Triple Bagger
Page 3
In a more acceptable, post-coffee mood, I walked to the building across the road, grey and charmless.
Inside the building, I was welcome by a great hall, grey and charmless again, except for the bright bunches of flowers probably arranged earlier that morning by a gay fashion student working for pocket money at the florist by St. Martin’s Lane. They stood on the counter being fiddled with by a receptionist, who thought she had a degree in architecture. She caught my eye and said good morning loudly to draw my attention to her cleavage, amply revealed by her new dress, and to her shiny bob of blonde hair. ‘Definitely an Essex girl,’ I mumbled under my breath. I thought how she could be the highlight of my day, after Coffee Plantation. I didn’t have any expectation of my new employer being fun.
After proudly announcing my name to her, she directed me to catch the lift to the top floor.
The lift travelled fast, and soon the shiny doors opened onto a huge auditorium with hundreds of new faces. Many people, all shapes and colours. It felt like the United Nations. Not that I knew how that looked, but I had heard stories from the time my older cousin had been invited to their junior programme in New York. This room’s murmur reeked of excitement and expectation, so much success and overachievement in the air. It stunk the sort of bad smell that turns you on.
After some adjustment, I recognised some vaguely familiar faces in the room sporting nervous smiles. But the coffee had not fully kicked in yet, the disadvantages of a slow riser. ‘No training in the world seems to fix that genetic defect,’ Dad always complained.
I stood near the entrance and glanced at a copy of the welcome brochure on a nearby table. The little I had understood at interviews was that Enterprise was run by exceptional men who had made it their profession to tell the truth about the health of corporations. Not their financial health, not the health of their employees, but their organisational health as a corporate patient. It was about how corporations sought talented people and made them interrelate to work efficiently, chasing collective corporate goals. What did this have to do with my biochemistry PhD?
If your brain could understand how rat T-cells talked to B-cells to generate B antigen-presenting cells able to induce inositol phosphate production in T-cells responding to mouse mammary tumour virus-encoded superantigens, then it could probably understand how people could be organised efficiently in a corporation. Apparently. And Enterprise had many pharmaceutical clients. ‘It takes a scientist to understand a scientist,’ I had been told. From my point of view, it still sounded better than butchering a fresh shipment of a thousand rats over yet another year at the John Radcliffe.
Back to the brochure, where were we? Yes. Page 2. ‘Enterprisers work to tell the truth, the truth that matters.’ Christ this was a heavy start and I suddenly hoped the firm’s marketing manager had written those words high on drugs and booze, that they were unrepresentative and Enterprisers did not stand for them at all. I tried to rephrase it in my head not to make it sound so stupid. The truth that matters must have referred to what they called the Monday Morning CEO Test. If the CEO was not going to do something with this truth by Monday at 8 am, then it was not worth it.
‘Unearthing these truths is one of the most important and difficult things to do,’ I read next on page 3, in a charming font. It hinted that Enterprise sincerely believed that its guys were better at it than anyone else. ‘We arrive to the truths using Enterprise’s proprietary View from the Sky diagnostic and are compelled to tell our patients, however unwelcome the findings are, because it is a duty that comes with our vocation.’ I tried to imagine like doctors, Enterprise professionals’ thoughts went first to their patients, the most powerful men of the corporate world.
I was disappointed to find no mention of remuneration anywhere in the brochure, yet everyone said that Enterprisers made shitloads of money. I refused to believe that whilst my mates were off making stacks of green grubby dollars on Wall Street, I was at risk of being imbued with religious conviction to be an imparter of the truth and spreader of holy water, even if it was to the richest men in the world. ‘But as long as I will be paid,’ I soothed myself, ‘it will be fine.’ Dollars and doing the right thing in the same job, a two for one. I could become rich and still be a good man, able to look at myself in the mirror in the mornings.
Since when had I given a shit about being a righteous man? Was I going all soft? I had to pull myself together. ‘Vittal, you have a young, uncluttered brain and the blessing of sanity, and self-doubting at this stage is only cowardly.’ And as I walked past Enterprise leaders in my cheap M&S blue suit and brown Clarks shoes to take a seat, I found myself, perhaps forcefully, wishing that I was one of them, though not as much as I had wished to be a trader at Goldman. I dreamt of high success, the blessed relief of approval and a new suit. If Enterprise could do that for me, it would be fine.
Bev Darling, Head of the London office, was coming in.
We had briefly met a few months before and she had looked like a parrot fish. She still looked like one. Large head, shades of skin, loud but confined green-blue eye make-up, a pink puffy beak, and a tired-looking mop of muddy orange. That beak appeared to have so much to say for itself, it dribbled. Mid-fifties, big bones. Silky blouse in a colourful pattern with a decided bias towards the barbaric, over sleek black trousers with black pumps. Enterprise was apparently strictly no heels for girls, like nuns, though I later understood that some girls got away with heels, and with murder.
I homed in for an instant on Bev’s small, tired-looking, winking eyes, ticking at a hundredth of a second. They gave her a rare intensity. On close scrutiny I decided she could have been an Andy Warhol-ed version of that British Labour Party politician, Mo Mowlam. And I told myself that, judging by physical presence alone, I was still unconvinced that Bev was not the result of some women-at-the-top employment quota. She certainly was imposing but not in the way of a prospective CEO, I thought. However, everyone insisted that Enterprise was not the quota-type place.
