Life in the Stupidverse by Tom Tomorrow

This is a compilation of This Modern World cartoons, published in the years 2017 through 2020, and a worthy follow-up to the colossal 25 Years of Tomorrow I wrote about previously.

I am as devoted a fan of Tom Tomorrow (pseudonym for Dan Perkins) now as I was then, and have previously commended him for keeping the dying art of satire alive on the Internet and in a shrinking number of progressive weekly newspapers. 

Here’s what Perkins himself, in the introduction to Life in the Stupidverse, says about that endeavor:

Over these past years, cartoonists and comedians have grown used to hearing the same comment over and over again: you must have so much *material*! Unfortunately that’s not really how it works. Satire is the art of taking something to an absurd extreme in order to highlight the problems of the current moment. The thing is, we are living in the absurd extreme. I try my best, but it’s impossible to come up with something so ludicrous that Trump won’t actually end up doing it in reality, often before anyone even reads the cartoon.

Satire in the age of Trump is exhausting.

Indeed. Here are two of my favorite examples from this absurd extreme:

Yes, I can see Perkins’s dilemma. Good thing he’s a master at walking the line between the absurd real and the real absurd.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Dragons - Chapter 90 (DRAFT)

If I haven’t mentioned it before, it felt very much like things were accelerating on me. The meeting with Mary and Don had been a total mindfuck -- one wanted to fire me immediately and the other wanted to maybe fire me on Monday, and they decided by design or by dysfunction to have that argument with me in the room -- but I didn’t feel like I had any time to dwell on it, or even to prepare myself for its eventual, and inevitable, consequences. I remember talking to Jenny that night, while I was busily packing for Wes’s leadership meeting, first about the phone call with Steve Anderson, then about the meeting with Mary and Don.

“Do you really think Steve is going to offer you the job?”

I had the collar of a dress shirt tucked under my chin and I was folding its arms inward so I could better wedge it into my suitcase. “Yes. I mean, I think so.”

Jenny gave me a worried look. “Well, let’s hope so. You may find yourself out of a job on Monday. If not before.”

I tried to reassure her, knowing that anything was possible, but still pretty sure that I wasn’t going to get fired on Monday, and maybe not even then. I got the sickening sense that Mary wasn’t done sending me through the wringer yet, that she would never fire me, that she was trying to get me to quit by working me practically to death.

“Maybe you should start looking at houses in Boston?” I told her, trying to be cheerful, but checked by the tears that welled up in her eyes.

“Oh, Alan,” she said as she moved close and I put an arm around her shoulders. “How are we going to move to Boston? I feel like I’m going to drop this baby any day now.”

She was still a month or more from her due date, but I knew what she was talking about. A move to Boston with a pregnant wife or a newborn baby -- either way, it was going to be a challenge. It had already occurred to me that I might have to move to Boston and hole up in an extended stay hotel until all the difficult details could be worked out. But that, like a lot of other things going on at that time, seemed like too much to take on, too much to handle. When you’re running day-to-day, it’s hard to think about next year, next month, or even next week.

“It’ll be okay,” I told her, pulling her close, and feeling the solid weight of the baby pressed against my stomach. “We’ll figure it out.”

Maybe we would, maybe we wouldn’t. I didn’t have any idea. All I really knew was that I had to get on an airplane the following morning and help Mary manage what was likely going to be a raging tornado of a leadership meeting. As I lay in bed not sleeping that night, my mind was working double time on all the things that could go wrong and how I was likely to receive the blame for them.

But always there, running deep and dark like a sinister undercurrent to my thoughts, were the words that Mary had offered, telling me that it was Wes Howard -- Wes Howard! -- who had said favorable things about me, and that he was expecting to see me at his meeting. To praise me, I wondered? Was that what he had in mind for me? Was he going to give me a commendation? No, more likely he wanted me there so he could roast me in public.

