While having strong revenue management will always be paramount for any hotel, growing ADR and making your nightly rates less elastic to market conditions is largely dependent on brand differentiators and the operations you establish to make the guest experience memorable. The pandemic hasn’t stopped this pursuit, merely pivoted it as we all look to swim in the stream of new customer habits.
The bulk of these new traveler behaviors pertain to the delivery of a safe onsite stay through sanitization and social distancing. Our messaging to prospective guests is mostly designed to assure them of this quality via upgraded cleaning and disinfection standards, as well as the implementation of contactless technologies to remove (or reduce) physical touchpoints, all without compromising our service delivery.
But look deeper. If every property is discussing COVID-19 safety updates, then how can you ever stand apart by doing the same? Before you cry foul, know that communicating these assurances is absolutely critical, but you must do more.
The post-pandemic travel world continues to evolve in many fascinating ways, presenting a host of trends that you can take advantage of in order to give your brand an emotionally charged edge. For instance, with the surge in dog adoptions stemming from the widespread social isolation over the past year, do you think that more guests will be searching for pet friendly hotels?
Many of us have now grown accustomed to the home life. Remote work policies mean fewer commutes into the office, while simultaneously, our options for journeying about the world are still limited due to the swath of restaurant, bar, gym, salon and retail store closures. New habits are solidifying. We work from home; we cook for ourselves more often; our living rooms double as fitness centers.
All this social isolation has caused us to become more introspective. We will expect hotels to appease this behavior with new in-room amenities so that we can still have a great guest experience but without strictly relying upon access to onsite (and potentially high contact) facilities to achieve this. A clear path to this goal is through wellness features added to each guestroom.
Indeed, most of the major brands are already seizing upon this trend, like Accor’s All Stay Well or Hyatt Together which are both on-demand content services offering a range of exercise, meditation, mobility, sleep or yoga routines, often through partnerships with leading players in the wellness space. What I emphasize here is that if the big chains are bolstering their brand standards in this regard, then you cannot allow your property to get left behind.
The beauty therein is that wellness is such a catchall term these days that you can get as creative as your budget permits to build a unique interpretation. While you may not have the resources to put together a full-fledged app, this shouldn’t stop you from exploring your options.
Get your team together; make it a fun brainstorming exercise. Here are some ideas:
Onsite fitness, meditation or yoga calls, kept within the new guidelines for viral safety via clearly marked attendee floor circles, strict online booking for contact tracing and the option of a video alternative for those who want to remain in their rooms
Basic exercise equipment like yoga mats, bands, roam rollers or light weights, available in the room or at request, and always disinfected prior to delivery
Healthy foods with nutritional tidbits, available as a surprise-and-delight welcome amenity, as part of a rejuvenated room service program or in the minibar, again abiding by sanitization rules
In-room aromatherapy, which can encompass flowers, allergen-free materials, essential oil diffusers or branded scents
Anything else that can bring the calming experience of an onsite spa into the guestroom such as beauty product or grooming samples
Personal wellness consultations, conducted either in-person with physical distancing, or via your preferred platform for videoconferencing
Mindfulness enhancers such as stimulating in-room artwork, hydrotherapy, daily haikus or thoughtful materials accessible via a phone, tablet or TV
Undoubtedly your team can come up with a myriad of incredible recommendations that are tailored to your specific region if you give them a day or two. Importantly with all of these ideas listed above, there’s the possibility for an upsell by making these prearrival purchases, add-on services at any extra cost, bundling them into a rooms package or incorporating them into a higher product tier.
Take heed, though, as right now these wellness amenities can be marketed or sold as a value-add for your brand. Similar to what we’ve seen with the rapid adoption of upgraded cleanliness and safety SOPs this past spring, these aspirational trends can have a way of quickly becoming the expectation. The more that chains embrace in-room wellness, the more likely these amenities are to be perceived as standard rather than noteworthy across our entire industry.
Ultimately, moving into the wellness space should start with a pledge to continually guide your guests on the path of introspective self-improvement. To be started, it need not be something so elaborate and comprehensive. Simple is often better.
As my dear friend, Janis Clapoff, now the General Manager at Belmond El Encanto located in the hills just north of Santa Barbara, remarks, “In this new age we’re living in, good morning cards via room service or a positive affirmation with a flower and calming quote during turndown can go a long way. After the madness of the pandemic, we should all slow down and literally smell the roses.”
OK, we have moved along at a good clip here so perhaps let us take a bit of a rest to digest the Blessed Event and get a bit sidetracked.
Sometimes it takes the passage of time to determine the true nature of events and the Blessed Event just might turn out to be one of those! There is the power of positive thinking! Perhaps the tone of sarcasm and bitterness should be set aside and your conclusion will be that this book is a testament to largecorp and of course for the incredibly wise, pocket stuffing people that run it and run many of our lives which I refer to throughout as the Senior Management Team or SMT for short.
Before proceeding further with deep subject matter, you may want to know my credentials. Who I am might influence your decision to buy this book. I am not a senior executive at a largecorp nor am I ever likely to be. Ooops! I can see I am losing credibility as you were expecting a learned book by a super CEO. Therefore I didn’t have this chapter as some sort introductory chapter! So I have hidden this fact deeper in the book! I detest largecorp and their in the pocket schools of business management. The Canadian Business Hall of Fame makes me puke. The public institutions named after the filthy rich CEO robber barons (provided a huge donation was made) show a massive failure of anyone to put the brakes on largecorp. OK, I am laying my cards on the table.
I am a lawyer by trade. There goes even more of my credibility! I was born in 1953 in New Haven, Connecticut so I am seasoned enough to be familiar with the night The Beatles appeared for the first time on the Ed Sullivan Show. I lived through the Vietnam War and the countless protests and newsreel footage. I saw Kennedy shot and Jack Ruby too! Computers befuddle me. I may be an anachronism in terms of technology, but boy do I know largecorp!
I really don’t have many memories of corporate life from my father. He was a firm believer in separating work and home. He refused to invite over business colleagues to advance his career.
He rejected one current rule of corporate advancement that the distinction between home and office should not be blurred. Senior executives were the highest class and hence should socialize amongst each other? He used to say, “I am here away from the office to enjoy myself and get away from what goes on in the office.” Yes, again a bad lesson taught a little boy that would be a disadvantage in the current corporate culture. But in the 1960’s there were many who agreed with my father’s approach and they simply refused to bring the office and its management cadre home with them. They demanded free time to enjoy their families. And how many Filipino nannies were there in the 60’s? Was it my fault I got stuck with the rules of corporate life in the 60’s?
To really get off the track I can remember one facet of corporate life which was the arrival of a new car my father was entitled to each year as a corporate executive. Here was a definitive corporate perk that left a favourable impression on me as a young tot. However it was hardly sufficient to deliver my soul to largecorp at some point in the future.
There were frequent business trips my father took and I recall missing him but he was there each weekend and for that matter home for a late supper almost every night. In fact, the whole neighbourhood was around for the weekend. The street was alive with neighbours doing their chores and chatting with each other. And there were many a week-end party. There was a sense of community.
