Two blond lawyers wearing pantsuits with deep pockets walk into a bar.
"God, this joint is a mess!" complains the one with $60 million in her pocket.
"Don't worry," replies the one with $20 million in hers, "My Dad was a janitor. I'll clean this place out in no time. First, we will raise everyone's wages to $22/hours; and when the establishment goes belly up, I'll represent them in bankruptcy hearings, blaming everything on the banks."
Let's face it, NYC cab rides are not what they used be. And it's not about credit card processing and the built-in monitors - those were inevitable. And it's not about the signature-yellow black-checkered SUV's and vans either (though, only God knows how many pairs of pantyhose I've ruined getting into them). The main difference are the drivers.
Back in the day your taxi driver talked to you; whether you wanted him to or not. They were the ones who invited the conversation. I mean, hairdressers and cabbies were people's confidants. A cabby is even better than the hairdresser - most likely you will never see him again. Nowadays, however... Let me put it this way - Taxicab Confessions (1995) would not happen today.
Of course, just 15 years ago, when the medallions were around $250K, cab-driving was still a viable self-employment option for enterprising individual drivers. And a taxi owner-operator cared for the success of his business-on-wheels. Moreover, he felt at home there, ready to chat with his paying customer about this and that. But as soon as the medallions' prices went over $500K (hitting $1 mil landmark in 2011), the ownership shifted to investment groups, who lease the cabs to drivers known as "hacks." This resulted in a fundamental attitude transformation. To draw a parallel, it's like the difference between the treatment you get from some outsourced customer service representative and the care displayed by a business owner whose livelihood depends on the customer's satisfaction.
Generally speaking, we now get into a cab with an indifferent and dissatisfied employee at the wheel. And most of the time we actually want him to stop talking, because he is blabbering non-stop and not with you - he's got his earpiece in and he is doing his share of "connecting" to his friends and families at full volume in the language you most likely don't understand. Sometimes you are not even sure that he heard your destination; and you have to be really insistent if you want him to pay attention to your route instructions.
And me personally? At this point I am simply weary of cab drivers wanting to talk to me and actually prefer when they are preoccupied with their own telecommunications or whatever. I don't know whether this is because weirdos feel comfortable with me or there are just more weirdos everywhere now, but recently I've been having some uncanny cab experiences: Scientology propaganda session; sex proposals (this actually happens regularly, which is unbelievable for many reasons I will not discuss on this blog); self-righteous preaching (also pretty common); pushy sales pitching of the driver's childishly executed art; a reverse taxicab confession of a middle-aged driver stunning me with graphic details of his affair with a 78-year-old woman (sorry, people, but it's the honest truth), etc., etc. So, trust me, a quiet ride is fine by me.
But I guess there is indeed a reward through suffering, because sometimes you get lucky!
I was in a cab a few days ago. The driver had an old-Brooklyn accent and was middle-aged. The cab wasn't new either, but most remarkably it was already lacking the bulletproof divider (TLC announced in April that it can be removed). This is actually very important, because, even though he had the radio on at a low volume, without the glass barrier I could hear it very well (I have no idea what channel it was).
The topic of some political broadcast was the GOP's opposition to their own likely nominee, Donald J. Trump. One of the guests was commenting on how silly it was and questioning the possibility of some last-moment aspirant's attempting to steal the nomination in Cleveland from a candidate who won the most Republican primary votes in history - 13.4 million. And both the driver and I laughed out loud at the same time.
For the next 15 minutes I enjoyed the most amicable and satisfying political exchange with a person outside of my very close and very immediate circle, a complete stranger for that matter. And I would like my readers to share some of that experience. So, here you go, ladies and gentlemen, from my cab driver's mouth to your ears (or rather eyes) - a few bits of pure common sense:
"...He [The Donald] may not say it right, but he says the right things."
"...Professional politicians didn't work as the country's leaders. We've got to try something new. If he fails, we will not vote for him [The Donald] again."
"...Trump is the only one who has full intention to do what he says and actually take care of things."
"...I may not like Trump as a person and don't what to be his friend, but he is the only one right now I trust to be my President."
"...I used to be a big Clinton supporter, but she is a typical political weasel: talks how it's dangerous to trust Trump with the 'nuclear button,' while 20,000 of her emails with government secrets are about to be publicly released by the Russians."
"...How can she [Hillary Clinton] talk about War on Terrorism, when she is chummy with the Saudis? And how can she claim that she will protect women's interest when she takes millions from the kings of Oman and such."