I was still thinking about this when I met Mary at the airport the next morning. She was already at the gate when I arrived, and I was there at least an hour before departure. She was on her cell phone, sitting awkwardly hunched over on one of those airport bench-chairs, her body turned and twisted so that the charging cord on her phone could reach and connect to one of the few working and chronically over-used electrical outlets in the airport concourse. In the span of three seconds, she saw, recognized, acknowledged, and dismissed me, returning to the more critical discussion she was engaged in.

Sensing that she would want her privacy, I sat in a different section of the gate area, and immediately pulled a bulging file out of my briefcase. I had my own phone calls to make, coordinating more last-minute changes that Wes had left on my voicemail late the night before. I needed to talk to the venue, to some of the attendees, even to our keynote speaker. Some of it could have waited until we were together at the venue, but it would be better, I knew, to at least get some messages onto everyone’s voicemails.

I was still making those calls when my flight was called for boarding. Mary, flying first class, was able to queue up first, and as she walked by me in her business skirt and dragging her carry-on behind her, she offered me a few terse words.

“Good morning, Alan. See you in Denver.”

“Okay,” I said lamely, and it would turn out that those were the only words that we exchanged until our shared cab ride, on the ground in Colorado, as we were headed to the historic Brown Palace Hotel.

“Did you talk to Wes this morning?” she asked me, looking at me like I planned to panhandle her.

“No,” I said. “He left me a voicemail last night. I’m working on making his changes.”

Mary looked away from me and out the window. “Good,” she said, somewhat distantly. “There’s a lot riding on this meeting, you know. For him. And for you.”

“I know,” I said, looking at the back of her head.

When she didn’t turn back to me, or offer any other comment, like her, I turned and looked out my window. It had been a rainy morning in Denver, and the concrete was still wet as we moved off the freeway and onto the city streets.

This is so fucked up, I remember thinking to myself. She’s not even going to talk to me. She’s going to push me into the fire and stand silently by, watching me burn.

At the hotel we were too early to check into our rooms, so Mary planted herself in the lobby, quickly finding yet another often-abused electrical outlet and making more phone calls, and I went to meet with the conference service manager and make sure the meeting rooms for that evening’s opening dinner and tomorrow’s strategy session were being set correctly. I spent a few hours in the banquet room being set for our dinner, sitting at one of the yet-to-be-dressed rounds, doing what I could to prepare for the meeting.

Frankly, there wasn’t much more I could do. I had left my messages and a handful of those people called me back, confirming that they had received and would comply with their new instructions. Now, there really wasn’t anything to do until our attendees started showing up. Organizing these events was often like that. In the days leading up to the event there was always a frenzy of activity -- hundreds of tasks to complete and never enough time to complete them -- but once you got on the airplane and arrived at the venue, you typically spent a lot of your time sitting around waiting for something to happen. And usually, whatever happened at that point, it could only be bad.

Eventually, my sleeping room was ready, and I checked in, went upstairs, ordered some room service for lunch, unpacked my suitcase, and began ironing my shirts. It was a ritual I was well practiced at -- and a good use of the handful of slow hours that always existed before the rush of the meeting began. I was only going to be there for three days and two nights, and had packed accordingly. I had three dress shirts -- for that night, the following day, and the day after that, two pairs of dress slacks, and a single sport coat that would work with any combination of shirts and slacks. They all needed the careful attention of an iron after their journey in my suitcase and I lined them up on the bed and tackled them one by one.

As usual, lunch came to my door in the middle of this task, and I ate it sitting at the well-appointed desk that had been provided for the busy traveling professional. It was probably some kind of soup and salad combo -- I don’t remember what exactly -- but that’s traditionally what I ordered in situations like this. A chicken Caesar, or a Cobb (hold the blue cheese), with a cup of cream of broccoli or French onion soup, you know, the kind with the breadcrumbs soaked in the broth and the lid of crusted cheese over the top. Whatever it was, I ate it in silence, as I have a rule about never turning on the television when I’m traveling on business. 

