Uncle! I give up!
I swear I'm going to stop reading newspapers and magazines. And no more TV
news for me either. I simply can't take one more tale about the sufferings
of my fellow man and woman.
Until now, I had been barely managing to cope with reports of suicide bombings,
mass murder and mayhem; but this morning I read something that pushed me
over the edge. It was an article about a corporate executive whose compensation
has been slashed by two-thirds, and he is now going to have to support himself
and his family on a mere five million dollars annually. It's inhumane. He
may
actually be forced to eat prime rib occasionally instead of filet mignon.
Uggh! Furthermore, he may have to sell his 25-room villa on Lake Como,
the beachfront
estate on Palm Beach, and maybe even his private island off the coast of
Fiji. (I don't know that he actually owns all this real estate, but I wouldn't
be
surprised.)
Where will he go now to escape from the rigors of the corporate jungle — the
private jet business flights, the chauffeured limousines, the thousand dollars
expense account dinners, the bowing and scraping of his acolytes...and the
countless other onerous burdens of his demanding position. It makes me want
to cry. Or vomit.
His is just one tale. Fortunately, many corporate head honchos manage their
businesses competently and compassionately, but the pages of Fortune and
The Wall Street Journal abound with accounts of other big-biz bigwigs who
are paid
obscene bucks, even during periods when they cause their companies and
stockholders to lose mega-millions and thousands of their employees to
lose their jobs.
Yet Mr. CEO apparently doesn't see anything wrong with this picture. If
the "little
people" have to be sacrificed, so be it — as long as all his perks
and ill-gotten gains are protected. (I say "Mr." and "his" not
because women are necessarily more principled, but because very few achieve
CEO-dom.)
What's really surprising is that several of these misguided captains of
industry had humble beginnings — sort of the modern day equivalent of
Abe Lincoln and the log cabin. The only difference is that Abe remained humble
and compassionate,
even after becoming president of the United States. Not so some of today's
rags-to-riches tycoons. With every step up the corporate ladder, their grasp
on reality loosens a bit more until they actually believe they are as important
as their sycophants tell them they are. They develop God complexes and feel
no one should have the audacity to question their authority or their motives.
The Board of Directors demands accountability and wants to bring in outside
auditors? How dare they! The stockholders are getting restless? Off with
their heads!
What's with these guys? How do they get off feeling so entitled? Would I
react the same in their position? I certainly hope not, but who knows?
I have to
admit that when I repair a tear in my two-dollar shower curtain liner with
Scotch tape, I can't possibly be objective about a corporate mogul who buys
a $6,000 shower curtain (for the maid's quarters yet).
I'm willing to be fair. I'll be happy to accept a position as monarch of
a multi-national conglomerate at an annual salary that could feed Africa
for
a decade, adopt a suitably lavish lifestyle, and then see how I react if
people criticize me when my mismanagement and extravagant spending drown
the company
in a flood of red ink. Just one year. That's all I ask. Then I promise to
resign and forfeit any future compensation. But I do hope they'll let me
keep the
villa on Lake Como....and, of course, a generous pension. After all, by then
I will have become accustomed to an opulent standard of living, and it would
be heartless to expect me to give it up. How could I survive without caviar
and champagne?
For now, though, I'll just settle for some sugar to sprinkle on my sour grapes.
Rose's new book, The Stranger
in My Mirror and Other Reflections is available by special order from
most book stores, or on the web at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Rose Mula was an executive
assistant, a public relations specialist, and an operations manager
for a New England theater chain before discovering a passion for
writing.
Her work has appeared
in The Saturday Evening Post, Yankee, Modern Maturity, The
Christian Science Monitor, The Reader's Digest, The Philadelphia
Inquirer, The Baltimore Sun, and more than a hundred other
magazines and newspapers. Actually-thousands of newspapers, since
one of her essays, The
Stranger in My Mirror (originally titled, The Stranger
in My House), was reprinted in Ann Landers' nationally syndicated
column in 1999, and after an explanatory exchange with Ms. Landers, an attribution.
Rose's new book, If These Are Laugh Lines I'm Having Way Too Much Fun, is available at bookstores, through online bookstores, and from Pelican Publishing, 800-843-1724. The book was a finalist in USABOOKNEWS.COM's 2006 Best Books Award humor category. Meanwhile, she can reached
by e-mail.