Look, of course I don't know about all of the 13.4 million of Trump supporters - I'm sure, like in any other group of people, there are plenty of bastards and idiots among them. Yet, every one of those who I met personally, heard talking or read their opinions in various media strikes me as exceptionally reasonable, very informed, logical person, free of fanaticism. Without any bias, in a true objective spirit I so vehemently cultivate on this blog, I cannot say the same about the followers of either of the still-running Democratic candidates. And it makes me wonder: maybe, just maybe, it has something to do with the compelling rationality of Donald Trump's presidential platform.
Like many hiring execs, I still have an employer account with Monster.com, even though the time when they dominated the job-hunting market has passed. Nowadays, they are not even at the top of the industry leaders list. Still, we got used to them in the 17 years they've been around. And they do try their best to provide the paying clients with value-added bells and whistles beyond the standard ad posting: resume matching, database searching, description writing, HR Resource Center, and whatnot.
One of these add-ons is the email service that blasts recruitment articles to all registered users. I usually ignore these emails, but the last one had an article with an enticing title The Real Reason Millennials are Leaving Your Company.
The first thing that caught my eye was the singular "Reason." I thought, "The author was able to identify a single, most fundamental cause of what appears to be a case of chronic pins and needles in the millennial butts? That's remarkable!"
I got even more curious reading the logline. It talked about an abundance of options, "a plethora of jobs" that allow millennials to be "super selective" in their career choices. Moreover, it promised expert advice to employers on how to keep the "valuable millennials" in the work seats. I was like: This must be one of those sci-fi imagine-if humorous thingies, because these statements, if not drenched in undiluted sarcasm, can only refer to some remote planet in an unknown universe. Here on Earth, right now, most of the millennials you and I know are either unemployed, or work jobs that have nothing to do with their chosen professions (let alone vocations), or stretch their schooling to avoid facing the bleakness of the job market. I mean, there are premium cable shows and broadcast sitcoms about it.
And, "valuable millennials?" Yes, they exist, in small numbers and tiny clusters, and you ought to be very lucky to have them around. But generally speaking: the state of our arts and entertainment is a testimony of young people's value and their values. And when it comes to hiring, you need to go through 800 entry-level resumes to find 3 candidates who can write a coherent sentence, even though (I'm talking to you, senator Sanders!), all of the applicants have college degrees.
Opening the article immediately dispelled all enthusiasm. Firstly, no pinnacle reasoning was crystallized. The piece was divided into subsections addressing different causes for millennials' job mobility. Since the author is not a Canadian afflicted by the national inability to pluralize words, I can only attribute the use of the single form in the title to writing and editing sloppiness. And, of course, there was not a single whiff of alien or any other humor.
In fact, the self-branded Talent Maximizer® Roberta Matuson, who wrote the article, takes herself and her "advisory" role very seriously. In complete solemnity she lists the following as the reasons why the millennials don't want to hold on to their jobs (with my commentaries):
To paraphrase Woody Allen, "What's wrong with this? Everything!"
First of all, what does the lame formula "improved society" mean? What's a "better society" for one person, is hell for another. The massive support of Bernie Sanders by young voters clearly shows that they want to live in a welfare state. I, on the other hand, have been preaching no government interference and market economy my whole life. I would understand if the focus was more specific - let's say on environmental issues. If employees of different ages boycotted the fracking industry, for example, our society would seriously benefit in the long run. But I doubt we are talking about future impact here. I'm pretty sure that if the fracking industry started providing free daily lunches to local people, the millennials would think of them as employers with a positive mission! Never mind the explosions and the fiery faucets.
And what happened to the old-fashioned purpose of being profitable, staying in business, and continuously providing jobs? It's not good enough? Do all millennials want to work for non-profits spending grants, or public companies depleting investors' pension and college funds?
Well, this is not the first time I am confronted with the suggestion that what I call "hugging motivation" is more important to younger people than fairness, objectivity, professional growth, adequate compensation, etc. Don't get me wrong, the acknowledgement of one's achievement is incredibly important, but only if it's deserved. Constantly patting on the back some unimpressive, low-value jackass out of fear that they will leave - that would be a betrayal of my work ethics and a violation of my fiduciary duty as a CFO. Merit-based rewards, people! That's what made America great in the first place and that's what will bring the greatness back!