The 1960’s corporation gave its employees an opportunity to inter-act with neighbours in a meaningful and non-businesslike fashion. Mom and Dad were most often at home to tuck in their children to bed. These days Mom and Dad may still be off at the office and a Filipino nanny feeds and tucks in the children. The streets are deserted on the weekend as many mothers and fathers are in the office and even at home with mobile devices and remote access employees being enslaved 24/7. Capitulate to this exploitation to survive! The hell with family life! We are now back to the Industrial Revolution except the coal mine has been replaced by the office tower and the only grime on today’s office tower employee is shame at deserting family responsibilities. Corporate survival and the Filipino nanny may have gone so far as to obviate shame. After all, getting ahead is more important than family and decency. And that mega Mercedes SUV is a must.
Now I have gone through (or have been devoured by) largecorp but hopefully you’ll note I derive some meanings from my experience. I remember that many executives of the 1960’s liked to party hard and the multiple Martini lunch was a reality. This may have been because of the war trauma many of these executives had suffered during WWII and the Korean War. Life was brief and meant to be enjoyed in the moment. Sounds a bit like mindfulness!
In those days, there was no Chardonnay or Pinot Noir. It was the hard stuff usually rye and ginger ale or rum and cola. And the crowning glory of the 1960’s corporate executive was the Martini lunch. As a child, my siblings and I used to sit at the top of the stairs and listen to the goings on of these neighbourhood parties. No one got plastered just lots of noise, laughing and good times and no such phrase as “designated driver” existed and it meant we could pig out on leftover soft drinks the next day! Unlike the legions of obese children of North America many of us children of the 1960’s were banned from consuming soft drinks except for very special occasions. There was little obesity in those days.
The corporate parties one goes to today are demure and too loud a laugh leads to gossip that you are plastered. Parties are viewed as “networking events” to make contacts and further your career and corporate survival. Party goers have been transformed into weasels and moles to collect information that will lead to self advancement. As many people, as possible are to be “networked” and ranked as to usefulness. The consumption of food and alcohol is closely monitored as “discipline and control” are important characteristics for advancement in largecorp. One too many a drink or shrimp can sink your future!
One indication of the power of largecorp over the individual is the disappearance of the Martini lunch. I recall chatting with one of our most successful salespersons within my division at CRAP. Hubert was in his late 50’s and becoming more disillusioned with his job. Hubert lamented the disappearance of the Martini lunch which he scornfully remarked was replaced with some healthy stir fry or sea bass and MINERAL WATER! As Hubert said, “We used to get together with a prospective client and start lunch at a nearby steakhouse with a few Martinis. By the time we had finished it was three and we used to be so tired we’d head home for a nap before dinner. We really got to understand our clients and build a relationship. It was a humane way of doing business and it produced results. Now we are pressured to have no alcohol lunches and ordered to sell, sell, sell. How can you build a relationship over a 45-minute lunch? Instead of the long Martini lunch where we could slowly slide in our sales pitch now we must do it in 45 minutes. Clients perceive this as obnoxious and high-pressured selling. Not only that I have to write a detailed report on the lunch!”
Today Hubert would be pegged by largecorp as a corrupt and an alcoholic Willy Loman. Largecorp demands a mineral water lunch. Prospective clients now are a force to be managed according to a strict set of “relationship building” techniques invented as you may have guessed by business management faculties funded by largecorp. Isn’t it very odd that this academia who have little or no experience or use for business relationships are designers of relationship management programmes? Friendship has been reduced to superficiality and designed solely for profit taking purposes. The elimination of the Martini lunch shows the soullessness of largecorp.
Having a father on the inside would have been an unbelievably valuable asset to have but that asset depreciated instantly with my father’s death at 45. Fortunately, he had a massive life insurance policy so financially I never really suffered. Now his death did put me in “an outsider” position continually embarrassed by not having a father. It scarred me psychologically. I lost more than a father but also a valuable mentor and connection
As I had mentioned previously one of my father’s last wishes was to make a “man” out of me so I was shipped to one of New Haven’s top WASP private schools, “Penton Academy” which was an excellent introduction to corporate life. This was a semi-militaristic school that was full of Second World War and Korean War vets that thought the students were military recruits about to be sent off to battle and in retrospect I must admit they were not too far off the mark. We were abused and beaten regularly but thank God not sexually (at least not me).
Although a WASP my fatherless status put me into the ranks of the Jews that were accepted as tokens and had to bribe their way into Penton Academy with large “donations”. What in earth was a Jew? I had never encountered one before but like me they were outsiders and we bonded immediately. They were good people. WASPS were suddenly distasteful to me unfortunately making me yet more of an outsider. In those days the word “global inclusion” would be met with a hearty chuckle.
In this private school, there were lessons about corporate life to come. Prefects were like a junior division of senior management. They could turn you in for violations of the rule and you’d then be beaten on the ass with a cut-off goalie stick by a teacher. Keep on their good side and you would be fine. Thank God. In our dining room in grade 7 I was an assistant table captain which meant at our table I could serve dessert and for that matter seconds to whomever I chose. Being a table captain or assistant table captain meant you had no waiting duties. Strangely or purposely the Jews were never table captains or assistants. They were waiters along with all the others who had not been appointed as table captains or assistant table captains. Hierarchy even in the dining room.
As the English were being persecuted and denied many rights in Quebec my wife Fay and I joined the hordes of Anglo refugees and ended up in Toronto articling for a sole practitioner in a less than tony part of Toronto. I was a decent law student but neither brilliant nor a cheater and coupled with no connections in Toronto my articling position was far from Bay Street but as for diverse experience in corporate, family, criminal and employment law it was an extraordinarily rich and rewarding experience.
Perhaps I was unskilled in corporate politics of the big law firm but I was happy in the shadows of power and prestige. And I was grateful for the diverse and wonderful articling experience. One very memorable experience I had was listening to a terribly upset woman who had worked as a secretary for 27 years for an insurance company. She was hit with the Blessed Event and offered a paltry 16 weeks of severance. Inexperienced as I was in the law of termination of employment I felt this poor lady was getting the rawest deal possible. It was more unpalatable as this insurance company was in the midst of an advertising campaign emphasizing how much it cared for its clients. Obviously it did not care for its employees. We settled for two years of salary as severance. I quickly saw that Canadian corporate image and corporate reality were two different realities.
My reaction to the Blessed Event and what yours should be!
Most victims of the Blessed Event exhibit a whole series of emotions that kick in, most of which are potentially self destructive and unhelpful. Now, if you have been around long enough at largecorp countless of your colleagues have been “downsized” because of a “restructuring” or “outsourcing” or even due to COVID-19. These terms appear neutral most likely due to their invention at largecorp sponsored faculties of management. I prefer the word “terminated” because it is crueller and more realistic. Being fired is not a neutral event. I do not like the term “laid-off” because a layoff is a temporary loss of employment with a possibility of a return to work. “Let-go” is a bit namby pamby.
In hindsight, my advice to you if you are victimized by a “Blessed Event” is to take it in the present moment as an opportunity to take the next step in your career or economic survival if you feel there really is no career for you. If you are angry and bitter that is OK but realize that it is what it is and it is in relation to a past event that has happened that you may have no control over. As they say in mindfulness there is no sense in getting tangled up with negative thoughts. Know that they are there, acknowledge them but do not let them strangle you. At best, you might learn a lesson or two about your experience at largecorp. Put them in your war chest of corporate experience.