As Bev’s huge mass approached, her voice, that of a bearded three-hundred-pounder, could be heard welcoming each new recruit. When it came to me, she called me by a name I did not recognise, but only mortals had to worry about small things like that. This woman behaved like a goddess, flowing across the room whilst smiling and shaking, walking on the sea like an overexcited whale.
A dull-looking boy sitting next to me, with Tobias Kramer written on his tag, offered Bev a limp hand and the broadest of smiles. It worried me that she spoke to us for up to a minute and I did not understand a single word. I instinctively panicked that Carlo had spiked my espresso with grappa, but soon remembered that he had not made it that morning. The Fame baristas? Could they have done it?
No. It was me not being used to the language of Enterprise.
‘Bev what are you saying?’ I would have felt more comfortable being met by an arrogant male loser à la Wolf of Wall Street’s Jerry Fogel, clearly spelling out the ground rules: ‘There are to be no breaks, no personal, no sick days, no leaving the office so you will avoid coming in late, no lunch,’ pause for effect, ‘and you better be thankful because there are five hundred bright young fuckers waiting to take your role if you fail.’ Well, was that not what we were getting ourselves into? But of course, Bev could not have seen the film yet, it was only the year 2000.
After walking the room, she took to the stage in some kind of rapture, as if the curtains had just opened ahead of a premiere. She stood at the speaker’s podium and drank from the glass of water on the side. How long had that water been there? Bacteria thrive in warm water, I thought. But Bev seemed unaffected as she looked straight to her audience and kick-started her sermon.
‘Our reach has been great, our power is vast, our influence has been and still is incomparable,’ she said. Those very words made the walls tremble, followed by multiple reverberations, like a magical echo.
Then piercing through with her accelerating tick-tocking eyes, she explained how we were summed up in uniqu
eness because: ONE, ‘We have been called,’ pause; TWO, ‘To focus on things that matter,’ pause; THREE, ‘To stand for the truth,’ final pause. These had been three disruptive concepts which had made us unique and underpinned our success, according to Bev. And I knew straight away that three was the number in this place.
We all clapped in unison, my hopes for the hype over my new life purpose being confined to the firm’s marketing manager’s drug habit, evaporating quickly.
‘Our mission,’ Bev continued to explain like a proud mother, ‘is to shape the world through helping patients,’ that would be corporate clients, I understood, ‘and developing better people.’ She assured us we would be evaluated against these two honourable aspirations and nothing else. ‘You have been blessed with a powerful intellect and Enterprise will grow your gift into inspirational leadership.’ There was a roar from Enterprisers at the back of the room. ‘Over a thousand Enterprise Squads,’ she next stated like a general starting a show of military power, ‘are imparting the truth and leading corporate salvation across the world every day. Soon you will too,’ she added emphatically, ‘offering objectivity, mature judgement, truth solving and analytical proficiency, and the ability to make things happen.’
There was a water pit stop, and I stole a moment to reflect on how her plans for us sounded not short of the life of the gods from Olympus, without all the debauchery that made theirs fun. But I could see senior leaders and new recruits alike were enthralled with admiration for Bev, for each other, for Enterprise. My initial take was that it was all sick but I could get used to it. A longish fair-haired, Germanic-looking woman in a light pale pink dress-suit with a hanging bow stood by Bev, like an arousing Aphrodite wannabe. The hard lines of her face could not be softened by the floating silk, though, and she irradiated prudishness as she flicked the projector slides in rhythm with Bev’s words.
‘Sometimes things will go wrong because the conditions for salvation are not present,’ she was reciting in her powerful voice. ‘But mistakes are always of the mind and never of the heart. The important thing is that we want to do the right thing and we have a deep commitment to make a lasting contribution to society!’ Did I? I was just happy paying my university debt first. But Bev was now on a roll. She next claimed that our values gave us an ethical superiority and that they were the essential underpinning of Enterprise success. ‘You will all find that living in an environment of high standards is such a personal reward,’ she added, looking intently at us, ‘that it results in a relentless effort to maintain and improve ourselves. Any realistic goal can be pursued and you will be asked nothing which is in conflict with your own principles...’ I collected some sweat accumulating on my temples.
‘At the grasp of your hand,’ Bev continued, ‘is the ability to get up in the morning and feel that the world is a little better because we have passed through it. This is a rare opportunity, as rare as they come,’ she acknowledged and, had there been a fly daring to spread its wings that second, you would have heard it, but they could not survive in the chill of the air conditioning.
I could feel the crescendo was imminent.
‘Nowhere else is there a place as uniform and self-supportive with the calibre, vision and responsibility of Enterprise,’ she was assuredly spitting her heart out. ‘You will work with people with an unusual quality of mind and character and, with time, you will become those people. Your wives will become those people.’ Oh, dear! Miriam would be thrilled. I for now was trying hard not to be terrified. ‘You will live and lead change,’ Bev insisted in a final effort to vitalise us. ‘You will blossom. You have joined a great family. At a moment of strength. And you will be exposed to the most exciting opportunities to shape the world.’
