The CEO of the Sofa (O'Rourke, P. J.) Read online

  “Your wife,” said my wife.

  Some professions are, in effect, controlled by women, who make up 51 percent of editors and reporters, 66 percent of PR “men,” and 62 percent of the psychologists telling us to get over it about the Mrs. making more than we do. Even the federal government’s Glass Ceiling Commission, created by the Civil Rights Act of 1991 to bird-dog the remaining boys-only boardrooms, had to admit that women are getting along all right. The commission conceded that the two economic sectors expected to grow most at the beginning of the new century—service/trade/retail and finance/insurance/real estate—are well on their way to becoming hen parties.

  No ethnic subculture or immigrant population has ever swept capitalism off its feet the way women have. The last time any group rose so quickly to the top was when men first got jobs and the only competition was from woolly mammoths.

  What accounts for the distaff triumph? Of course, as every son, brother, boyfriend, and husband knows, women are smarter than we are. But it can’t be only that. Looking around at my fellow males I realize everything is smarter than we are—the copy machine, for instance. And, when I was working, the copier never got promoted ahead of me. Although, as I recall, it did have a nicer cubicle.

  The fact is, women possess a certain body of arcane knowledge, an eons-old set of complex skills, an ancient esoteric understanding that no one else has. This profound wisdom and well-learned craft is shrugged off by the ignorant (i.e., me) in the single dismissive phrase good with kids.

  Or I used to shrug it off. But one day I came home from New York and was fuming into my martini about childish articles editors, infantile managing editors, and a publisher who was a spoiled brat, when what should my eyes behold but—a spoiled brat. My spoiled brat. There was my daughter Muffin, age two and a half, in the middle of the living room shouting no, kicking the furniture, and otherwise acting like every corporate executive since the great Ice Age Inc. takeover of Woolly Mammoth Ltd. in 11,000 B.C.

  Then you, my dear, breezed into the room and did something involving a sippy cup and a Barney tape. Peace reigned. During that reign of peace I had a brilliant insight. Well, brilliant for a man.

  Women are successful in the business world because the business world was created by men. Men are babies. And women are…good with kids.

  So if I want to be successful in the business world, I need to be good with kids too. But how to go about this? Well, I could undertake to become principal care provider for Muffin. But there’s our daughter’s welfare to be considered. I have no idea how many Ring Dings and packages of beer nuts a toddler needs each day. And are diapers supposed to be changed three times a week or only twice?

  I could ask you, honey, how to be good with kids. You’re certainly good with the one who is, at the moment, contentedly singing along with a fuzzy Tyrannosaurus rex. (I’ll bet Microsoft wishes it could get the Justice Department to do this, although, actually, in that case the Tyrannosaurus rex is Janet Reno. Which shows there is an exception to the good-with-kids rule; Janet would scare the hell out of Muffin.) You also rose higher on the corporate ladder than I ever did, before you resigned to run our wholly owned subsidiary of Toys “R” Us. But would you tell me? Does Apple tell Microsoft? (Actually Apple does tell Microsoft, now that they’re married—but you know who wears the pants in that family. And in mine.)

  Instead, what I decided to do was buy books about raising children. But not just any children. Not babies—anybody with a dairy farm, a chain of rug-cleaning establishments, and 200,000 shares of Procter & Gamble can raise a baby. And not teens—raising teens is the business of the police and the National Association of Television Broadcasters’ Code of Standards and Practices. I bought books about the most crucial and difficult periods in child raising: the God-Awful Ones, the Terrible Twos, the Threes That Are So Bad There’s No Name for Them. I bought books about raising the variety of kid that I am absolutely clueless about raising: ours.

  Of course, I chose books that were written by women. I remember the disaster that ensued when a generation of parents listened to Dr. Benjamin Spock. Trying to gain management acumen from Spock’s ultrapermissive Baby and Child Care would result in running a brokerage house full of people in bell-bottoms eating peyote and handing out stock certificates for free on the street. I also wanted books that received high marks from women readers, so I had Max consult the Average Customer Review page at the Amazon.com web site, looking for things like: I am still using the “respectful” techniques I learned from this book. (Note the sly use of quotation marks.)

