To serve man...

It was more than a cookbook, it was the kitchen

My road out of corporate America started with a CEO having a tantrum. Or I should say that the beginning of the journey started there? It was the moment that I knew I had to do something different, that the discomfort and disassociation I had been feeling had coalesced, in the form of a 200 lb infantile executive.

I had spent most of my professional life, to that point, holding the bag for CEOs and other senior corporate executives, helping them explain themselves to investors and raise capital for themselves their companies. Most of them were small enterprises, and it was a time where a barely numerate Liberal Arts major could get an audience with Wall Street investors and stock analysts to pitch them a good story. Often with the CEO in tow. I got to travel the country, stay in swank spots and learn about people and places. It was swell to be a corporate servant in the 80s. I was far from Yonkers, NY.

Fast forward a decade or two and I was the financial communications practice director for a large global marketing firm, and my job was to help fix things (in communications terms) that the execs had broken by explaining that it wasn’t as bad as it looked. (Narrator: it was usually worse.) A wag at my firm once remarked that all crises started in the marketing department. This is only true when they do not emerge from the executive suite.

The CEO in this instance was of the holding company that owned our marketing firm (and about a gazillion others.) He was angry that the Wall Street Journal was questioning his accounting for acquisitions. Being publicly traded, this questioning hurt his wallet, as well as his feelings. He paraded around the conference room smoking (breaking a few local laws as well as company policies) and at one point literally jumped up and down in anger. He wanted us to make it go away. He erupted when we said that we couldn’t.

He went on to continue to do what he did and make a few more billions. People forgot about the accounting shenanigans because he made them money. I got laid off a couple of years later when I got too old for that shit/expensive/wise. This was a master that I no longer could bear to serve. But we had a family and a small economy to keep afloat while we plotted the escape from NY. And a reluctant bride.

After a pit stop for three years at the most godawful place there ever was, we cashed out of NYC and moved north. The financial crisis of 2008 provided the non-lubricated final push.

Next up, on Sunday

Green Acres is the….

And each Sunday some fresh hell…