END. The words appeared on a screen behind her, in case we hadn’t noticed.
Offerees applauded until their hands were bleeding, in a confirmation that dreams can infect reality with their truths. It was like if Maria Callas had come back from the dead. You could tell the audience thought that the time of their lives was starting. Bev had captivated them and I, myself, felt dizzy, but I put my head on my hands and tried hard to supplant my unease with stupid jolliness. I could do it. I was good.
‘A man has to know how to act a fool to get anywhere.’
This was just a phase. It would be fine and then it would end.
Then, I looked up, and with a single glance I knew that it was HIM.
He reeked of success like a true world-shaper. He was handsome, with charisma oozing off him like Moses in a suit.
He was imposing, with the right height for a CEO. (I had been told that Enterprisers obsessed over having CEO-like physical features.) You could tell that this man’s hair had fallen in golden ringlets to his shoulders in his youth. He even got away with a jacket a shade too tight for him, like Ben Affleck. My eyes were glued to his person with admiration or perhaps it was just envy. I was guessing the suit was Caraceni and the shirt handmade in Italy – where else? – and that his personal idiosyncrasies like silk socks and Pegasus gold cufflinks (a sign of virility, of course) spawned a million copycats at Enterprise.
Money was carelessly embedded in every inch of this man and he was not unaware of his inscrutable grace, one which looked as if it did not need constant minute study but came naturally. It was as if someone had transfigured divinity into a human being, put him into a state of glory. It was the ultimate expression of the theatrical beauty that a cultivated eye could achieve.
And this man was vain not of himself, but of the impressions that he created because he knew that he mastered them. This man smacked of performance, of the only kind of influence that lasts. The art of success is, after all, to act successful. A diploma means brains, a medal stands for bravery, a testimonial conveys moral high ground. You do not need to dig any deeper than the Wizard of Oz.
It took me little time to learn that this man was one of our most revered Enterprise leaders, a man named Peter, Father Peter, and I immediately renamed him Peter-Moses. I knew that I wanted to be kissing his arse and joining his cult of self, the club of the quintessential alpha males. Because only shallow people do not judge by appearances… Oscar Wilde?
I knew then this man would take me places, and I probably even knew already that one day I would be writing about him.
Still, not to undermine the power of a book, but literature is the analysis after the event and the physical quality of life is living. Which is why I could never explain in words how my heart felt seeing him standing there like my saviour that day. Some people think that the first (mis)reading of a person is the truest. Looking back, all I can think is that the damned had never looked so beautiful.
Chosen
I soon understood that at Enterprise we were uniformly stiff and upper. We were also dry, strictly no glamour, no badinage, and lacquered a perfect grey without a sign of red. We were also, despite how hard we tried to make believe otherwise, not the world’s best and a breathing advert for Benetton.
It was true that Enterprise had over one hundred hubs, our name for offices. We were in cities around the world, from the traditional New York, London and even Rome, an office which required the harshest sacrifices because it was nearest to the Pope, Francis Bacon’s screaming Pope, to less desirable economies we called dynamic, where we only sent people we hardly ever wanted to see again.
It was also true that in order to choose the lucky ones like me with access to these opportunities, Enterprise sent hundreds of leaders on fishing days at big university programs, taking them away from valuable patient duties. But what was surprising was how the list of privileged recruitment holes had remained unchanged through years of research, because Enterprisers were in essence resolute to go on recruiting each other from the same brotherhoods they could count on the palms of their hands.
It had been explained at my interview how complex rubrics determined the specific dimensions against which candidates were to be assessed: The DiaL (drive in a life) test focusing on demonst
rable drive impact leadership achievements (DILAs). The Find-the-Truth scores ranking the candidates’ abilities to think through problems with creativity, insight and plenty of storytelling. The AA challenge for analytical aces, to ensure the chosen could, at least, count. It had been impressed upon me how harsh scoring rules would take human subjectivity out of the recruitment process (unless your dad was an influential business figure, naturally), and how distinctiveness would be a commonality in all successful candidates, if that makes any sense.
But I had never anticipated Enterprise’s almost unhealthy focus on our personality. We were not only all chosen from the same watering holes, but we were chosen to be the same person.
The fact is that most ordinary people are not what they do (to earn a living). But Enterprise needed people who could become so and fully commit to Enterprise. And I soon realised that it invariably took fear, that fearful people had most of what Enterprise needed. Enterprise wanted men who would drive orderly along a predefined path in constant fear for their lives. Men who feared being average, being forgotten. Men who feared not fearing anymore because fear drove them. Men who would get comfort from a higher shared purpose to stop that little fearful voice repeatedly ringing in their ear.
These men were my peers now and I was them. We were one and the same.
I should have asked myself from the beginning, where is the wisdom in fear? But I didn’t, because I was fearful, I guess. One day we should all walk up to fear and tell her that she is a bully and a coward. Because I now understand that fear was the start of everything, even if Enterprise had been clever enough to hide FEAR, to disembody it into single traits.