There is a kind of loneliness that comes when you’re by yourself in a hotel room, and I have always had an unhealthy obsession with it. Even in a place like the Brown Palace, or maybe especially in a place like that, you can look around at the wallpaper, at the soft goods, at the furniture standing solidly on the manicured carpeting, and you can sense all the souls that have been there before you and all the souls that will come after -- a long, uninterrupted chain of humanity, dating back and forwards decades if not centuries -- everyone with their own hopes and ambitions, but all sharing the same basic needs for shelter, for sanitation, for sustenance. Everything provided for you -- the bed linens, the bath towels, the room service -- they are all both unique and eternal. Like you, they will have their existence, but each in time will fade away and be replaced by something or someone else that serves the same purpose and comes to the same end. 

These are the thoughts that would typically crowd in on me, and they probably explain why I hated being on the road so much. But after my lunch and after my ironing was finished I was able to put them all aside because it was time for me to dress in my work clothes and head down to the ballroom where that evening’s dinner would be held. It was still hours before any of the guests would arrive, but there were a lot of details to see to, and a lot of items to set up.

I had to get the boxes we had shipped in advance out of hotel storage and use their contents to set-up our registration table. For an event like our Annual Conference -- with thousands of attendees and hundreds of sessions, this was an elaborate process, requiring the work of dozens. For this leadership conference, it was similar but in miniature. The boxes we had shipped contained the name badges, ribbons, lanyards, and program books we would need to distribute to the various attendees, and they would need to be checked and doublechecked to make sure all the last-minute changes Wes had demanded had been incorporated.

I was deep into that task, my attention wholly consumed by making sure the badges I had made matched Wes’s final invite list, when a strange but familiar voice interrupted me.

“Hello, Alan.”

I looked up. Standing in front of my small table were two people. The first, the one who had not spoken, was Wes Howard, his unruly mop of brown hair framing his blazing and inquisitive eyes. The second, the one who had spoken, was a young woman, her hand clutched to the elbow crook of Wes’s left arm. She was young and thin and attractive, and I felt like I knew her but could not place her in my memory.

“Hello?” I said.

“Oh, come on, Alan,” Wes said. “You remember Amy, don’t you?”

The name was also familiar and the young woman looked at me like that clue should have been sufficient, but I was still not making the connection.

“Amy?”

She smiled and then I knew, the knowledge blooming in my brain like spores shooting off a fungus. 

“He knows, Wes,” Amy said. “He’s just pretending to forget. But really, Alan, how could you possibly forget me?”

It was Amy Crawford, the woman Don had fired for her inappropriate behavior at a meeting much like this one, whose cackling laugh I had heard bellowing from the basement of Club NOW the night I had tried to rescue Caroline Abernathy, and now, here she was, standing before me, dressed in what appeared to be designer clothes, and hanging onto Wes Howard’s very arm.

“Amy,” I said with renewed confidence, working hard to mask the heart attack I was experiencing inside. “Of course, I remember. Just didn’t recognize you for a moment. How are you? You’re looking well.”

“I’m fine,” she said, extending her left hand as if I was supposed to kiss it. I would have been a fool to miss the size of the diamond on her ring finger. “How are you?”

“Okay,” I said, limply shaking her hand and then turning to Wes. “Are you two… Are you… ?”

Wes deliberately put his arm around Amy’s shoulders and pulled her close to him. The movement caused the neckline of her blouse to spread, revealing a healthy cleavage. “Are we what, Alan?”

I felt like a child, not having the words for what I wanted to say. 

“Are you two … engaged?”

The word had magic. At its appearance Amy’s eyes seemed to light up and her face began to shine.

“Yes!” she said, jumping up and down in her excitement but held tight by the tether of Wes’s arm. “Isn’t it wonderful!” she said, extending her hand again, this time without any doubt as to her purpose of showcasing her ring. “Wes proposed last week while we were in the Bahamas.”

I looked at Wes, wondering which of the hundred of phone calls he had made to me had been done from the Bahamas. He looked back at me, smiling like a cat who had just eaten a pretty little songbird.

“It looks like you’re getting things in order, Alan, so we’ll leave you to your task,” he said to me, as if doing me a favor. “Just wanted to check-in and let you know we were here. Oh, and to make sure you can make room for Amy at our table tonight.”