In my experience at CRAP I saw no wrong in what I did in standing up against Brian Cochon for the rights of beneficiaries of pension funds which employers were raiding for the recovery of pension fund expenses that they had paid. A fiduciary of a pension fund, such as CRAP, has the obligation to protect the right of the beneficiaries of a pension fund. In standing up to the bullying of large law firms acting on behalf of employers seeking to extract pension fund expenses paid by them to their pension funds and knowing the law in this area, I viewed them as bandits seeking to raid the pension fund. In my view, I was also protecting the interests of CRAP which acted as pension fund recordkeeper because if paid out as commanded by its clients it might very find itself in court for breach of its duty to act as a fiduciary for a pension fund.
Now Felicity Poker was so blinded to hopping to the commands of the largecorps she had previously been retained for at Ooze & Ooze that she couldn’t understand (or didn’t want to) the liability CRAP was incurring by obeying the illegal command of employers to pay out to themselves pension fund expenses they had previously paid into the pension fund. I think Poker was so used to promoting and plotting the whims of her large corporate clients and saying yes to their every goal she had been corrupted of independent legal judgement hence breaching her fiduciary duties to CRAP.
I also was proud of the offer of nomination I had received to a panel advising the Ontario government as to pensions, my publications, speaking engagements and appointment to an industry committee executive. I did nothing wrong except for threatening the reputation of Felicity Poker whose whole goal in her past life was billable hours and not serving the legal community. That slavishness to her corporate clients was hard to break despite the fact she now worked at CRAP. She was big law firm material supposedly above lowly corporate in-house counsel that never had the “intelligence” to work for the big law firms. Why then was CRAP inundated by resumés from lawyers working in these prestigious law firms? I saw resumés coming in on the fax machine from Ooze & Ooze lawyers. In short, they were sickened by the burn-out conditions they slaved in. They wanted an independent life. Poker had chosen money and status over a life. Beluga, our former general counsel, may have acted like an absent landlord but he never bothered his charges.
For those not in the legal profession I will tell you most lawyers working for huge prestigious national law firms view in-house corporate counsel as inferior to private practice lawyers. They are so blinded by their haughty image and lust for wealth they fail to see how destructive their life is to themselves and their family. They fail to see the importance of having a life. It takes a toll and it is not surprising that provincial law societies have remarkably busy addiction and mental stress hotlines for their lawyer membership.
In retrospect I believe that Poker was jealous of the success and recognition I had obtained in the insurance community.
Once the Blessed Event has happened to you there may be those victims saying that this is the best thing that ever happened to them. In many cases, it indeed will be the best event that ever happened to you. There is no harm grieving, being angry and feeling betrayed. That’s normal for a limited amount of time but the emphasis is on” limited”.
I was younger then and I had never had my employment terminated so I was an emotional Newbie to the emotions that followed which in retrospect must affect everyone who faces the Blessed Event. I was devastated, angry and bitter. It took me years to recover. One thought that remains with me even now is the hope that Felicity Poker and Brian Cochon, swine that they were, rot in hell. However, I realized long ago there was little purpose wasting emotional real estate over them.
I think the foremost reaction most victims encounter is shock unless of course you saw it coming or have had this happen to you previously. How could this have happened! Over and over this phrase will batter your ego. You were doing an excellent job as measured by corporate employee performance ratings. You were a 4 out of 5 employee in your “performance appraisal” for the past several years. You were quite proud of yourself.
That’s your first mistake at largecorp which is assuming an excellent job performance protects you. You must realize that legally largecorp can toss you out at their will provided they provide you with severance as required by statutory and common law which in very general terms translates into a month of salary for each year of service.
How could the Blessed Event strike me? I worked at least two nights a week close to midnight. I never ate more than three shrimp at the client Christmas reception and nodded and said hello to the Executive Vice-President of Re-engineering in the elevator every morning. I was tough yet fair and willing to compromise.
Yes, a true model employee and well regarded in the external legal community yet it was all bullshit now. All that Human Resources Department palavering was not worth the e-mail it was written on.
My advice to you is do your best to avoid looking shocked and please no tears. If the Terminator is in the room he or she probably hates your guts and that is why you have been chosen for the Blessed Event. You made an enemy despite the “excellent job” you were doing. Your Terminator crushing you like a fly is a dream come true for the Terminator. You were hated more than the others who survived the Blessed Event although their day will come as it always does.
Of course, there are some downsizings planned by bean counters with no connection to you. They’ll establish a termination number or percentage of employees to be fired and leave it up to the Senior Management Team to approve and give the orders to middle management to execute the terminations. This sounds neutral but why was it you that was picked? It is beginning to sound less neutral when you start asking yourself this question.
It may have been that your inter-personal skills were not up to largecorps, invisible code of brown nosing, flattering, sucking up or trumpeting false praises. So why all the doublespeak from the Human Resources Department about team spirit, customer service and global inclusion? My thought that all these phrases are there to mask hatred and arrogance that largecorp’s SMT has for their charges and for that matter amongst their own caste. How did these executives reach the upper ranks of largecorp? They are there stuffing their loot bags like bandits without getting apprehended and of course never walking the talk rammed down the throats of employees like gavage. At this point of extreme greed, it is up to the securities regulators to apprehend as many crooks as they can. However, as we have seen as late there are more crooks in the executive floors than the regulators can ensnare. Let us be fair! Most of the SMT are not criminals. They are just greedy and some may be psychopathic.
My advice so far has been not to be tangled up in negative emotions and focus on the present. This is the essence of mindfulness; I agree getting tangled up may leave you running backwards however let’s bend the mindfulness rules and say your anger may be a useful source of energy for your gruelling job search. What better force to keep you going on from the 230th rejection letter to number 231 resumé and cover letter being sent out? It gives you adrenaline. Cherish and guard it. Know when to use it. It should be an energizing factor in your job search. However, to avoid being labelled as a potential “toxic employee” keep your cool in your networking and job interviews.
If you appear angry and bitter to your network and prospective employers it might be perceived as a justification as why you were terminated. Angry people are not marketable. Your goal is to fool a prospective employer into thinking you will be a committed employee and not one that is bitter, resentful and holds grudges.
In interviews your anger must be transformed into joy and glee about having the opportunity to fill the position! Golly gee the Blessed Event is a gift from the Virgin Mary. It provided you an opportunity. In fact you might have even convinced yourself you are the best candidate. You are the best at masking your true emotions to better pursue an opportunity where your strengths can be showcased? You can put a happy face on and lie left right and centre as your outplacement counsellors have taught you. This is the ideal employee!
In summation don’t bellyache, whine and complain. Just use that negative energy to move on down the road.
I hope my discussion on anger has not put you in a bad mood particularly as you have just purchased a Tony Robbins video and I have put your upbeat mood in the rubbish bin. I want to be like Tony Robbins and get on the lecture circuit. Therefore, I have told you that anger may be one of your best weapons in your job search if managed carefully. The more outlandish the statement the better my chances of enraging some professor in a largecorp funded faculty of business and getting the publicity, I need for fame and fortune. Of course, like Tony I believe in what I write!
Anger is good for you! What rubbish you say. Tony Hornet is desperate. Yes, I want to establish a new management institute and through my lectures and books I will revolutionize management. I am going to revolutionize the downsizing function (amongst other issues) and make a fortune doing it. Now I have told you my intentions I have experienced a profound sense of relief. Sorry, just being a bit sarcastic here.
