Business as Usual

I'm an independent woman, a powerful woman. NO, let me
rephrase.

I'M OBSESSED with the thoughts of my boss. I can't even remember how
I became this way. Why have I become this way? DO you know the answer
to that? I didn't think so. You're really not much help, are you. Well,
I'm not here to justify myself so let me, let me just simply state the
thing that makes me who I am.

I'm obsessed with my boss, that's very true, but I'm also obsessed
with how I can bend the thoughts of my boss as to, how should I phrase
this, accomodate my interests within the company.  The funny thing
is that, it was only when I was able to think in this manner that the
company became a home to me. Did that just sound like a homily? I hope
it didn't.

*****

My boss never wears a suit and never attends the weekly meetings.
How do I know that he never wears a suit if I've never seen him? 
That's a good question:

"Suits are forbidden in our company."

"WHAT?"

"No one is to wear a suit any longer. It's a serious violation of
our dresscode policy."

"That's absurd."

"Are lawsuits allowed?"

"Lawsuits and business-suits are absolutely forbidden."

 Do you see what I mean? He doesn't come to the meeting
himself, but sends someone else, a bald, respectable-looking man with
perfectly fitted spectacles and a perfectly anonymous accent to state
this. As if these issues were actually important enough to be
discussed.  It does make you think. If I can't wear my power-suit,
how am I supposed to feel? Suits are modern ways of distinguishing
between people who are important from the people who aren't, aren't
they? After that meeting, I seriously felt that my boss was taking away
a part of my identity. I considered writing a serious memo to my boss,
complaining about the inanity of his decision. Could I do that without
offending him?  SO I began, I began that very night to dig into
his mind, trying to figure out what his intention was in getting rid of
the old dress-code.

I had often heard that the Emperor had no clothes, whoever he was.
Perhaps he had such a beautiful body that he didn't need clothes. His
body was colored royal gold and tantalizing silver.  Perhaps my
boss was like this emperor.

Perhaps my boss was very much that Emperor.  But then, why not
make us go naked into the company meetings? Clothes helped us to hide
behind a mask... they were simply presentations of how we liked or
preferred ourselves to be perceived by others.  Didn't it matter
to him how we were perceived then, at least by others? I
suppose that it didn't matter.  Would we hold meetings
without clothes in the future?

"You're wearing the same suit that I'm wearing."

"It's a unisex atmosphere, with only one exception."

"I feel that men are still wearing their power-suits."

"You can't be serious."

"Isn't the body some type of suit if there were no suits?"

"He never said that we couldn't wear suits. He said that we couldn't
wear power-suits."

It was true. How had such a small change in the dresscode effected
such hostility from us? I tried to think like my boss. Perhaps he
thought that our clothes were dividing us.  We needed to work
together. He was sick of us trying to distinguish ourselves from the
group, each one of us trying to act so superior. I would be humble in
these meetings from now, and I would also wear something comfortable
for once. All these clothes lay in my closet that I only wore at night
anyway.  It was a terrible waste of fabric.

Briiiinnngggg!

"It's your boss speaking."

For the first time, I heard his voice.

"Yes," I answered, "Is there something wrong?"

"I need to meet you.  It's been so long since I've actually met
an employee of my company. I just want to see what you look like. 
Please, dress in a suit, a nice suit that makes you look like a
professional businesswoman."

I was slightly offended.

"Why should I wish to meet you? You're so aloof and strange."

"If you don't want to meet, then that's fine too. Your loss."

Curiosity is a curious cat, is it not?

"I will meet you," I consented.  He asked me to meet him in a
certain restaurant at 7:00 sharp.

He chewed his food slowly, taking almost an eternity. The salmon
inside of this mouth seemed to take on the quality of infinite
flavor if there were such a thing. It was nice to see him eat like
that.  It comforted me.

"I know this is rather strange, I mean, us meeting like this, but
I've got a problem which isn't going away."

"What is it?"

"I didn't mean to forbid suits.  I just wanted to forbid
power-suits."

"You didn't make that very clear. A suit is a power-suit, you know.
It's our modern style. It's our way of seducing people into behaving
the way we want people to behave, is it not?"

"It just makes people act so different," my boss began to speak
seriously, "It makes people think that they are so clean, as if they
have nothing to hide.  I don't know whether that is a good thing
or a bad thing."

"That's how people should behave."

"And then, everything just becomes dry-cleaned. It's like, you just
can't do anything wrong if you're in a suit.  A soldier wears a
uniform and he's allowed to do certain things that a normal person
wouldn't do.  A person who wears a suit can be a really
amazing panhandler. Isn't it just amazing what we would do for a person
who wears a suit?"

"Is that why you don't wear a suit?" I asked carefully and
slowly.