  Here’s what I picked.

  1,2,3…the Toddler Years: A Practical Guide for Parents and Caregivers by Irene Van der Zande (Santa Cruz Toddler Care Center, 1995), 184 pages, $11.95.

  Parenting Your Toddler: The Experts’ Guide to the Tough and Tender Years by Patricia Henderson Shimm and Kate Ballen (Perseus Books, 1995), 227 pages, $12.00.

  Your One-Year-Old: The Fun-Loving, Fussy 12-to 24-Month-Old by Louise Bates Ames, PhD, Frances L. Ilg, MD, and Carol Chase Haber (Dell, 1982), 178 pages, $11.95.

  Was I imagining it or did the lady at the bookstore cash register look suspicious? “My wife is going to a Theta reunion in Bloomington, Indiana,” I said, “for the whole weekend.” I placed a concealing copy of Sports Afield in my shopping bag and slipped home. I opened Your One-Year-Old at random and…the shock of recognition was so severe that the vermouth bottle almost dropped from my hand. Listen to these excerpts from the chapter titled “Characteristics of the Age”:

  He seems to want everything, to prefer everybody else have nothing.

  A busy little person. Though much of his activity is purely…bumbling around from one spot to another.

  Almost anything may attract his attention, and then he almost seems to have to respond, without rhyme or reason.

  Extremely self-involved. He relates to others if and when it pleases him.

  All too likely to put on a full-fledged temper tantrum over what may actually be only a minor frustration.

  Can be seen as enchanting if the viewer appreciates an almost total egocentricity.

  Is that not the most brilliant description of management ever limned? Consider the management in the Clinton White House. What had I been doing wasting my time reading What Flavor Is Your Poison Pill? and The 137,240 Secrets of Highly Concise People?

  And women’s sagacity does not stop at mere keen observation. The books I bought wade right in and tell you how to deal with the president of the United States or, for that matter, a regional director of sales and marketing.

  “You control him,” says Your One-Year-Old, “by controlling the surroundings and by just not having too many things around that will get him into difficulty.” Interns, for one.

  “If you do use language to motivate him,” the book continues, “keep it very simple, and use words of one syllable only.” The most famous boss-motivating monosyllable is, naturally, the Yes. But its opposite, the I will get right back to you on that, works too, because, as Your One-Year-Old says, “he has such a very short attention span.” And try “Your golf game looks real good,” and “You’ve lost weight.” Your One-Year-Old points out that “Whatever gives comfort is worth its weight in gold.” Naps are also suggested. They worked with President Reagan.

  The three books are full of good advice about how to make people who think they’re in charge think they actually are. Never ask your boss a yes-or-no question. “No becomes his favorite word even when he wants to say yes,” states Parenting Your Toddler. “He quite typically says ‘no’ instead of ‘yes,’ ‘down’ instead of ‘up,’” notes Your One-Year-Old. “There’s almost always a way to give…a choice,” vouchsafes 1,2,3…the Toddler Years. “Notice that these questions are all offered in the form of closed questions.” And the latter book goes on to give examples, one of which, since we’re using President Clinton as our specimen awful boss, is rather too pertinent:

  “Do you want to wear your red pants or your blue pants?”
It’s important before asking the question to decide what choices we’re willing to live with. Open questions such as “What do you want to wear?” lead to answers we may not be willing to accept, like, “Nothing!”

  The closed question—it is so easy, so obvious, and yet every one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff forgot to ask Bill Clinton, “Do you want to stay out of the Balkans or not get involved in former Yugoslavia?” The problem is, the Joint Chiefs are guys.

  The books are equally savvy about temper tantrums. Says Your One-Year-Old, “The less they bother you, chances are the less frequently they will occur. It is not much satisfaction to play to an uninterested audience.”