Speaking of being relieved, many of you hit by the Blessed Event are in fact relieved by it! If you were miserable as most employees are in today’s brutal downsizing-outsourcing corporate environment. You are now liberated and if close to retirement, mortgage free and saved your ass off and blessed with a generous severance package you have made it to the finish line. Yes, the downsized are not all miserable bastards. In today’s largecorp environment making it to 54 without being tossed in the street is nothing short of a miracle. Of course, senior executives are an exception to the rule as they are usually so filthy rich they can say good-bye at 62 and enjoy their membership to the golf course, summer home, retirement compensation arrangements and endless vacations. If particularly well connected (as opposed to skilled) they will have snagged a consulting contract for a few more years and board positions with friendly executive pals.
Getting personal I will readily admit to the “Relief Factor”. I had finally escaped a stifling bureaucracy imposed by Felicity Poker. No more Library Committee, Computer Committee, Social Committee and Budget Committee. Most importantly no doughnuts and coffee early every Friday morning. Her pets were appointed to chair of these Committees but at least I was Vice-Chair of the powerful Library Committee. Wo hoo!
Speaking of relief, I was delighted to have been turfed before the Legal Department’s summer picnic which was being held at the Toronto Islands. I am sure like me the last thing you want to do is sacrifice your Saturday roasting weenies and jumping in potato sacks while Felicity Poker watched thinking what a solid department she had created. If there is anything I hate it is the corporation stealing my time on a week-end. The moral of the story is that there may be a silver lining in every cloud. At least I was saved from the idiotic picnic scheme designed by the Social Committee.
Not to beat the Relief Factor to death I can relate to you the story of Ron who had worked in the department I had once worked in as a client relationship manager. Ron had 39 years of experience and was growing sick and tired of the differing waves of corporate ideology over the years that focussed on “corporate excellence”, “operational excellence” then “relationship management.”. Ron had it right. Make the client happy with good service while offering reasonable protection to CARP. It was as simple as that, but the Human Resources Department in conjunction with the Marketing Department had to be kept busy and worked to continually develop new corporate ideological standards to impose upon confused employees and it was becoming increasingly confusing and annoying for Ron. Ron wanted the “Blessed Event”. In fact, he was begging for it to be put out of his misery like a dog with rabies.
Ron had no debts, a retirement cottage and expected a large inheritance in the future. He was the first to call me at home after the Blessed Event hit me. He was royally pissed it had not been him! A word of advice. If you are seeking the ultimate relief of the Blessed Event don’t advertise you are looking for it. Word gets out and the SMT knows they might be able to buy you out with a cheap severance package or even worse let you sweat it out until you couldn’t stand it anymore and then you’d leave without largecorp having to pay a severance package.
It is natural after the Blessed Event to panic particularly about financial matters especially where you have a mortgage debt and a family to support. Could I manage these expenses and for how long? You just must manage the best you can and avoid the panic getting the better of you lest you face bouts of anxiety.
Insecurity will also gnaw away at you. Will you ever be employed again? I say have confidence in your abilities. You most likely had the correct technical skills but failed to successfully navigate the hidden culture of largecorp which was far less pleasant than what the Human Resources Department was telling you was necessary to succeed namely treachery and backstabbing.
I am sorry if you fell for the Human Resources Department’s party line that you as a worthy employee were worth listening to. Focus groups, employee surveys, open door policies, global inclusion and talent development. Follow the palaver and do an excellent job and you’ll have continual employment! Pipe dream. I’d like to encourage you by saying you did a good and honest job and never should have been turfed. The shareholders one day will realize that the SMT and Human Resources Department folks weren’t doing a decent job and they should have been terminated and not you.
I am trying to get you out of your termination rut by writing this book so you can discover yourself and feel as if you were a decent human being. I am doing this by attacking the pig heads than run largecorp and have temporarily ruined your life by turfing you.
There is no need to be humiliated. Most of you are good hard-working employees that are the victims of hatred or of a downsizing, expense reduction or outsourcing programme that takes no hostages.
It’s awfully difficult not to be embarrassed when someone asks a turfed employee what they do for a living. The best advice I can give is to hold your head up high and give a well rehearsed line that due to a corporate restructuring you were “downsized” and are now taking the time to find a position that best suits your talent. Of course, my advice is worth shit as you will feel awful when asked this insensitive question You are a social leper. You have no choice but to live with it. Limp on to a greater future.
Now looking on the positive side remember that Andy Warhol once said that everyone would be famous for 5 minutes. Being turfed gave me a few minutes of fame as dazed colleagues said why in earth would a great employee like you be turfed? By the reactions of my colleagues, I realized I had become a watercooler hero raised to fame by the Blessed Event! The same day I was turfed 10 or so of my fellow employees took me out to several bars spewing their venom against CRAP. It becomes a heartwarming experience to have your colleagues say how much they appreciated your support with the SMT being referred to as poltroons and backstabbing double dealers. However, one can’t be honest for very long if one wants to survive in largecorp. You’ve gone and are quickly forgotten as your colleagues keep hoping for the next direct deposit of salary to be made.
You may wish to jot down which colleagues and clients gave you a courtesy call after the Blessed Event. Not that you are petty or nasty but you may just want to keep track of who your friends are. You may wish to repay their insensitivity one day. Does the absence of a call denote an enemy? You be the judge. In some cases the calls may be sincere and encouraging while others are fishing expeditions trying to wheedle out juicy news to discuss over coffee with their friends.
Perhaps the nicest call I received after the Blessed Event was from legal counsel Tommy Bland who worked with a large U.S. automaker with operations in Canada. He was positively outraged about what had happened. Strangely some three months later I had to give him the same call as he too had been felled by the Blessed Event.
So, you have been a victim of a corporate hit. Keep your chin up and realize it is normal to be shocked, humiliated, angry and panic stricken. You did your job well but next time you are going to learn how to act better in the largecorp way which is to lie better and not mean what you say. You were just a bit slow to learn the survival game, but you are learning it now. All said and done you are in a better position today than you were in yesterday. It’s quite simple. Find yourself a new job and “repay” a few favours when the chance arises
Before you move on to pick up the pieces of your shattered corporate life there are few players acting in the Theatre of the Downsized that are going to appear on the stage. You have surfaced from the depths of the coal mine and are now in the sunshine. You can either be burnt or emerge with a glorious tan. Think of what’s to come as a little lotion to get you that nice tan.
Google & Oracle To Monitor Americans Who Get Warp Speed’s Covid-19 Vaccine For Up To Two Years
Moncef Slaoui, the official head of Operation Warp Speed, told the Wall Street Journal last week that all Warp Speed vaccine recipients in the US will be monitored by “incredibly precise . . . tracking systems” for up to two years and that tech giants Google and Oracle would be involved.BYWHITNEY WEBBOCTOBER 15, 202013 MINUTE READ
Last week, a rare media interview given by the Trump administration’s “Vaccine Czar” offered a brief glimpse into the inner workings of the extremely secretive Operation Warp Speed (OWS), the Trump administration’s “public-private partnership” for delivering a Covid-19 vaccine to 300 million Americans by next January. What was revealed should deeply unsettle all Americans.