And here she goes again with the sci-fi twist: the recession is over! Where? In Alpha Centauri? Oh, wait - on the front page of The Wall Street Journal and in government reports. In real life, we are in the permanently recessive stage of economic decline with no prospects for upward turn. This slow sliding may feel to the uninitiated as a flat plateau, but just you wait - we are bound to experience some dramatic crashes as well.
So, no matter how much you praise them, and hug them, and take them to lunch, the old-school paycheck still matters! Except there is nothing old-school about it either. Back in the day, wages were determined by clear and tangible factors: the sophistication of the job, the level of expertise, the scarcity of QUALIFIED professionals on the market. But apparently it doesn't work like that with the generation of people who were born after The Breakfast Club and Back to the Future came out. The key to their adequate compensation is their own self-worth. We must pay them whatever they think we must pay them. And don't forget, the employers need to account for the student loans! Essentially the implication is that we have to pay them what they NEED and not what they earn. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" maybe sounds right to Sanders's supporters, but it is not the principle that lies in the American foundation. You know whose principle that is? Marxists-communists!
Just the millennials? Is that what the article's author actually believes? That millennials should be treated preferentially when it comes to working hours, paid time-off, etc.? That there should be two different HR policies in every company, one for millennials and another for the rest of us chickens? That's age-based discrimination, isn't it?
I've always believed in the importance of work-life balance and regularly wrestle with the owners to ensure that every employee has access to the same set of benefits and perks. And what my experience shows is that the millennials take the full advantage of these packages like no one else; sometimes to the point of abuse. 90% run out of the office the minute the clock strikes the official end time, no matter what's happening with the work. Many don't even spare a few seconds to shut down their computers (yet all of them fancy themselves "environmentalists"). Just last year, I had a millennial employee who was out for 15 working days in the 5 months I tolerated her bullshit. I've never had to deal with that kind of attitude before the millennials entered the workforce.
The truth is that you don't need to be an HR expert to formulate your ideas about the reasons behind the millennials' prevalent job discontent. Any experienced manager with a keen eye and some human insight can draw up a comprehensive list. And here is mine (in no particular order):
By the end of last Friday, the Dow Industrial dropped 400 points and the market is now down cumulative 8% in 15 days of the new year! Oil teeters at $28 and it looks to me that it is inclined to slide down, not climb up. Just as expected by some, and say it with me, please, "It's only going to get worth!"
But people (again) are like, "Oh, my God! My Apple stock! I should've sold at $139!" (FYI, it's at $97 as of Friday). And the media is all like, "Market crash robs $2.3 trillion from investors!"
Seriously? It's the market's fault??? Hello, people, can't you read?! They state it plain and simple on every trading site and in every market investment document: "May lose principal value." It's in smallish, but not invisible, print - if you care to see it, you will. How can anybody possibly blame the stock market for being what it's meant to be: the gambling boiler fueled by unsubstantiated rumors, false promises, illogical hopes of overnight wealth, and herd mentality? The chances of losing all your money there are pretty much the same as those in pressing the slot machine's button for days and days in a row.
In fact, casinos are far more honest about it - when you walk in, you know that the odds of setting yourself for life by winning there are very low. And nobody blames the casino. You blame the Fortune. The reality is that the stock market is not much different.
The only people who manage to generate gains there are the most shrewd, the most intuitive, the luckiest, and, most importantly, active traders; those who understand the slightest nuances of the market's moves; who sit in front of their computers for 8 hours a day and follow their gut feelings when they personally manage their portfolios. But those are one in a million. The rest of the "investors" - from an average Joe to large pension funds are bound to lose. Remember all those brokers and fund managers who handed over their investors' money to Bernie Madoff? You don't expect them to start actively trading for you, do you?
And let's not forget the simple arithmetic fact that it is the mass public participation in the security exchange that drives the market value up and down in the first place. We've already discussed the supply and demand laws on multiple occasions. The more people buy the stocks, the higher their prices are. And it's the mass panic that results in selloffs and crashes.
Even if you don't understand the detailed dynamics of what happened on Friday, you can grasp the essence of the participation impact in the perfect example of Apple shares: There were tons of companies that lost far more than Apple's 2.4% of their stock prices (Disney, for example, lost 5.3%), yet it was Apple that led the list of "wealth destroyers" (as some media geniuses labeled them) with a loss of $218 billion (26%) of their market value. The reason for that is the astounding number the company's outstanding shares. Everyone and their mother chooses Apple as their favorite high-tech investment.
