The Key to Success · 1:33am Aug 5th, 2018
Once upon a time, at a company that I will not name but which you have almost certainly heard of, a senior vice-president wished to find his daughter a job. She had some trouble with employment, not due to a lack of ability, but a lack of focus. As he put it, she was a very bright woman, she just needed a chance.
Company rules strictly prohibited executives from hiring their relatives, and required an open and impartial interview process for all new candidates. But the man who was a senior vice-president had a way around such rules.
He found a hiring manager who was overdue for promotion, and implied very strongly that the man might get that speedboat he wanted if he could find a way to make it happen. The hiring manager, in turn, spoke with the senior vice-president's daughter, and crafted a job description that fit her perfectly. It called for a woman between the ages of 24 and 26 with degrees in physics and art-history, a familiarity with Thailand's drinking culture, and blue hair. The position was then posted to the most obscure corner of the company's hardest to navigate web portal, and was left up for less than an hour.
One can imagine the hiring manager's frustration when the position had two applicants. The second applicant was named Cindy, and notably was not the daughter of a vice-president.
She was also more intelligent, more charismatic, and (while such things shouldn't be relevant in a meritocracy) more attractive than the SVP's daughter. The impartial interviewers ranked her more highly, and she got the job.
The SVP could not fire Cindy without cause, and alleging an incident might draw human resource's attention to the whole affair. Instead, he resolved to persuade Cindy to quit. After all, her job was vaguely defined, and with her title of "Office Associate" he could give her nearly any task he wanted.
So he assigned her to hold up the front-left corner of one of the desks. The front-left leg of that desk had fallen off some years ago, and without it, the desk wobbled. Her full time job was to hold the corner of the desk with her bare hands so that it sat still. Her goals for the year included things like, "Don't prop the desk," and "Hold perfectly still."
So she did. For a year, Cindy held up the corner a desk with her bare hands. Once, the man who sat at the desk -- a man she would later marry -- asked her why she hadn't quit.
"Are you kidding?" she said, "This is great. I don't see them fixing that leg any time soon. I have total job security!"
At the end of the year, when HR gave her performance review, a very confused human resources administrator had to admit she had accomplished all of her objectives. She even accomplished her stretch goal of not scuffing the floor. And so he gave her the only review he possibly could: "Greatly Exceeds Expectations."
She got the same review next year, and with it, an automatic promotion. Then another the year after that. Then she got featured on the employee web page as a consistent high-performer, and the company asked her to give a short speech at the next all-hands. She eventually went on to become a successful executive, and did a motivational speaking tour.
Years later, she wrote a book called: "Keep Holding On -- A Guide to Success in Business."
Most of her readers assumed the desk was a metaphor.
Are you sure that wasn't a government job?
(Seriously, this kind of thing was done for years in the Soviet Union with job exchanges between high executives in the party where Factory X would find a need for Factory Y's oldest son, and Factory Y's senior executive would then have his son 'amazingly' find a perfectly good job at Factory X, and so on with various degrees of cross-connection to avoid irritating people who might cast displeasure on such maneuvers.)
Are you making that up? It sounds like you're making it up. If not, then I seriously need to rethink my life.
Why can’t I upvote blogs
Why, knighty
I can only ask, do you know what happened to the daughter for whom the job was originally created?
Really hope she ended up being a certain SVP’s boss...
True story, in theatre, lighting instruments have the most esoteric descriptions because the bean counters can’t buy a specific lighting instrument without shopping around. Let’s say that the master electrician wants Kleig lights, but he can’t say that in the purchase proposal, so he includes things in the spec requirements like ‘needs a 8” lens’ and ‘must have crinkle finish.’
I know the story isn't true, but it's damned entertaining.
Googled it. Couldn't find such a book. Disappointed.
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It's mostly fictional! Mostly.
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That kind of thing happens in private industry too -- particularly in companies where the bureaucracy is big enough nobody really knows what's going on.
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I didn't know that! I am both entertained and slightly sad.
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It kind of makes sense when you consider that a lot of places have to get stuff from the lowest bidder, so you specify in the purchase request so that there’s only one option for them to find.
That story could have come from academia just as easily. Where we have an "administrative staff" whose job is to work the remote control on the video conferencing TV during meetings that are broadcast to our satellite campuses. Who works for one hour, six times a semester. And makes twice what any faculty does.
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Please for the love of God tell me that's a joke because that is f****** obscene.
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Not a joke.
Don't even ask about the $2 million we paid AT&T for phone service... after we switched to VOIP phones with another provider. Nobody knows who kept paying them for over two years, but the coverup makes it hard to find out.
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