During an interview with the Wall Street Journal published last Friday, the “captain” of Operation Warp Speed, career Big Pharma executive Moncef Slaoui, confirmed that the millions of Americans who are set to receive the project’s Covid-19 vaccine will be monitored via “incredibly precise . . . tracking systems” that will “ensure that patients each get two doses of the same vaccine and to monitor them for adverse health effects.” Slaoui also noted that tech giants Google and Oracle have been contracted as part of this “tracking system” but did not specify their exact roles beyond helping to “collect and track vaccine data.”
The day before the Wall Street Journal interview was published, the New York Times published a separate interview with Slaoui where he referred to this “tracking system” as a “very active pharmacovigilance surveillance system.” During a previous interview with the journal Science in early September, Slaoui had referred to this system only as “a very active pharmacovigilance system” that would “make sure that when the vaccines are introduced that we’ll absolutely continue to assess their safety.” Slaoui has only recently tacked on the words “tracking” and “surveillance” to his description of this system during his relatively rare media interviews.
While Slaoui himself was short on specifics regarding this “pharmacovigilance surveillance system,” the few official documents from Operation Warp Speed that have been publicly released offer some details about what this system may look like and how long it is expected to “track” the vital signs and whereabouts of Americans who receive a Warp Speed vaccine.
The Pharmacovigilantes
Two official OWS documents released in mid-September state that vaccine recipients—expected to include a majority of the US population—would be monitored for twenty-four months after the first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine is administered and that this would be done by a “pharmacovigilance system.”
In the OWS document entitled “From the Factory to the Frontlines,” the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Defense (DOD) stated that, because Warp Speed vaccine candidates use new unlicensed vaccine production methods that “have limited previous data on safety in humans . . . the long-term safety of these vaccines will be carefully assessed using pharmacovigilance surveillance and Phase 4 (post-licensure) clinical trials.”
It continues:
The key objective of pharmacovigilance is to determine each vaccine’s performance in real-life scenarios, to study efficacy, and to discover any infrequent and rare side effects not identified in clinical trials. OWS will also use pharmacovigilance analytics, which serves as one of the instruments for the continuous monitoring of pharmacovigilance data. Robust analytical tools will be used to leverage large amounts of data and the benefits of using such data across the value chain, including regulatory obligations.
In addition, Moncef Slaoui and OWS’s vaccine coordinator, Matt Hepburn, formerly a program manager at the Pentagon’s controversial Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), had previously published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine that stated that “because some technologies have limited previous data on safety in humans, the long-term safety of these vaccines will be carefully assessed using pharmacovigilance surveillance strategies.”
The use of pharmacovigilance on those who receive the vaccine is also mentioned in the official Warp Speed “infographic,” which states that monitoring will be done in cooperation with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) and will involve “24 month post-trial monitoring for adverse effects.”
In a separate part of that same document, OWS describes one of its “four key tenets” as “traceability,” which has three goals: to “confirm which of the approved vaccines were administered regardless of location (private/public)”; to send a “reminder to return for second dose”; and to “administer the correct second dose.”
Regarding a Covid-19 vaccine requiring more than one dose, a CDC document associated with Operation Warp Speed states:
For most Covid-19 vaccine products, two doses of vaccine, separated by 21 or 28 days, will be needed. Because different Covid-19 vaccine products will not be interchangeable, a vaccine recipient’s second dose must be from the same manufacturer as their first dose. Second-dose reminders for vaccine recipients will be critical to ensure compliance with vaccine dosing intervals and achieve optimal vaccine effectiveness.
The CDC document also references a document published in August by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, associated with the Event 201 and Dark Winter simulations, as informing its Covid-19 vaccination strategy. The Johns Hopkins paper, which counts Dark Winter co-organizer Thomas Inglesby as one of its authors, argues that existing “passive reporting” systems managed by the CDC and FDA should be retooled to create “an active safety surveillance system directed by the CDC that monitors all [Covid-19] vaccine recipients—perhaps by short message service or other electronic mechanisms.”
Despite the claims in these documents that the “pharmacovigilance surveillance system” would intimately involve the FDA, top FDA officials stated in September that they were barred from attending OWS meetings and told reporters they could not explain the operation’s organization or when or with what frequency its leadership meets. The FDA officials did state, however, that they “are still allowed to interact with companies developing products for OWS,” STAT news reported.
In addition, the FDA has apparently “set up a firewall between the vast majority of staff and the initiative [Operation Warp Speed]” that appears to drastically limit the number of FDA officials with any knowledge of or involvement in Warp Speed. The FDA’s director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Janet Woodcock, is the only FDA official listed as having any direct involvement in OWS and appears to be personally managing this “firewall” at the FDA. Woodcock describes herself as a long-time advocate for the use of “big data” in the evaluation of drug and vaccine safety and has been intimately involved in FDA precursors to the coming Warp Speed “pharmacovigilance surveillance system” known as Sentinel and PRISM, both of which are discussed later in this report.
Woodcock is currently on a temporary leave of absence from her role as the director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, which allows her to focus her complete attention on overseeing aspects of Operation Warp Speed on behalf of the FDA’s Office of the Commissioner. Her temporary replacement at the FDA, Patrizia Cavazzoni, is “very aligned with Janet and where the agency is going,” according to media reports. Cavazzoni is a former executive at Pfizer, one of the companies producing a vaccine for OWS. That vaccine is set to begin testing in children as young as 12 years old.
The extreme secrecy of Operation Warp Speed has affected not only the FDA but also the CDC, as a CDC expert panel normally involved in developing the government’s vaccine distribution strategies was “stonewalled” by Matt Hepburn, OWS’s vaccine coordinator, who bluntly refused to answer several of the panel’s “pointed questions” about the highly secretive operation.
More Secret Contracts
While Moncef Slaoui and Warp Speed documents provide few details regarding what this “tracking system” would entail, Slaoui did note in his recent interview with the Wall Street Journal that tech giants Google and Oracle had been contracted to “collect and track vaccine data” as part of this system. Neither Google nor Oracle, however, has announced receipt of a contract related to Operation Warp Speed, and the DOD and HHS, similarly, have yet to announce the awarding of any Warp Speed contract to either Google or Oracle. In addition, searches on the US government’s Federal Register and on the official website for federally awarded contracts came up empty for any contract awarded to Google or Oracle that would apply to any such “pharmacovigilance” system or any other aspect of Operation Warp Speed.
Given my previous reporting on the use of a nongovernment intermediary for awarding OWS contracts to vaccine companies, it seems likely that Warp Speed contracts awarded to Google and Oracle were made using a similar mechanism. In an October 6, 2020, report for The Last American Vagabond, I noted that $6 billion in Warp Speed contracts awarded to vaccine companies were made through Advanced Technology International (ATI), a government contractor that works mainly with the military and surveillance technology companies and whose parent company has strong ties to the CIA and the 2001 Dark Winter simulation. HHS, which is supposedly overseeing Operation Warp Speed, claimed to have “no record” of at least one of those contracts. Only one Warp Speed vaccine contract, which did not involve ATI and was awarded directly by HHS’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, was recently obtained by KEI Online. Major parts of the contract, however, including the section on intellectual property rights, were redacted in their entirety.
If the Warp Speed contracts that have been awarded to Google and Oracle are anything like the Warp Speed contracts awarded to most of its participating vaccine companies, then those contracts grant those companies diminished federal oversight and exemptions from federal laws and regulations designed to protect taxpayer interests in the pursuit of the work stipulated in the contract. It also makes them essentially immune to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Yet, in contrast to the unacknowledged Google and Oracle contracts, vaccine companies have publicly disclosed that they received OWS contracts, just not the terms or details of those contracts. This suggests that the Google and Oracle contracts are even more secretive.