So, it's not an abstract "market's" fault; it's the investors' own undoing. Nobody forced them to trust their pension and college funds to a gambling outfit. And now, between the mass hysteria of people in fear of losing their last dime and the financial strains caused by the economic downturn, the selloff will accelerate. 400 points is nothing - there is a real crash ahead.
From an actual email exchange that took place this morning (quoted as was written):
From a Customer to Operations Department of A_C Company:
Hi John,
Please deliver the second truckload from our current order on Monday 12/21. Please confirm.
Customer
From the Operations Department to the Customer, copying A_C Company's CEO as per protocol:
Good morning Bob,
Thanks for providing the delivery date! We will begin to secure trucking.
Best regards,
John
From the CEO to the entire Operations Department, copying The Frustrated CFO and Managing Partners:
Please find a trucker who will not spill the product, drive into the customer's gardens, or drive recklessly through their parking lot damaging their employee's car, which all happened to this valuable customer in the recent past.
CEO
I've been predicting that crude oil prices will eventually drop below $30 per barrel for nearly two years. When I first started talking about it oil futures were trading on NYMEX at $108. Everyone thought I was too radical in my predictions. Even those interested in my reasoning refused to believe that such a drastic adjustment was possible.
Then, on Friday, September 11, 2015, many industry insiders have received a MarketWatch alert letting them know that Goldman Sachs underbid my forecast, warning that "oil prices could sink to $20 a barrel." I personally don't pay much attention to big-firm analysts (they are most likely low-balling because they have some shorting game in the works), but a few of my acquaintances thought I should've felt justified. The only thing I can say is "What took them so long?"
Human myopia doesn't shock me anymore. However, the level of denial exhibited by those in and around the business of oil and its derivatives borders on blindness. I mean, it's not like I have some special connections or access to secret information, nor do I spent any time on extensive research. The same self-evident facts were always right under everyone's noses, not just mine own.
Look, having been one of the largest importer of oil in the world for decades, the United States used to limit supplies to other regions of the globe by consuming the majority of Saudi, Algerian, and Nigerian output, thus keeping everyone hungry and bidding. Up to a certain price level it was considered more practical to buy foreign oil than to invest into domestic production by pretty much every branch of US energy and petrochemical sectors. But as soon as the prices hit an attractive spot, everyone and their mothers started pumping more oil and throw it into the market. The US production doubled; the same happened in Russia, Iraq, Canada.
Meanwhile on demand side, the oil consumption is slowly (too slow for my taste) diminishes. Tapping into shale formations made natural gas a cheaper energy alternative. Furthermore, the idea that switching to renewable energy (solar and wind) may offer a chance of survival seems to take a stronger hold in more reasonable heads worldwide. Even in our country, in spite of all that protectionist auto lobbying in Washington, vehicular fuel-efficiency finally became a reality. And those of us who travel to Europe and Japan have seen the itsy-bitsy cars most people had been driving there for the past 25 years.
More significantly, the economies are weakening all over the globe. EU is barely holding itself together. China has finally admitted that the country has "problems," which is probably a tight-lipped way of describing a complete disaster. This means shrinking consumption of everything, but especially of oil and oil-derivative products.
As I said, it's self-evident. As far as I was concerned, expecting the downward turn of the oil market was the only sensible conclusion. But everyone seemed to have gone stupid. Seriously, what's wrong with people? You don't need a PhD in Economics to understand this! What happens when you have a product surplus in the market of diminishing demand? Does the price goes up or down?
Of course, ever since the oil has become THE most important commodity on the market, it's been associated with that very special cardinal sin - Greed. (If you search Amazon for books on oil, you will find the word "greed" on at least half of the covers.) And greed is blinding. It makes people reckless. They refuse to consider a possibility that making a profit of $60 per barrel today can turn into a $20 loss tomorrow.
Greed always goes hand in hand with opportunism. As I said above, higher prices attract more suppliers - it's hard for people to resist the opportunity to make an extra buck, regardless of the consequences. All considerations of important values, including the planet's survival, are cast away in the pursuit of hot dollars. They pump more and more. They create new nightmare technologies like fracking. They invest billions of dollars into new facilities, raping the Earth and turning household water into flammable liquids. And then, these blind people have the audacity to look surprised when overproduction manifests itself in rapidly falling prices.
And it's not just oil - prices for every single product on the petrochemical flowchart (kerosene, polypropylene, PVC, polyethylene, etc.) are dictated by the prime material's behavior. When the prices were high, the greedy piggies cranked up the production capacities of those products as well, with exactly the same result - massive overproduction followed by the drastic price drops. What was selling at $1500-$1900 per metric ton a year a ago is now sold for $900.
