"Stop sulking," Green commanded me curtly, wearing that smile of breezy and complacent innocence he likes to affect when he knows he is cutting deep. "You're a rotten speaker anyway, and you'll probably be much happier working the slide machines and movie projectors and seeing that the slides of the others don't get all mixed up."
"I want to do it, Jack," I told him, trying to keep my voice strong and steady. (What I really wanted to do was burst into tears, and I was afraid I would.) "I've never made a speech at a convention before."
"And you aren't going to make one now."
"This is a good talk I've got here."
"It's dull and self-conscious and of no interest to anyone."
"I've prepared some fine slides."
"You aren't going to use them," he told me.
"You did the same thing to me in Florida last year."
"And I may do it again to you next year."
"It isn't fair."
"It probably isn't."
I waited. He added nothing. He is so much better at this sort of ego-baiting than I am. It was my turn to speak, and he had left me nothing to say.
"Well," I offered, shrugging and looking away.
"I don't care if it's fair or not," he continued then. "We're discussing an important company convention, not a college commencement exercise. I've got to use what little time they give us on the program as effectively as possible."
"It's only three minutes," I begged.
"I can use those three minutes better than you can." He laughed suddenly, in the friendliest, most inoffensive fashion, as though nothing of consequence had just happened, letting me know in that arrogantly firm and rude manner of his that the argument was over. "You must understand, Bob," he bantered (while I thought he might actually throw an arm around my shoulder. He never touches me), "that this ambition of yours to make a little speech is nothing more than a shallow, middle-class vanity. I'm as shallow as you are, and as middle class as the best of them. So I'm going to take your three minutes away from you and cover you and your department in my own speech."
You bastard, I thought. "You're the boss," I said.
"That's right," he retorted coldly. "I am. And you've already received more than enough attention here for an employee of mine. I want to make certain that nobody in this company gets the idea you're working for Andy Kagle and not for me. Or that you're doing a better job in your position than I'm doing in mine. Do you get what I mean?"
I certainly did, then. Green was reasserting his ownership of me publicly by demonstrating his right to treat me with contempt. And in his own long (rather self-conscious and pedantic) speech to the convention, he «covered» me and my department in a single aside:
"And Bob Slocum and his people will help, when you feel you really need them, provided your requests are not unreasonable."
And that was all, even though the two projects I had prepared for the coming year were the real high spots of the whole convention. Everyone was enthusiastic about them, even executives from other divisions of the company, who were there as guests and observers: several asked to meet me and expressed the wish for work of similar kind and quality in their own areas of the company. I could have had a grand, triumphant time that week if not for Green (Green's?) kicking me off the schedule. The salesmen, who would have to use these projects in connection with their own work, congratulated me over and over again and never stopped slapping my back as they drank their whiskey in the evening and their Bloody Marys at breakfast in the morning (although some were already implying that they would want to discuss some modifications with me for their own purposes when the convention was over and we were back in New York). And even Arthur Baron, who is boss of us all in this division, drifted over to me on the terrace of the hotel during one of the twilight cocktail parties to tell me that both my projects were the best of their kind he had ever seen and would probably be very useful.
Arthur Baron, who is tactful and soft-spoken, addressed his comments to Green, who was standing beside me on the terrace because he does not like to be seen standing alone. (I was Green's roosting place for the moment, while he took his bearings; and I knew he would walk from me to someone more important as soon as he spied an opportunity. At crowded social or business gatherings, Green never leaves one person unless he has someone else to move to.) Green laughed quickly and gave all credit for the work to me; then he promptly diminished its importance by declaring he had not even seen any of it until that same afternoon (which was not true, since his criticism and suggestions all through the previous ten weeks had helped enormously, and nothing had been included without his inspection and approval.) Green went on to observe, with another pleasant laugh, that the excellent response to something prepared by me without his knowledge or assistance all went to prove what a superb administrator he was. (All I was able to get in to Arthur Baron was a mumbled:
"Thanks. I'm glad.")
"The only legitimate goal of a good administrator," Green continued affably, smiling directly at Arthur Baron and excluding me from his attention entirely, "is to make himself superfluous as quickly as possible, and then have no work of his own to do until he's promoted to vice-president or retires. Don't you agree?"
Arthur Baron chuckled softly in reply and said nothing. He turned from Green to me, squeezed my shoulder, and moved away. Green beamed hopefully after him, then turned somber and began to worry (I guessed) that his hint to Arthur Baron about a vice-presidency had been too broad. He was already regretting it. Green knows he often pushes too hard — even at the exact moment he is pushing too hard — but he simply cannot control himself. (He is out of his own control.)
(I am in it.) I am dependent on Green. It was Green who hired and promoted me and Green who recommends me for the generous raises and good cash bonuses I receive each year.
"You were a third-rate assistant when you came to work for me," he likes to joke when we are getting along comfortably with each other, "and I turned you into a third-rate manager."
I am grateful to Green for promoting me, even though he makes fun of me often and hurts my feelings.
Green is a clever tactician with long experience at office politics. He is a talented, articulate, intelligent man of fifty-six and has been with the company more than thirty years. He was a young man when he came here; he will soon be old. He has longed from the beginning to become a vice-president and now knows that he will never succeed.
He continues to yearn, and he continues to strive and scheme, sometimes cunningly, other times desperately, abjectly, ineptly, because he can neither admit nor deny to himself for very long that he has already failed. Green fawns compulsively and labors clumsily to curry favor in every contact he has with someone in top management or someone near top management. He knows he does this and is ashamed and remorseful afterward for having demeaned himself in vain; he is willing to demean himself, but not in vain. Often, he will turn perverse afterward and deliberately offend somebody important in order to restore what dignity and self-respect he feels he has lost as a man. He is a baby.
Green is a clever tactician at office politics whose major mistake has always been to overestimate the value of office politics in getting ahead. He has refused to recognize that promotion to high place in the company has invariably been based on certain abilities and accomplishments. He has never really understood why so many people of less intelligence, taste, knowledge, and imagination have gone so much further than he has and have become vice-presidents. He does not see that they work hard continuously and that they believe in the company, that they do well and meticulously whatever they are asked to do, that they do everything they are asked to do, and that they do only what they are asked to do — and that this is what the company wants. Green will not grant that these people are all luminously well-qualified for the higher positions into which they are moved.