  Parenting Your Toddler gives six rules for dealing with tantrums:

  1. Don’t punish.

  (“I quit.”)

  2. Don’t reward.

  (“I quit. Sob. Sob.”)

  3. Don’t bribe.

  (“I’ll quit if you ask me to.”)

  4. Don’t placate.

  (“You don’t really want me to quit, do you?”)

  5. Don’t leave the room.

  (“I quit. F—you.”)

  6. Don’t have a tantrum yourself.

  (“I quit. F—you. I’m suing.”)

  Then the text goes on to posit a strategy worthy of Napoleon, if Napoleon had been a woman. But he wasn’t, so he wound up getting fired and hanging out at the day care center on St. Helena. And the strategy is: Just name the feelings that caused the tantrum. “Once your toddler calms down, explain in short sentences why he gets angry.”

  Let’s try using the example that Parenting Your Toddler gives, about putting crayons away, with some minor modifications to fit Napoleon’s case. “General Wellington and General Blucher, you got really mad when I said it was time to put Louis the Eighteenth away. It’s okay to be angry; next time you can tell me this. You can say, Napoleon, we get mad when you escape from Elba. I will listen to you. And you know that no matter how mad you get at Napoleon, somebody stinky is always going to run France.”

  Just naming things seems ridiculous to a male. But think how often females make it work around the house: Because I’m your mother or Oh, no, you don’t, you’re a married man.

  Equally effective for dealing with tantrums, and with almost all other lousy executive behavior, is a technique that women invented at a very early date—distraction. “Not right now, Adam, I’ve got to go fig-leaf shopping. Why don’t you have an apple instead?” Or, as Your One-Year-Old puts it, a “new and interesting object if offered may prove to be a satisfactory substitute for the thing he really wanted. Or a total change of scene…may help him forget his frustration.” Hence the importance of the business jet, which, you’ll recall, came into use in the middle seventies just when large numbers of women were gaining influence over America’s executive suites. If the corner-office carpet apes get completely out of control, put them on the G-5.

  Besides sage advice, the books contain a variety of real-life anecdotes to help me better understand how corporate and professional life looks to women. It looks like a play date gone horribly wrong. Thanks to the following item from Parenting Your Toddler, I now know everything about telecommunications networks and am ready to go toe-to-toe with the sharpest gal in the industry:

  Lily walked into her friend’s house and her eyes immediately lit upon a beautiful new doll. Lily quickly said, “Joan, I’ll share your new doll.” Joan, who obviously had heard that sharing was a good thing, replied, “Oh, yes, we’ll share the doll.” Lily then grabbed the doll and ran into a corner with it, saying, “Now, we are sharing.”

  I suppose women thought men would never read these books. Or women thought these books would be read only by the kind of man who bikes to his job at the organic food co-op—not a threat to promotion. Anyway, women didn’t work very hard at putting their percipience into code. Even a board chairman could crack it. Examine the following passage, allegedly about biting, from 1,2,3…the Toddler Years. First, however, we will substitute account supervisor for “eighteen-month-old,” new executive assistant for “four-year-old sister,” Palm Pilot for “doll,” and vice president of account services for “Mama.”

  Account Supervisor Kenny stood quietly watching his new executive assistant. It’s possible to guess at the sort of thoughts going through Kenny’s head. “I wonder about this girl here. I know what she looks like…I know what she smells like…but what does she taste like? I’ll just find out…. Wow, she made a big noise! And she dropped that Palm Pilot she never lets me play with. Uh-oh! Looks like the vice president of account services is real mad at someone…. Who, me?”

  You members of the business sisterhood, I said to my wife, should be more careful about putting your secrets into print. Or at least you should make a pretense of actually using these books to raise kids. I’ve noticed you never look at them. When anything untoward happens in our house you call your mother. “Mom,” you say, “I’m having a terrible problem with bedtime. It’s just, No, no, no! More bottle! More bottle! Nothing seems to work. What did you used to do?”