In theory, the only logical response should be to seize the output. Yet, it's not easy to hit the breaks. When in the fourth quarter of 2014 oil prices sharply adjusted from $93 to $45 per barrel, one CEO of a petrochemical trading company asked me, "Why those Russians and OPEC aren't doing anything to stop it?" And I had to explain to her that for Russians oil is like payroll wages for an ordinary person - they need continuous oil income for sustenance. They will not stop pumping no matter what. What else can we possibly expect from a dictatorship where a handful of usurpers hold national property for personal gain? And OPEC? The cartel's members refused to cut their oil productions for an opposite reason: They are already so rich, they cannot be hurt by falling prices. On the other hand, impoverishing the competition will benefit them in the long run.
Here in the States, though, we still have some shreds of the free-market economy left: shrinking markets and overflowing storage capacities inevitably result in industrial contraction. So far 50% of rigs got decommissioned; research and investments are halted, over 200,000 workers have been laid off.
(Insider tidbit: The other day, in casual banter over lunch, my commercial insurance broker told me that one of her Chinese clients is currently buying oil rigs and related equipment out of the US bankruptcy courts at about 15 cents on a dollar and shipping it to the homeland for resale. Way to enrich our foreign creditors, you guys!)
For the sake of clarity let me fiscally connect the sharp price drops to shutdowns and layoffs. Let's say your product's market price was $1800 per unit, but it's now $900. Even if you are a very shrewd business person capable to quickly adjust your costs to the changing market, avoid operating losses, and maintain your healthy 10% gross margin, in absolute dollars you are now making only $90 gross profit per unit instead of $180. In other words, you have only 50% of cash available to pay salaries, benefits, rents, leases, bank interests, etc. - all those overhead items that have either fixed or increasing values.
And so, the steady stream of insiders' news that comes to me is not surprising at all: Nippon is closing their propylene unit, and Formosa shutting down its Delaware productions, and Exxon is halting their alcohol output, and Sterling Chemicals is running on the negative cash flow, etc., etc.
Meanwhile, our state economists continue telling us that everything is okay and will be even better. Well, I'm saying that it's only going to get worse (especially if voters will be fooled by phony, skin-deep feminism or silly, unattainable promises). And you don't even have to take my "radical" word for it - listen to you trusted "friends," the Goldman Sachs's analysts.
In the TV business, summer traditionally has been considered an off-season. Primarily because the broadcast networks' prime series go on a 4-month hiatus after completing their 20+ episode seasons. Nowadays, of course, it's not all that relevant for TV viewers, because... Well, for multiple reasons, really, but to name a few:
First of all, if you prefer edgier premium cable series, your TV viewing patterns are driven by 2-3 month seasons scheduled at different times throughout the year: Shameless airs January through March, Game of Thrones and Silicon Valley - April -June, Masters of Sex - July-September, Homeland - October-December, etc. Even if you are into blending your TV cocktail out of cable and broadcast ingredients, you most likely use on-demand and DVR options to accommodate your personal schedules and to fill the airing gaps. Plus, some broadcast networks now have "summer shows" - short-seasoned and "limited" series aired specifically to cover the off-season void: Hannibal, Wayward Pines, Under the Dome, Aquarius, etc.
The most important factor, however, is that we've stopped being restricted by conventional TV ever since Netflix came along. First, they made the idea of going to video stores and looking for something to watch unnecessary. We were so grateful for digital searching, online ordering, and USPS drop-ins and drop-offs. But then even walking to the mailbox became unnecessary, because they made a tremendous volume of content available for IP streaming, including rare and obscure movies, shows, documentaries, anime, etc. from all over the world!
They didn't stop there either - they got into creating their own original programming. And then Amazon followed suit! As a result, we got access to gems that make me feel as if I am living through some sort of an indie renaissance via the Internet: House of Cards, Orange Is the New Black, Peaky Blinders, Grace and Frankie, Sense8 (Netflix originals), Transparent and Mozart in the Jungle (Amazon's originals). It's fucking incredible!
Moreover, not only that streaming content is available everywhere you can go online, it's available in whole seasons. There is no waiting for weeks at a time until the next episode; no mid-season separation anxiety; no loss of vital details from previous weeks. Technically you can watch a 12-episode season in one day. It is my understanding that some people actually do that.
