented themselves as pretty nice people, but interspersed within top management were a fair number of assholes.

One day I was scheduled to meet with a management person named Dave and another newish young recruit named Walt was going to join me. Walt was from Buffalo, New York, like many of the other young recruits from decaying Great Lakes Rust Belt hellholes that had lost their manufacturing base. Walt was what I called a Glad Hander. A Glad Hander ranks at the top echelons of Ass Kissers, like at the 95th percentile of Ass Kissers and above. You can't really blame a Glad Hander for wanting to permanently escape a Rust Belt hellhole, I guess.

So we're having a conversation with this management guy who in my opinion was showing himself to be a pathetic knob and a complete asshole. He was enumerating all the company priorities that he could list, when I asked him which of those were the most important. Cleverly, as in advanced prison clever, he replied that was like asking which leg of a 3-legged stool was most important, at which time Walt, on the edge of his seat, quickly blurted out, "They're all important!" Perfect!

I just recalled anther great anecdote about Walt. On some regular basis, everyone had to eventually give a presentation to our group of about 30. It was something like 3 per month. Someone gave their presentation and the person did a pretty good job but it was evident this person was slightly nervous. After the presentations were finished, people would offer comments for improvement. As I recall, there were a couple constructive comments. Then Walt offered that some of the person's intonations or pitches rose slightly at the end of some sentences. The person then smiled and asked the group if it was OK to sit down now. A few people smiled and laughed and then someone said OK, yes, you can sit down now.