A major conflict of interest worth noting is Google’s ownership of YouTube, which recently banned on its massive multimedia platform all “misinformation” related to concerns about a future Covid-19 vaccine. With Google now formally part of Operation Warp Speed, it seems likely that any concerns about OWS’s extreme secrecy and the conflicts of interest of many of its members (particularly Moncef Slaoui and Matt Hepburn) as well as any concerns about Warp Speed vaccine safety, allocation and/or distribution may be labeled “Covid-19 vaccine misinformation” and removed from YouTube.
From the NSA to the FDA: The New PRISM
Though the nature of this coming surveillance system for Covid-19 vaccine recipients has yet to be fully detailed by Warp Speed or the tech companies the operation has contracted, OWS documents and existing infrastructure at the FDA offer a clue as to what this system could entail.
For instance, the Warp Speed document “From the Factory to the Frontlines” notes that the pharmacovigilance system will be a new system created exclusively for OWS that will be “buil[t] off of existing IT [information technology] infrastructure” and will fill any “gaps with new IT solutions.” It then notes that “the Covid-19 vaccination program requires significant enhancement of the IT that will support enhancements and data exchange that are critical for a multi-dose candidate to ensure proper administration of a potential second dose.” The document also states that all data related to the OWS vaccine distribution effort “will be reported into a common IT infrastructure that will support analysis and reporting,” adding that this “IT infrastructure will support partners with a broad range of tools for record-keeping, data on who is being vaccinated, and reminders for second doses.”
Though some Warp Speed documents hint as to the existing IT systems that will serve as the foundation for this new tracking system, arguably the most likely candidate is the FDA-managed Sentinel Initiative, which was established in 2009 during the H1N1 Swine flu pandemic. Like Operation Warp Speed itself, Sentinel is a public-private partnership and involves the FDA, private business, and academia.
According to its website, Sentinel’s “main goal is to improve how FDA evaluates the safety and performance of medical products” through big data, with an additional focus on “learning more about potential side effects.” Media reports describe Sentinel as “an electronic surveillance system that aggregates data from electronic medical records, claims and registries that voluntarily participate and allows the agency to track the safety of marketed drugs, biologics and medical devices.”
One of Sentinel’s main proponent at the FDA is Janet Woodcock, who has aggressively worked to expand the program as director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, with a focus on Sentinel’s use in “post-market effectiveness studies.” As previously mentioned, Woodcock is the only FDA official listed among the ninety or so “leaders” of OWS, most of whom are part of the US military and lack any health-care or vaccine-production experience.
Woodcock’s temporary replacement at the FDA, Patrizia Cavazzoni, is also very active in efforts to expand Sentinel. STAT news reported earlier this year that Cavazzoni previously “served on the sterling committee of I-MEDS, an FDA-industry partnership which allows drug makers to pay for use of the FDA’s real-world data system known as Sentinel to complete certain safety studies more quickly.”
Sentinel has a series of “collaborating partners” that “provide healthcare data and scientific, technical, and organizational expertise” to the initiative. These collaborating partners include intelligence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, tech giant IBM, and major US health insurance companies such as Aetna and Blue Cross Blue Shield, among many others. In addition, Sentinel’s Innovation Center, which it describes as the program’s “test bed to identify, develop, and evaluate innovative methods,” is partnered with Amazon, General Dynamics, and Microsoft. Sentinel also has a Community Building and Outreach Center, which is managed by Deloitte consulting, one of the largest consultancy firms in the world that is known for seeking to fill its ranks with former CIA officials.
The Sentinel system’s specific surveillance program aimed at monitoring vaccine effectiveness is known as the Post-licensure Rapid Immunization Safety Monitoring Program, better known as PRISM. Sentinel’s PRISM was “developed to monitor vaccine safety, but [to date] has never been used to assess vaccine effectiveness.” PRISM was initially launched alongside the Sentinel Initiative itself in 2009 “in response to the need to monitor the safety of the H1N1 influenza vaccine” after it was licensed, marketed, and administered. Yet, as previously mentioned, PRISM has yet to be used to assess the effectiveness of any vaccine while quietly expanding for nearly a decade, which implies that the stakeholders in the Sentinel Initiative have a plan to implement this “safety surveillance system” at some point.
The name PRISM may remind readers of the National Security Agency (NSA) program of the same name that became well known throughout the United States following the Edward Snowden revelations. Given this association, it is worth noting that the NSA, as well as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), are now officially part of Operation Warp Speed and appear to be playing a role in the development of Warp Speed’s “pharmacovigilance surveillance system.” The addition of the NSA and the DHS to the initiative, of course, greatly increases the involvement of US intelligence agencies in the operation, which itself is “dominated” by the military and sorely lacking in civilian public health officials.
CyberScoop first reported in early September that members of the NSA’s Cybersecurity Directorate were involved in Operation Warp Speed, with their role—as well as that of DHS—being framed mainly as offering “cybersecurity advice” to the initiative. However, the NSA and DHS are also offering “guidance” and “services” to both the other federal agencies involved in Warp Speed as well as OWS contractors, which now include Google and Oracle.
Google is well known for its cozy relationship with the NSA, including its PRISM program, and they have also backed NSA-supported legislation that would make it easier to surveil Americans without a warrant. Similarly, Oracle is a longtime NSA contractor and also has ties to the CIA dating back to its earliest days as a company, not unlike Google. Notably, Oracle and Google remain locked in a major legal battle over copyright issues that is set to be heard by the Supreme Court in the coming weeks and is expected to have major ramifications for the tech industry.
The Public Health Panopticon
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the US military attempted to institute a surveillance program so invasive that Congress defunded it just months after its creation due to public outrage. Known as Total Information Awareness (TIA), the program sought to develop an all-seeing surveillance apparatus managed by the Pentagon’s DARPA and officially argued that invasive surveillance of the entire US population was necessary to prevent terrorist attacks, bioterrorism events, and even naturally occurring disease outbreaks before they could take place.
Before it was disbanded, TIA sought to collect Americans’ medical records; fingerprints; gait, facial, and iris biometric data; drug prescriptions; and even DNA in addition to citizens’ financial, travel, and media-consumption habits. TIA, not unlike Operation Warp Speed, was a “public-private partnership” managed by the DOD and partnered with the NSA, the CIA, and other intelligence agencies as well as the private sector and academia.
Also like Warp Speed, TIA officially justified its invasive surveillance goals by claiming that its initiatives would rescue Americans from the “invisible enemy” of faceless terrorists abroad and ensure citizens’ safety, security, and health. Today, Warp Speed officially takes aim at a new type of “invisible enemy”—a microbe invisible to the naked human eye.
In the years after 9/11, the public pushback against TIA was fierce. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) claimed at the time that the surveillance effort would “kill privacy in America” because “every aspect of our lives would be catalogued,” while mainstream media outlets warned that TIA was “fighting terror by terrifying U.S. citizens.” Despite Congress officially defunding the program, it later emerged that TIA was never actually shut down, with its various programs having been covertly divided among the web of military and intelligence agencies that comprise the US national security state.