Netflix had at their hands the best market-testing sample imaginable - their entire subscription base. They must've noticed early on that a large percentage of the viewing population doesn't restrict itself to one episode at a time. They even installed a special probe at the start of the third consecutively watched episode to test whether you are actually binging or have simply fallen asleep on your couch. Brilliant!
Yes, binging - as in excessive indulgence, as in manifestation of addictive personality traits. Not a new thing, really. TV networks (USA especially) have been scheduling rebroadcasting marathons since the 80s. By offering this opportunity to audiences with pretty much any kind of preferences, Netflix forever altered the cultural lives of millions of people.
The phenomenon itself became a marketing tool for Netflix's competitors, who want you to know that you can replicate this experience with them as well: This summer, Amazon actually used the phrase "binge on your favorite shows for free" in its promotional messages for Premium subscriptions. HBO, still holding onto their highbrow status, softens it by offering you to "feast" on your past and present favorite shows on HBO GO.
Poor David Foster Wallace warned, way before streaming had become a household concept, that Television is the one and only true American addiction. He predicted that catering to user demand for content of their choice whenever and wherever they wanted it (remember the "direct dissemination"?) may irrevocably alter us and potentially result in the crumbling of human will.
But who am I to judge? Yes, my life is too busy for hardcore binging and I refuse to watch an episode of anything on my goddamned iPhone, but I've been taking advantage of on-demand entertainment ever since it was first introduced by American cable providers 15 years ago. Then came iTunes 6.0 (2005). Today - Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu Plus, HBO Go, Showtime Anytime - I've got them all, including a Fire Stick to carry them with me wherever I go.
But that was not the topic of this post, was it? (Too bad you cannot hear me laughing at myself.) This was meant to be a brief introduction to the shocking fact that, even with all that variety of quality entertainment on hand, at some point in July I found myself with my personal TV time-slot empty. And let me tell you, that made it hard to ignore the binging and feasting callings of the content pushers.
I browsed the variety of offerings and ended up with The Good Wife on Amazon Prime. It used to be one of the shows I watched during its active seasons - all the way through the middle of Season 4. But then, 2013 announced its arrival to Netflix with their first two major originals, plus Top of the Lake, plus The Fall, the first season of Broadchurch, etc., etc. I'm a busy woman - something had to go. Now I picked up where I left off.
I have to admit, assuming you manage not to paralyze your life or degrade your mental and motoric agility, watching multi-season, multi-episode shows without gaps measured in weeks and months has its undeniable benefits. Complex and intricate storytelling loses some of its power when it's broken up into weekly installments and then gets shelved away for 4 or more months. Reducing these gaps not only allows for a more detail-oriented viewing, it also gives you an opportunity to assess the show's merits and values in a more coherent way.
Aside from the most obvious and well acknowledged attributes of The Good Wife - strive for realism; acute attention to the impact of technology on our lives; honest depiction of shifting morality; head-on tackling of race, class, gender, sex, and all other divides - what I like the most about the show is its refusal to label itself as a single genre. We can definitely identify it as a Drama, but the range of applicable modifiers is quite long - family, political, crime, legal, courtroom.
But what I realized while watching seasons 4 through 6 now, was that in it's wardrobe full of genres, The Good Wife's favorite outfit was the Workplace Drama. One law firm, another law firm, State's Attorney's office, governor's office, clients' businesses (including a drug-distribution organization), you name it - all of them are depicted as places of employment. And the human relationships inside these businesses play essential roles in the show's storytelling. The office politics, alliances, squabbles, hiring, firing, promotion, compensation, peers' competition, subordination, fraternizing, partnerships, resignations, harassment, even telecommuting - all of them have been used as plot points.
Once I started noticing, I've found so many typical and easily recognizable Human Resources issues, it was hard to pick the following ten:
But the most valuable life lesson one should take away from The Good Wife is that you should never ever burn all the bridges and cut all the ties, because you never know with whom you may need to partner next.
Three weeks ago, my 81-year-old father had to go to a hospital for angioplasty. Truth be told, I'm not a big fan of my parents, but the tearful monster of the inevitable guilt demanded my dutiful attendance there.
Aside from keeping company with someone who is forced to be in a scary medical place, where everyone's job is to cause you pain and discomfort for the sake of possible betterment, my presence there was actually useful in multiple ways. As sharp as my Dad still is and as good as the hospital staff turned out to be, the situation does call for a third-party facilitator: faster paperwork and check-in, better understanding of medical terminology, firmer grasp on the authority structure, timelier requests for assistance, etc. - little things that help. I hope they did.