“At our table?” I said.

“For dinner tonight. I think I may have neglected to mention that my fiancee would be accompanying me. We want to make sure that you’ll be able to provide a place setting for her at our table.”

I was nodding my head, understanding Wes’s intent long before he got to the end of his sentences. At dinner that night, there would be a lead table reserved, with its seats scrupulously assigned. Our current chair, our incoming chair, our keynote speaker, Mary Walton, me, and one or two other dignitaries. It wasn’t unusual for the spouse of the incoming Board chair to attend -- I remembered the dowdy and tired-looking man who had accompanied Eleanor Rumford last year -- but last I was aware, Wes Howard had been a confirmed bachelor.

“Of course,” I said, knowing there was nothing else I could possibly say. “It’ll be no trouble at all.”

“Super!” Amy said, as the pair turned to depart. She waved her jeweled hand at me with a backward glance. “It’ll be fun catching up!”

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“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Image Source

http://lres.com/heres-why-amcs-need-to-pay-close-attention-to-looming-regulatory-changes/businessman-in-the-middle-of-a-labyrinth/

A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin

So, ordinarily, I wouldn’t read books in a series back to back like this. But here’s what happened. I actually picked up A Clash of Kings -- Book Two of Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series -- at a used book sale. When it came up in my reading rotation, I realized I couldn’t read Book Two first, so I bought Book One, A Game of Thrones, and read that first. Somewhere, deeper on my To Read list, is Book Four, A Feast for Crows, similarly picked up at another used book sale. When that one comes up, I suppose I’ll have to buy Book Three, A Storm of Swords, and read those two in order like I did with Books One and Two.

Complicated, I know.

But so is Martin’s plot and cast of characters; famously so. Book Two is interesting in the respect that it widens the story’s canvas considerably, with several new characters and plot lines introduced. 

One of them is Theon Greyjoy -- who likely made an appearance or two in A Game of Thrones -- but who really comes into his own in A Clash of Kings. I didn’t like Theon in the TV series (I’m not sure I was supposed to), and I like him even less in the book. But at least in the book he is given the inner depth that is needed to understand him and his motivations. 

Here’s a quick summary of Theon’s journey in the book from Wikipedia:

Robb wins several victories against the Lannisters while his younger brother Bran rules the Northern stronghold of Winterfell in his absence. Robb sends his friend Theon Greyjoy, Balon Greyjoy's son, to negotiate an alliance between the North and the Iron Islands. Theon betrays Robb and attacks Winterfell, taking the castle and capturing Bran and his younger brother Rickon. When Bran and Rickon escape, Theon fakes their deaths. Stark supporters besiege the castle, including a force from the Starks' sometime ally House Bolton. However, the Bolton soldiers turn against the Stark and Greyjoy forces alike, burn Winterfell, slaughter its inhabitants, and take Theon prisoner.

I didn’t dogear any pages while I read this one, so it’s challenging for me to go back and detail Theon’s psychology, but suffice it to say that he is the fool who thinks he can be king. He is consistently insulted and belittled by his own family, yet decides to turn against and betray the foster family that showed him love in order to prove his worth and might to his father and his clan. As I flipped through the book just prior to composing this post, I happened to see in one of Theon’s chapters the italicized line representing his thoughts: “Better to be feared than laughed at.”

And it occurred to me that this sums up the code of honor that drives not just Theon, but many of the other characters in the story. One must conquer to avoid the shame of ignominy. The thing I liked best about A Game of Thrones is the expert way Martin made Ned Stark’s honor become his downfall. And I wonder if Martin isn’t doing something similar here in A Clash of Kings. Just as Stark’s sense of duty and honor was a flaw in the “game of thrones,” Theon’s sense of shame and anger was equally a flaw in the “clash of kings.”

For two books now we’ve seen Martin present us with characters -- one sympathetic, the other not -- who are constitutionally ill-suited to the tasks that confront and confound them. In this view of the series, it would seem important to ask that if neither honorable nor forceful action can make one the champion of the tale, what kind of character is it that will succeed?