Unlike in years past, TIA’s apparent successor, Operation Warp Speed, has received no pushback from mainstream media outlets or advocacy organizations, with many of these same entities now placing blind faith in the secretive initiative and lionizing it as the “only way” to resolve the Covid-19 pandemic crisis.
The national security state has carefully learned from and studied its past failures, while many Americans, in contrast, continue to place their trust in the very agencies and government entities that have lied the country into multiple wars, tortured and maimed countless civilians abroad, produced a series of failed states in order to plunder their resources, and are currently facilitating the pillaging of the American economy by Wall Street and the Federal Reserve under the guise of “relief.”
Allowing these same entities to surveil and track a majority of Americans and to use the country’s population as guinea pigs for unlicensed, understudied, and experimental vaccine technologies is a clear recipe for disaster. At the same time, it would also enable a surveillance panopticon so dystopian and far reaching that Americans stand to lose not only their few remaining civil liberties but even sovereignty over their own bodies.
The total-surveillance agenda that began with TIA and that has been resurrected through Warp Speed predated Covid-19 by decades. Its architects and proponents have worked to justify these extreme and invasive surveillance programs by marketing this agenda as the “solution” to whatever Americans are most afraid of at any given time. It has very little to do with “public health” and everything to do with total control.
“And indeed as he listened to the cries of joy rising from the town, Rieux remembered that such joy is always imperilled. He knew what those jubilant crowds did not know but could be learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come for the bane and the enlightening of man, it roused up its rats again and sent them forth to die in a happy city.”
Albert Camus (1913-60) first published “The Plague” in 1947.
“Through this sudden setback of the plague was as welcome as it was unlooked for, our townsfolk where in no hurry to jubilate. While intensifying their desire to be set free, the terrible months they had lived through taught them prudence. and they had come to count less and less on a speedy end of the epidemic. All the same, this new development was the talk of the town and people began to nurse hopes the less heartfelt for being unavowed. All else took back place: that daily there were new victims counted for little beside that staggering fact: the weekly total showed a decrease. One of the signs that a return to the golden age of health was secretly awaited was that our fellow citizens, careful that they were not to voice their hope, now began to talk-in, it is true, a carefully detached tone-of the new order of life that would set in after the plague.”
Albert Camus (1913-1960) first published “The Plague” in 1947.
Back from vacation under the control of Felicity Poker
It was a beautiful July day in Toronto and I could see the harbour below with the sun shimmering off the placid waters of Lake Ontario. Beautiful puff clouds switched the sun off and on like some psychedelic light show. Terribly refreshed I felt or so I thought I was for the first couple of hours after returning to work from a two-week Euro vacation.
One of the advantages of working in a high rise in Toronto is that if you were proximate enough to Lake Ontario and with the necessary altitude you benefitted from a spectacular view. And if you were high up in the CRAP hierarchy like the Senior Management Team (SMT) in the executive suites you also benefitted from a spectacular if not a highly obscene salary. How does it feel when these lucky SMT members earn more in a year than I would make in my entire career? Jealous you might say? Rational and insightful?
Although I was high enough to enjoy a wonderful view I was not high enough to be greedily gobbling at the shareholder’s through of course that being thoroughly justified by an” objective” team of external employee benefit consultants retained by CRAP (and countless other largecorps) legitimizing enormous compensation packages for the SMT that were “what was required to recruit and retain top talent” and “in accordance with industry standards”. Having an employee benefits firm review and “justify” executive compensation was like having a fox in the chicken coop!
I remembered reading a New York Times article many years ago explaining the enormous differentials of salary for the ordinary office worker to that of a CEO. At one point a CEO in the United States in the 1950’s was making ten times what the average office worker was making. Now it was hundreds of times greater salary. Each year the spread between the “ordinary worker” and SMT was widening. There was no Robin Hood in sight but there were plenty of Sherriff’s of Nottingham supporting King John!
In Canada for 2016 a study which was released in 2018 by The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives the differential between the highest paid CEO’s at 100 Toronto Stock Exchange listed companies in 2016 was more than 209 times that of the average worker. The average compensation for those CEO’s in 2016 rose 8% as opposed to 0.5% for the average worker.
I am not a bitter person but the facts of my working existence were beginning to annoy me. Here I was as a lawyer for CRAP for the past nine years yet unionized workers for General Motors in Oshawa or for Chrysler in Windsor were making the same as me with a bit of overtime tacked on plus an indexed defined benefit pension plan. Unlike the SMT in the executive suites I had no parking spot. No health club. No access to “executive medical care”. No free home computer and a stock purchase plan that had decreased to extinction exponentially to the dramatic rise in share option plans for the SMT. Furthermore, SMT members had a top up pension arrangement. The SMT up in the executive suite were making out like bandits. I was really beginning to feel like one of those poor Mexican villagers in a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western.
I was finally realizing that despite the exhortations of CRAP’s Human Resources Department about how well I was taken care of the SMT was not being taken care of by anyone. They were taking care of themselves in a grand fashion. It was saddening to see CRAP’s SMT loot the corporate coffers. Of course, the self justification, as mentioned above, was that it was what was needed to attract and retain “top talent”. This was all somewhat like the Newark Riot looters comparing themselves to the Detroit Riot looters.
Those not fortunate enough to be in the anointed SMT crowd will most likely be the readers of this book. For what will follow will grill the hypocrisy and greed of the SMT that may reign over you in your largecorp. You may have been suffering in silence or quietly gossiping in trusted groups about how much you are getting exploited. However, you are smart enough to realize criticism of largecorp governance and greed of its SMT will get you terminated because you are “not a team player”. It is akin to criticizing dictatorial leadership where instead of execution you will be terminated from your position. Like me for so many years I suppose get the shit piled up all over you, smile and take that paycheque because you must survive.
Today those on the SMT in the executive suites are the 1% and you and I are often part of the marginalized 99% working in well lit and poorly ventilated conditions. We office workers are the coal mining children of “The Affluent Society” a term coined by Canadian economist John Kenneth Galbraith in the 1960’s.
As you can see I am attempting to be a clever writer trying to garner your sympathy, so you’ll continue to turn the pages. By now I hope you are saying this guy is making sense. I understand what he is saying.
Nothing like a good vacation and a tremendous view to lull you away from the daily grind of making a living. I quickly realized this daydreaming was not a particularly good strategy with a rumoured takeover of CRAP’s institutional insurance business.
It was all rushing back to me. Being honest with myself that the vacation had been great but I was still bone-tired? Of course, I could play the game for awhile, but mental and physical fatigue was gripping me. I had been putting long hours in, was cranky and snappy at home, becoming increasingly stressed and was becoming so extremely sick and tired of listening to the doublespeak and reengineering jargon that said all hail to the joys of market strength and repositioning to become more competitive.
Quite frankly in addition to feeling like a poor Mexican villager I was feeling like some member of the “Outer Party” in George Orwell’s novel “1984” compelled to listen to endless propaganda and doublespeak announcements spewing from the telescreen without any benefit of “Victory Gin”. Are you sensing a rapidly deteriorating mood? Good for you. You are right.
I have told you that I had been transferred into the Legal Department under a reporting relationship to Felicity Poker the new General Counsel of CRAP. A good looking corporate commercial lawyer recently brought into CRAP by the SMT as she had been, within the confines of a top Calgary law firm, Ooze & Ooze, doing work for Bleedco which was the holding company owning CRAP.