(I have to make a CFO's aside here. In the past 30 years I've observed and directly dealt with many profit, non-profit, and government organizations, in professional capacity and as a functioning individual; in different countries around the world, in various social and economic systems. Based on my cumulative personal experience, I am strongly inclined to conclude that Mount Sinai Heart - the internationally celebrated cardiology division of Mount Sinai Hospital - is one of the most organized, efficient, smoothly functioning business establishments I've ever seen, with the most sensible technology utilization to boot. Considering that most of our existence nowadays takes place in the vile swamp of unmanaged laziness and pervasive unprofessionalism, being there was like a breath of fresh air. I honestly didn't think that it was possible to have such an experience in our times.)
Everything went quite well and we were getting discharged in the early afternoon of the day after the procedure. All documents that my Dad needed to take with him, for his personal records and to pass onto his referring doctors, were organized for him in a folio: surgeon's summary, nuclear images, blood work, EKG's, follow-up instructions (i.e. important documents) in the right-side pocket; hospital's legal documents, releases, disclaimers, general recommendations for cardiac patients (i.e. generic bullshit) in the left-side pocket.
I checked thoroughly everything on the right and glanced through the other side without intending to actually read anything there. But a sheet of paper right on the top of the left-side pile caught my attention. Not I only did I read it, but I also pulled it out of the folder and kept it, because it contained
Seven Tips for Healthy Living
First, the list amused me with its glorious banality and brevity. I mean, all that sophisticated and extraordinarily expensive research and diagnostic equipment in the hands of doctors with international renown and exorbitant fees - and it all comes down to just these seven items?! Where do I even start or end? We are being fried by the unfiltered UV rays all year round. We breathe the air that exponentially increases annual asthma statistics. Everyone has some sort of an allergy and the skin conditions have intensified to the point of Desonide shortage on the market. We don't know what we eat anymore. Yes, there is information on the packaged food, but there is none on the tomatoes or any other loose vegetables. Even if they carry the "certified organic" stickers, do you really trust USDA? By the way, what about smoking, drinking, overmedication? Is all of that less important than flossing? That's hilarious!
On the second glance, the list bewildered me by its ambiguity and the fact that even as is, with all those missing pieces, it's absolutely unattainable.
Okay, maybe I'm over-thinking it. I showed it to someone incredibly level-headed and unruffled. She was curious and unfazed: "Is this in order of importance?" she asked. "Well, dear, I cannot really fucking tell!" Let's say it is. Some people I know would be appalled by the bottom placement of the water consumption. Others (also personally known to me) would rejoice in seeing that their running two miles a day at a sprinter speed for the past 50 years appears to be at the top of the list.
But I personally would definitely like to ask for more clarification. And not only about the ranking of the tips. Move more how? Any type of movement? Running, walking, flapping your hands in exasperation? Fat - cut it down or cut it out? All kinds of fats? What about the ones that help the absorption of vitamins and nutrients? And are people okay holding their phones in their hands while driving as long as they are wearing seat belts? Even flossing! After every meal like I do; once a day at night; before or after brushing?
Never mind the individual interpretations, however! At least items 1, 2, 4, 5, and 7 can be actively controlled by a person striving for a healthy living. But the numbers 3 and 6 are totally different animals altogether! Any doctor who gives a "reduce stress" advice is an equivalent of an accountant whose business recommendations amount to "buy low and sell high." Dah! Any other bright ideas? There are so many factors that contribute to our stress levels, it would be stressful even to attempt listing all of them. You can meditate for an hour, decompress, and whatever, but you cannot stop your mind from reacting to your reality: as soon as the first thought about your life, and never-ending obligations, and overwhelming responsibilities, and guilt, and uncertainties creeps onto that clarified canvas, the stress is back on!
And don't even get me started on the Positive Mental Outlook! Look around yourself - you literally have to be mental to be positive right now. Didn't you notice how the people with supposedly the most positive of outlooks, i.e. pregnant women with small children in tow, actually look completely deranged?
So, let's not worry about the silly list from the famous hospital. I choose to believe it to be a joke from some humorous nerd in the hospital's administrative offices. The good news is that we most likely don't need to work too hard on trying to stay healthy anyway. The probability of the damage we caused this planet hitting us back real hard with one or another pandemic extermination is way too high. And I'm pretty sure that doctors know that as well.