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Dragons - Chapter 89 (DRAFT)

As I walked back to the office I thought a lot about some of the last words Steve had said.

At least not presently.

That one stuck with me the most. I had asked him if he wanted to schedule another call to continue our discussion, and he had said that it wasn’t necessary. At least not presently. It was more his tone than the words themselves, but they left me with the decided impression that I had passed some kind of test, and that there were only a few more formalities to move through. Steve had seemed to signal, intentionally or otherwise, that we would be speaking again and that, when we did, it would be on a new and different footing.

Discuss the remaining candidates.

And that one gave my exuberance pause. There were other candidates still being considered? Those words reminded me of the stage management I had been subjected to in Boston, ostensibly to keep me from accidentally bumping into other candidates, but which instead left me with the impression that they were instead hiding from me the fact that there weren’t any other candidates. And again, Steve’s tone seemed to communicate something different than the words themselves, something along the lines of that original impression. The remaining candidates, right? You’re a professional, Alan. You understand that I have to pretend that there are other candidates. That’s how this game is played.

Either way, I felt extremely confident. I thought I had nailed it. I would have wagered a large sum of money that I was going to get offered the job. In fact, I remember standing in the elevator lobby of my office building, watching the lighted numbers slowly count their way down to my level, and seriously considering the idea of not getting into the elevator car when it arrived. There was likely a shitstorm waiting for me up on the eleventh floor, and maybe, just maybe, it was something I no longer really needed to wade into. 

I could just leave. I could just go home and never go back to that awful place. In a few days, Steve would have his conversation with the Executive Committee, they would discuss the “remaining candidates,” make their decision and, a few days after that, I would receive (and almost certainly accept) their offer. With that prospect before me, what was the point of subjecting myself to more of the pain and suffering that comprised my current employment?

It would be a risk, I supposed. I felt confident, but maybe I was misreading the situation again. Maybe there really were other candidates, and one of them was going to get the offer next week instead of me. Then, where would I be? Unemployed with no real prospects on the horizon. That felt scary -- terrifying, in a way, knowing how much Jenny and Jacob and the new baby were depending on me -- but, at the same time, it also felt liberating. So I don’t get the new job? So what? There were other jobs out there, and I would certainly get one of them eventually. And without the drama and dysfunction of my current position getting in the way, I could better dedicate myself to getting one of them. We had some money in our savings account. We could make it for a few months if we had to. 

I thought about calling Jenny -- and was in the process of fishing my cell phone out of my pocket -- when the elevator dinged and its doors opened before me. Standing in the car was Bethany Bishop, a cardboard box filled with the personal effects from her office in her arms. We both froze upon recognizing the other. I’m not sure what expression sat on my face, but Bethany looked like she had just given birth.

In a moment, the elevator doors started to close, and that prompted action -- the two of us reaching out simultaneously to prevent their movement. My arms were freer, and I had an easier time accomplishing the maneuver.

“Bethany,” I said. “What are you still doing here?”

She shook her head, as if determined to not fall into a trap. “Mary had to put off our meeting,” she said quickly. “They just finished interrogating me. Now they’re looking for you.”

She sounded exhausted, but I detected a small lift in her voice at the end. Yes, I thought. I’m sure they are looking for me.

“Stand aside, Alan.”

That woke me from my reverie and I realized I was effectively blocking her exit from the elevator car. Mindlessly, I stepped aside, continuing to hold the elevator door open with my hand. Without another word she charged forward, her heels clicking on the tiled lobby floor and she made her way to the parking structure. I watched her go, watching as she hitched her box on one wide hip in order to free a hand to open the door, and then disappear inside. In the same mindless fashion, I stepped inside the elevator and pushed the little button with the number eleven stamped on it.

I don’t know what I thought about on the short ride up to my office floor. I probably didn’t think about anything. I was probably incapable of any real thought at that point. Somewhere, deep inside my brain, instinct had likely taken over. There would be an ordeal to suffer through, I knew, and it would serve me better than my constantly vacillating consciousness.

When the doors opened, I entered the office complex and immediately made my way down to Mary’s office.