"I don't really need to wear a suit, that's a part of it.  I am
the part owner of a rather large corporation. I can afford not to wear
a suit, if that makes any sense. To be truthful, I've been through all
that.  All those feelings of power and entitlement and
success no longer interest me since I suffer daily from an incredible
backache. I got it trying to lift a large rock to impress some
shareholders.  I felt like I had a plug pulled from my lower
back, laid me low for so many nights. The pain was almost
unbearable.... they put me on valium, percoset, is it? 
Suddenly, nothing really seemed important to me. I felt like such a
fool to tell you the truth. I really thought I was going into the other
world."

The more I looked into his eyes, the more I could sense some
deep sorrow which he had hidden in his heart.  This man was not
the Emperor with the impossible demand that his clothes-makers
make something so beautiful that no other fabric could match it. It
occurred to me that only an incredible vain and foolish man would have
requested such a thing.   No, he was asking for something far
simpler.

"So you could drive the meeting toward the destination that I am
asking you to..."

"Of course, it's my specialty."

Finally, I had met the boss.  I was somewhat shocked by his
petty, little request. The whole experience had been a letdown in a
way.  I hadn't expected him to be so human, so absolutely human,
even fragile or tender.  I was expecting someone intimidating,
tough, and masculine, someone with a poker face, whose intentions could
not be divined or guessed at, someone with a higher purpose for the
company, someone who put me back in my place as to say.  It was
not like that at all, not like that at all.

Driving home that night, I stared into the face of the moon. 
It was a bloodless, cold face, above the skyscrapers, above the waters,
living a life of its own, heavenly, blissful and alone.  BUT what
was the sorrow behind this man I met tonight, I wondered. Why had
he looked so awfully sad as though someone had broken his heart so
completely that he could not get up even.  It was the look of
someone whose heart had completely died. All the light inside of
his eyes had died and all you could see was this unending
darkness, over and over again, covering every single thing that he
said like the shadow of a blanket.  I could only think that he
would not be the boss for much longer.  Someone would replace him,
come in his place, and make the company an exciting place to be once
again.  His time was fading, and he would fade as all humans do so
that others whose time had arrived could succeed and make their mark in
the world.

Brinnnnngggg.

"I'm so sorry for looking so awfully sad tonight. It's just
been so long since I've had dinner with a person, even a remarkable
person like you. I hope I didn't disappoint you. If you could just do
me one favor.  Don't tell anyone else at the company that you
met me.  I've given up on the company you see... that's why
I never attend the meetings because it's just too painful for me
to see all the pain that you cause each other."

"Of course," I answered curtly.  It seemed that I had the boss
wrapped around my fingers.  The Emperor, he was not. Nothing like
the Emperor was he.  The Emperor had made his servants design a
suit for him that would be more marvelous to the eye than the sun
itself.  The servants, knowing the Emperor would never be
satisfied by anything that they wove decided to make him nothing. 
He came out naked in front of his subjects as the sun does.  Did
the story reveal the emptiness of vanity?  Did it simply reveal
the nakedness that we all feel and the desire to hide our nakedness
through success, achievement, and status?  When would we be
satisfied with all the things that we bought to beautify ourselves,
make ourselves happy, and even pamper ourselves.  Just how far
would our desire to prove ourselves carry us toward perfection?  I
began to understand the problem.  Sooner or later, I would begin
to see that the shame that had made me seek all these marks of
status and power would become the center of my world, the cause of all
my actions until, in front of God, I was once again naked, with
the shame or even guilt.  He would see all the anger and hatred
inside of me that had hardened into sheer contempt and
vanity.  I could not come into the kingdom of God just because I
had simply chosen to cover myself instead of becoming transparent to
the spirituality of the almighty.  Had I been so afraid of
being seen as weak that I sought at all moments to cover up all signs
of weakness? Was that it?  No, it was the meeting with the boss
that once again opened up my heart somehow.  Behind my curt
sarcasms and my intimidating gestures lay a curiosity about the truth
in the world.  It almost seemed all too silly that I had worked so
hard to reach this point, worked so hard to have this conversation with
a boss who hated to be boss.

"He just thinks that we should behave more naturally in our
meetings.  After all, it's not like we are threats to each
other.  I'm a marketing director., you're the CFO, 
you're high-level managers of various aspects of our operations. 
Must we still be competing? Isn't what we need cooperation, after
all?"

 "Synergy, that's the word. Somehow, we still want an
affirmation from a superior that we are really the best and that we are
the only one who truly understands the mission of the company that was
set out by our absent "CEO."  It's rather strange, I know it,
but I wish that he were here once again.  It was so pleasant
when he was actually present at these meetings, and now, all we really
discuss are trivial and even dull issues."

"I did meet him recently," I confessed.

"Really?"

"He thinks we are obsessed with power."

"Perhaps that is true, but, at least, we show up for the
meetings."

Later that night, we went to see a movie:
"These movies are so dull these days.  Whatever happened to good
storytelling.  The movies now feel like episodic adventures of
so-and-so who must prove that he is someone extraordinary."