Generally speaking, all benchmarking techniques can be defined as ranking of a process or a product against another process or a product with similar specific metrics of known values. Financial benchmarking in particular focuses on the comparison of the financial results with a purpose of assessing overall competitiveness and productivity. The beauty of this research tool is in its potential to uncover some underlying reasons behind the comparative results.
While it's difficult (yet not impossible) to apply generic correlative methodologies to such subjective, ambiguously immeasurable, and predominantly qualitative characteristics as artistic values of cinematic products, fiscal aspects of the movie-making are not only comparable (as previously outlined in Arts & Entertainment by the Numbers III), at this point they are the chief driving force behind the big-screen output. It's that competitiveness, y'all! "C.r.e.a.m get the money. Dolla Dolla bill y'all."
Let's not forget that financial results are accounting reflections of the micro-economic patterns of supply and demand. Movies, being consumer products, specifically depend on the behavior of the consumer market; even more categorically - on the tastes of the viewing audience.
With that in mind, I would like to sketch out a simplified financial benchmarking exercise based on the most recent installments of two movie franchises (identical products competing in the same markets) that came out on the same day, 05/15/15 (another identical metric) - Mad Max: Fury Road (a terrifyingly believable upgrade of the post-apocalyptic high-octane series with Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, and Nicholas Hoult) and Pitch Perfect 2 (a hard-to-believe Cinderella-type contemporary chick-flick-with-singing about an a capella group on the road to stardom with Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wilson, and Elizabeth Banks; the latter also produced and directed).
Mad Max opened on more screens: 3702 vs. 3473, yet Pitch Perfect 2 made $69.2 million (230% of its rumored $30 mil budget) during the opening weekend - $23.8 mil more than Mad Max whose $45.4 mil barely returned 30% of its $150 mil budget. Here, in our blessed USA, the fiscal gap between the two movies keeps only expanding: As of yesterday, Mad Max's domestic gross ($143 mil) was already trailing Pitch Perfect 2's by $34 mil.
Numbers don't lie: A handful of them is all we need to clearly show that American general public prefers to see a movie full of inexplicable plot turns and dialogue pearls akin to
"Fat Amy: Listen, I don't want you guys to fight. You're Beca and Chloe, together you're Bhloe and everyone loves a good Bhloe."
instead of taking a hard and honest look at the future that already awaits us around the proverbial corner, notwithstanding the high cinematic standards, tight script, awesome directions in all divisions of the process, and NO CGI (!!!)
Of course, making back multiples of the budget and fattening the pockets of producers and distributers pretty much guaranteed Pitch Perfect 3, which is already set to be released in 2017. On the other hand, if people behind Mad Max: Fury Road had to rely only on the US distribution, the $7 mil deficit would pretty much kill all the chances for the filming of the next installment - Mad Max: The Wasteland. Thankfully, there are international distribution channels.
And overseas results are quite opposite to what we observe here at home. The universal appeal of Mad Max's sci-fi realism yielded the film $202.5 mil of foreign revenues, making the total box office as of yesterday $346.10 mil.
On the other hand, I can't even imagine how translators deal with that Bhloe crap in the subtitles. So, it is not surprising that Pitch Perfect 2 made only $94.5 mil outside of US, with 51% of that coming from English-speaking countries of UK, Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands. In many countries the movie stayed in the theaters only for the opening weekend. As the result, its worldwide box office now totals $272 mil, or $74.1 mil less than its competitor in this example.
That's gross, of course. Nowadays, it's hard to overcome a $120 mil budgetary differential. Thus, the singing chicks are still $46K more profitable than the depiction of our damaged Planet and her marred inhabitants.
One can argue that today $150 mil worth of resources is too high of a price for any movie, good or bad. And I agree, but spending any resources at all over and over again on crap that furthers the process of human degeneration is simply criminal.
One of the walls in the lobby of the building where my office is located is entirely covered by multiple monitors. Together they work as one giant HD screen. This is what techies call a video wall. To the best of my knowledge its primary feed is CNBC.
Most days when I leave the office I see in passing Jim Cramer still going Mad about Money. But today I had to leave a little earlier and the only money manager ever to tell the general public not to use their retirement and college funds for stock-market speculations wasn't on yet.
I have no idea what was on, but from the corner of my eye I saw flashing on the screen
EARTHQUAKES ARE LINKED TO FRACKING?
Eh, dah! Are you fucking kidding me? Is that even a question? Who the fuck told these people that they could rape the Earth every each way and not to hear her scream?
I am glad, though, that it was there, hanging on the wall for a minute - at least someone in the prime media is talking about this abhorrent crime.
