advice sandwich, hold the baloney

"How To Succeed in Business without really Trying"
was a show -- probably a play first, then a movie, when I was a child -- I always heard of it, don't think I saw it. Even as a child, I knew that title was meant to be humorous: to be Successful at Anything, you are supposed to have tried. Tried hard, & worked hard.

(That's the Calvinist / Puritan influence from several generations of rule-obeying, by-the-book ancestors, I think.)

[I had thought of that title, and the idea behind it, this weekend and then come to find out it looks as if this show is being produced on Broadway again, now.]
Sometimes I have these thoughts in my head, and then they are Out There in world, and it's -- weird.
I don't believe in ESP. Only coincidence.

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Summer after college graduation, worked at a stockbroker -- place: Shearson, in Boston.
The things people back then told you to do in order to "succeed in business" as the Broadway play says, were to --
dress the part; you must dress like an executive, even if you weren't one yet,
and then there was --
stay late at the office -- (don't be a "clock-watcher," shooting out of the place at 5:00 sharp, knocking people down in your rush for the elevator -- the idea was to exhibit Dedication -- your first thought is not, "Is it time for me to get the hell out of here?"; your thought was supposed to be, "How can I make this project better and more effective...) ...
and, on same principle, there was:
"Work Saturday mornings."

A very successful man I had known before going to college told me working Saturday mornings was important, when I had asked about his "keys to success."
He said, "I don't take the whole weekend. I'm in the office every Saturday until noon."
OK.
So one Saturday, instead of relaxing in blue jeans or house-cleaning, or cat-brushing, or novel-reading, or Cambridge-walking, or Bob Dylan-analyzing, I woke early, did hair-make-up-and-nylons-high-heels-good-outfit, and got onto the trolley and headed to the stop nearest Shearson, in downtown -- either Park Street, or Government Center -- one of those stops.

Into the building, it was considerably less populated on a Saturday. Most of those people were NOT coming in to work on Saturday.
In the elevator, going up, a guy got in with me. He was wearing an outfit that sort of looked like a policeman, but yet you had a sense that he was not a policeman. Applying my current knowledge to this distant memory, I realize this fellow was what we now call a "Security Guard."

I'd never noticed security guards in the building before; they were probably there every day, but M-F, there was so much human traffic, that you didn't notice everyone. That lonely Saturday morning, it was different.
In the elevator this guy asked me to give him some money.

-------------------- Yikes. I had thirty dollars in my purse. I gave him $10, with the idea that if I willingly gave him $10, I would not be mugged, and lose the whole $30. Then he sort of made a pass at me -- lunging across the elevator. Actually scared the hell out of me. (And he's supposed to be the security GUARD, right??!
If this guy's in charge, then who was I supposed to call, to report him, the muggers??

I stepped out of his way, and the elevator door opened at Shearson's floor: I went on into this vast expanse of Silent Office, all these desks ...
Am not even sure what I planned to do in there, that morning. Not cold-calling, because you wanted to have a broker available to speak with the person if you got anyone who'd take a minute, and there were no brokers in there that morning, I can tell you, I was it.

Maybe I was reading trade journals. Or somehow organizing my cold-call list ... honestly cannot remember. And I'd hear a click, or a tick, or a huff of Indoor Building air whishing by on stockinged Empty-Building-Air feet, and pretty soon I was like, "This is too God-damned scary; that guy knows I'm up here, and he knows I'm alone, I need t' get out. This is too weird. This is not working."

I left. And I never went in to that office on a Saturday morning ever again, the whole summer. And I remember leaving the building that day, just wanting to be alone in the ladies' room because I felt like crying, and I was not hurt, or anything, the guy didn't do anything to me, but I just had tears of (dam-mit!) frustration that I could not follow through on my plan of spending Saturday morning "in the office," like my Millionaire Role Model.

I felt lonely, and unsuccessful, and ticked off, riding the subway and the trolley home, that morning.

Looking back with hindsight being 20-20, and a more sophisticated adult perspective, I can recognize that my Successful Business Acquaintance was not being altogether straightforward or thorough in his instruction when he said the way he got successful was by working Saturday mornings.
He owned the place; he got successful by being a smart businessman and giving himself the deal. Writing himself the ticket. Arranging the songs in his key. Whatever.
And while I didn't want to See it this way, I did understand, on some level, that a big part of reason for working Saturday mornings was to tick off his wife. She would have preferred that he was "home, more." So he made stringent and consistent efforts to be Home Less.

(Yikes; yerks. When I see relationships that become a stand-off, like that, it makes me think Life With Cat is pretty good; on other hand, think Love is important. Maybe I shouldn't let Other People's Marriages scare me ...)

Me spending Saturday mornings in the empty Shearson office probably wasn't a Key to Success. After all, I didn't own Shearson.
Then why did he tell me that?
Nyeah -- people tell you anything. It's all white noise.

-30-