August 10, 2011

Joseph Heller just nails corporate America in "Something Happened."  Boss to subordinate: "I want inferior people with superior minds who feel in their bones their lives would be over if they lost their jobs with me."  Gives me a kind of creepy corporate PTSD flashback, right on the nerve.  No surprise after a quarter century on the Fortune 50 firing line with a company that hemorrhaged over 100,000 jobs during the last third of my career.  I staggered out the door leaking mental and physical health all over the sidewalk.  I don't know whether to be proud or ashamed of myself.  In truth, neither.  Like so many of us, I was swept up in a tide of conditioning and soon swimming with the sharks, bent on survival of myself and my family.  Everything had to happen just so for that violent wave to wash me up on this very fine beach, indeed.  I am a fortunate son.