  “And,” said my wife, “my mother says, ‘I used to hide your father’s gin.’”

  3

  NOVEMBER 2000

  So the Fairy Godmother waved her magic wand and Cinderella’s rags were suddenly transformed into a fabulous ball gown, and upon Cinderella’s dainty bare feet there appeared a pair of beautiful glass slippers. That can’t be right. One good polka and she’d smash them to bits. If Cinderella steps on broken glass she’s going to cut the heck out of herself and bleed all over the handsome prince’s ballroom floor and the prince is going to have to call 911. Emergency services will never get there before midnight. Fiberglass must be what’s meant or Plexiglas or one of those clear plastics like they’re making Nikes out of nowadays. So what Cinderella was really wearing was probably a big pair of lumpy athletic shoes, and that must have looked strange with the fabulous ball gown. But never mind. The Fairy Godmother waved her magic wand again and changed a pumpkin into a magnificent carriage. Of course you can change a pumpkin into a carriage, but it’s still going to retain a basic pumpkinishness. It was kind of wet and slimy inside. The way the pumpkin we carved for Halloween was. There were seeds all over the carriage floor. And Cinderella smelled like a big pie when she got out. Which, incidentally, is not a bad way to get a man. The Fairy Godmother waved her magic wand one more time and changed the mice in Cinderella’s kitchen into a team of splendid carriage horses. But they had a terrible gait and tended to scurry down the street too close to the buildings, scraping off a lot of pumpkin-colored carriage paint. And they bolted whenever they sniffed cheese.

  “Mommy!” screamed Muffin “I hate this story!”

  “Better let me put her to bed,” said my wife. “You go down and entertain the neighbors. And, please, honey…”

  [My wife was referring to the fact that I think the neighbors are Democrats. They look like Democrats—the same kind of shoes as Cinderella. And they smell like Democrats. That is, using smell as a transitive verb. When I light a cigar they wave their hands in front of their faces and pretend to cough. Not that I mind having Democrats in the house occasionally, when they own a snowblower I’m going to need to borrow. The problem is the Political Nut who lives around here. He can’t keep his mouth shut. And the Weather Channel says it’s going to be a severe winter.]

  Well, both the presidential candidates suck, I said, attempting to put the Democrat neighbors at ease with an even-handed show of bipartisanship. So I guess the real campaign issue is which candidate gives us more looty for our booty?

  That would be George, I continued. Big juicy tax cut from him. A family of four earning $35,000 would have their federal income tax reduced to the nice round sum of 0. And the top tax bracket would be lowered from 39.6 percent to 33 percent. Whee…but wait. Family of four making 35K. These days that’s two parents mopping the floor at Target or a single mom waiting tables at Hooters, and those people are going to vote Democratic anyway. The
$1,500 tax relief George W. is promising will not exactly let you Democrats build cathedral-ceilinged great rooms with hot tubs and decks onto your trailer homes. No offense, of course. That’s a perfectly nice fake colonial you’ve got next door. Anyway, for you better off, it will take only about $150,000 a year to get into Bush’s 33 percent category. One hundred fifty long is nice money, but not Wild Willy Gates income territory. So there you are, doing good, working hard, making America strong and prosperous, and the government’s getting a third of your pay. Is the government doing a third of your job? Is the government even doing a third of your laundry? If one of you is feeling romantic and the other is tired, does the government take care of foreplay? When you go to Hooters, is the government tending bar, making one out of three margaritas on the house?

  Gore, on the other hand, I said, has a dog’s breakfast of little tax cuts allegedly aimed at poor people. These involve 401(k) matching funds, 401(j) “lifelong learning” accounts, and other things that, if poor people could understand all the mathematical and regulatory complexities entailed, would qualify the poor people for top executive posts and they wouldn’t be poor. They would be voting for George W. Bush to get their tax bracket down to 33 percent.