Ruthie saw me coming. She looked at me with some mixture of contempt and compassion, and stood up to silently escort me into the corner office she traditionally guarded. Inside I found both Mary and Don, sitting together at the conference table. Three small pendant lights hung down over the table, only two of them working, their sharp illumination lighting them as if actors on a stage.

“Well, Mister Larson, there you are.”

It was Don doing the talking, and I took that to be an extremely bad sign. As Ruthie closed the door behind me, I felt like I was being locked in a room with two angry dogs, one of them rabid.

“Where the fuck have you been?”

And he was swearing. Not good at all.

“I was eating my lunch in the park,” I said, having prepared that much of the lie.

As I strolled over to stand just below the small dais on which Mary’s conference table sat, I saw Don’s beady eyes shift to the decorative clock in Mary’s award case, then back to me. “It’s two twenty-six. You’ve been gone since before twelve. Do you always take such a long goddamn lunch?”

I looked at Mary, and caught her eyes boring into me, her lips pressed so tightly together I couldn’t see the shade of lipstick she was wearing. I thought that maybe they weren’t both angry dogs. I thought that maybe Don was the dog and Mary was holding his leash.

“Not always.”

Don flinched as if I had tried to hit him. “Do you think this is funny? Do you know what happened while you were ‘eating your lunch’ in the park?”

“Why don’t you tell me, Don?”

“Sit down and I will, goddammit. I’ll tell you not just what happened but what the fuck is going to happen next. And you’re not going to like it.”

“Then I think I’d prefer to stand.”

I’m not sure what it was that was keeping me calm. Facing Don was always a terrifying prospect, and when Don’s back was up -- as it appeared to be now -- it usually caused people to wilt, weep, or wet their pants. It was probably an aftereffect of the conversation I had just had with Steve, and the confidence that it had given me that I wasn’t such a loser after all. But I’d like to think that I would have been able to remain calm even without that support. I had seen Don destroy people before, and I remembered telling myself whenever I saw it, that eventually, inevitably, his anger would turn and be directed at me; and that when it did, I was not -- EVER -- going to give that fat fuck the satisfaction of seeing me crumble before him.

“All right, smartass, have it your way.” Not without effort, Don worked himself up to his feet, almost toppling his chair over backwards as he did so. “While you were out ‘eating your lunch’ in the park, Bethany Bishop was in this office, resigning her position, and telling us -- guess what? That you were the reason for her departure.”

I looked over at Mary, who had remained seated, her arms now crossed over her chest. She looked nothing but uncomfortable to me, the way someone facing dental surgery might.

“That’s four by my count, Alan. Susan Sanford, Michael Lopez, Gerald Kreiger, and now Bethany Bishop. Four of your direct reports who have left the organization and who have cited you and your inadequacies as the primary reason they were leaving.”

I flipped my eyes back to Don. “You fired Gerald, and you only did that because I told you what he was doing to undermine our position with our largest client.”

Don shook a chubby fist at me. “You're goddamn right I fired him, Alan! And after the things he told us about you I wanted to fire you, too, but Mary decided to save your sorry ass.”

I remembered the cracked glass in my office door, cracked when Gerald punched it on his perp walk out of the building. You’re a dead man, Alan! You’re a fucking dead man!

“She saved my sorry ass?” I said, incredulous, and turned back to Mary. “Is that what you did? Working me to death is saving my sorry ass?”

Don started barking at me again, but I kept my gaze focused on Mary, and she eventually held up a hand to muzzle him. She still looked uncomfortable, like trying to swallow a slippery eel, but when she spoke, there was an icy coldness in her voice.

“The things that Bethany said about you are almost unbelievable, Alan. As challenging as things have been around here for you, even I didn’t think you would stoop to such a level.”

They were the first words in the drama that gave me any kind of pause. I blanched. There’s no other word for it. Remembering the lies that Wes Howard threatened to spread about me and Bethany, and the familiarity that we had shown in the office and at the recent conference, I suddenly feared the lies that Bethany may have decided to spin about me. 

“She’s lying.” It seemed the safest and most all-encompassing thing to say.

“Is she?” Mary asked. “Then you’re not trying to undermine my authority?”

Wait a minute. What? 

“Don’t just stand there with that ridiculous look on your face, Alan. Tell me if the things Bethany said about you are true.”

“What did she say?”

Don suddenly huffed with exasperation. “Oh, for fuck sake, Mary. Let’s just fire him already!”

Mary raised her hand to him again. “Just a minute, Don. I want to hear him deny it, if he can.”

“Deny it?” I said. “I don’t even know what I’m denying. Tell me what she said about me!”

And Mary did just that. Evidently, Bethany had really decided to throw me under the bus on her way out the door. According to Mary, she said that she was leaving because she could no longer work for a supervisor who was actively working against the leadership of the company and the clients it represented. Bethany said that I had frequently talked with her about both Mary and Don, expressing my opinion that they were corrupt and incompetent, running the company for their own personal enrichment and setting everyone who threatened them up for failure and termination. According to Bethany, it was me, not Gerald, who had been conspiring to steal the client from the company, and that I had tried to recruit her into my diabolical scene. On top of all of that, I had evidently been inappropriate with her -- especially as she began to push back against my schemes of conquest -- calling her names, insulting her, and threatening to fire her.

It was a lot -- most of it without a iota of truth to it. But there was one thing, the idea that I thought Mary was a moron, and that I had shared that opinion with Bethany in times of heartfelt intimacy -- that was true. The idea that she would share that with Mary, that felt worse than all the other lies she told about me. And, as I looked into Mary’s eyes as she summed up and demanded an accounting from me, I could see that that was the item that had hurt her the most, too.

“So, tell me, Alan. What am I to believe? Bethany was very convincing, with enough facts and figures to support many of her claims. Is anything she said true? Do you really have such a low opinion of… of the company?”

I stammered before I could form any kind of coherent response. “I… I don’t… I don’t know what to tell you, Mary. She’s lying. She’s… She’s mad at me, and she evidently wants to see me suffer.”

“What is she mad at you about?”

This last was from Don, who was still standing on the opposite side of the table from me, and had evidently been listening and waiting for an opportunity to poke his sharp stick back into my side. I looked at him, then back to Mary, then back to him.

“It’s… It’s complicated,” I said. “Bethany and I are friends. Just friends. At least we used to be. We recently had a falling out.”

Mary unexpectedly rose to her feet. “I don’t think I want to hear it, Alan. Whatever was going on between you and Bethany, I’m confident that it isn’t going on anymore. Tomorrow the two of us are supposed to get on the same airplane and attend the leadership meeting that Wes Howard will be chairing. I spoke to Wes this morning and, believe it or not, he spoke positively about the work you have been doing to adjust and support his vision there. I think he’s expecting to see you there, and I’m not sure that we should act on this situation until after this meeting is successfully completed.”

Don began to sputter again, but Mary waved him aside. “We’re not letting you off the hook, Alan. We’re just delaying any action we decide to take until Monday. There’s just one thing I want to know. Can I trust you?”

“What?” I said, not knowing what to think, much less say.

“Look me in the eye, Alan. I want you to look me in the eye and tell me that you are going to behave yourself until Monday. That you are going to attend this meeting like a good soldier and do exactly what you are told.”

It was evidently too much for Don to take. He threw up his arms, cursed, and stormed out of the room, saying that he wanted no part of this. The commotion gave me a moment to gather a mere handful of my wits together, to realize the depth of the dysfunction I was experiencing, and what I needed to do if I wanted to keep receiving a paycheck.

Mary turned back to me. “Tell me, Alan. Tell me what I need to hear.”

“I promise, Mary. I’m not working against you, and I’ll do what is required of me at this meeting.”

Slowly, she nodded her head, clearly making a decision in her mind.

+ + +

“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Image Source

http://lres.com/heres-why-amcs-need-to-pay-close-attention-to-looming-regulatory-changes/businessman-in-the-middle-of-a-labyrinth/