From the little I had seen of Poker she knew how to play the game well in her big Ooze & Ooze law firm. She racked up huge hours billing Bleedco and that really was the core of her life. Billable hours and money. No man would dare approach her as she had no time for them. Even her beloved dog Tennyson was in boarding most of the time due to the late-night deals she was pulling down for Bleedco.
She was a two-faced double dealer like most of her SMT masters at CRAP.I rather think the CRAP SMT was frightened of her thinking she might be a spy for Bleedco. She had fantastic interpersonal skills with those at the top but total indifference if not haughty superiority to the minions that eventually fell under her control in CRAP’s Legal Department.
I remember attending a cocktail party hosted by Ooze & Ooze for Poker when she had been appointed as General Counsel for CRAP. Her law firm colleagues gushed that she was “the heart and soul” of their corporate commercial department. If this were true such a nasty, two-faced SMT lackey lacking a heart being the heart and soul of Ooze & Ooze’s corporate commercial department made we terrified of what a monstrous soul sucking and dangerous organization a law firm could become! My God this “heart and soul” compliment was like Charles Manson complimenting Ted Bundy! And here I was under the control of Felicity Poker.
I had noticed prior to my vacation Felicity Poker had been ignoring me more than what was reflected in her usual distaste of “inferiors”. Where her superiors were concerned, it was all charm if not flirtatiousness. As far as she was concerned everyone in her department were all lowlifes and failures as they were in-house counsel as opposed to lawyers in the big law firm like she used to be in. Her door was closed, her mind was closed and there was not an inkling of heart and soul except for the SMT in the executive suites. She started hiring a few more lawyers from guess where…Ooze & Ooze!
I was not particularly in the mood of meeting with her every Wednesday to discuss what I was working on. Instead of constructive and helpful dialogue it felt like I was always on the defensive. This was the era where large corporations were raiding their pension plans to scoop up “pension fund surplus” and trying to recoup expense monies they had paid to the recordkeepers of their pension funds, like CRAP. These large corporations were the bread and butter of Felicity Poker and to say no to them was equivalent to slapping the faces of her old masters.
I will not bore you with the legal technicalities of a pension plan sponsor scooping up pension fund expenses. I will tell you this was at the time a particularly complicated area of the law and fraught with legal and reputational risk. It was a minefield for CRAP to repay any expenses to a sponsor of a pension fund. I was the legal gatekeeper to ensure those poor working stiffs in the pension plan were protected in accordance with the law and court rulings and to prevent CRAP from being hauled into court for improperly repaying to the employer sponsoring the pension plan pension fund expenses the employer had paid into the pension fund. Poker was becoming increasingly frustrated with my negative responses to senior executives of some of her ex-clients and their lawyers who demanded repayment of their pension fund expenses. Wow talk about a rampant conflict of interest on the part of Felicity Poker! The lawyers I dealt with on this topic were aggressive and belligerent feigning ignorance of the evolving law in this area. Usually I get along with my legal brethren but with these refund of pension expenses I saw the nasty side of the big firm lawyers. Quite frankly willful blindness to the law trying to bluff me out of millions.
I had told you in the previous chapter about my meeting with Brian Cochon, Poker’s former partner at Ooze & Ooze in Calgary. You may recall that Cochon was representing a huge oil producer corporation wanting its pension fund expenses repaid to it by CRAP from the pension fund. When I said I had problems with handing over the pension fund expenses due to the current state of the law he replied, “If you don’t pay out that expense I’ll have you terminated.” Now presuming good faith on the part of Cochon I thought he meant CRAP would be terminated as pension fund recordkeeper if it failed to pay the expenses to his client. It took only a few weeks to realize that “you” meant Tony Hornet and not CRAP!
I should add that I was a new addition to Poker’s legal department. I had been a lawyer for some 10 years with CRAP but acting within a business unit which had a dim view of the Legal Department as always putting roadblocks up to it. It was perceived by the business unit that the Legal Department was far removed from the actual client front lines while when I was within the business unit I was right up there with the business unit trying to devise win-win situations.
Felicity Poker was but a product of her time moulded by the big law firm mentality where customer service often focused on restraining the arrogance and pomposity of their high paid lawyers who were retained for their technical excellence and even more important their billing abilities and not for their inter-personal skills and true value-added services. Their lawyers were also coal mining children except they were very highly paid and they were mining billable hours and not coal.
I thought if I gave her some Italian coffee I purchased on my vacation she might at least say thank you. Why at Christmas time Felicity Poker had opened her steel vaulted heart and given all her minions a Tim Horton’s coffee coaster! Perhaps my nice little package of coffee might soften her heart? She had even installed a coffee machine in our cafeteria which was rather an old law firm trick of providing all manner of refreshment and even meals to keep staff at their desk instead of wasting precious time by grabbing a coffee downstairs at the many coffee shops in their office towers.
My demise was shortly at hand. The Blessed Event was at hand!
” But it seemed like the plague had settled in for good at its most virulent, and it took a daily toll of deaths with the punctual zeal of a good civil servant. Theoretically, and in the view of the authorities, this was a hopeful sign. The fact that the graph after its long rising curve had flattened out seemed to many, Dr. Richard for example, reassuring. ‘ The graph’s good today” he would remark rubbing his hands. To his mind the disease had reached what he called high-water mark. Thereafter it could but ebb.”
Albert Camus (1913-1960) first published “The Plague” in 1947.
After reading the autobiography of Ted Ngoy titled “The Donut King” I was delighted to see there is now a documentary of the same name and its executive producer was Ridley Scott so there must have been some serious money behind its production.
Ted Ngoy was a Cambodian military officer in a non-combat position that was training troops in Thailand. While the Khmer Rouge were about to capture the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh as it was collapsing, he managed to grab a flight on a military plane out of the capital to join his family in Thailand. With $3,000 in their pockets they made it to a refugee camp at Camp Pendleton in California along with 50,000 other Cambodians. America under Ford and Carter were much kinder than the United States of today.
Ngor’s sponsor was a pastor at a Lutheran Church where he worked for $500 a week as a custodian until he obtained a job pumping gas. Then one evening he smelt the most fragrant smell wafting over the gas station. It was from a 24-hour donut shop so bingo a light went off in his head that perhaps selling donuts, which reminded him of one of his favourite Cambodian cakes, was his ticket to the American Dream.
So he took a three month training course at Winchell’s donuts a Californian mega donut chain and they were so impressed they gave him his own store to manage. So with gruelling tenacity he built up the donut shop’s book of business and then left to start up his own shop. California was a great beneficiary of the 1955 US Highway Act and the drive-in culture of California launched the donut business to new heights. In California today there is one donut shop per 7,000 people while in the rest of the United Staters it is 1 for every 30,000 people.
Ngoy opened many donut shops using cheap Cambodian labour of other Cambodians wanting to make the American dream. Then he started leasing donut shops sponsoring many Cambodian refugees. His great legacy is that of the 5,000 or so donut shops in California 90% are owned by Cambodians.
By 1985 Ngoy was making over $100,000 a month and had a net worth of close to 25 million. Therefore he earned the name Donut King and lived like a king until that fateful day he visited Las Vegas and was drawn into the life of a high roller loser losing the shirt off his back admittedly cheating the Cambodian Donut crowd shabbily even forging signatures to fuel his gambling addiction. His wife divorced him and believe it or not he resurged into the donut business a second time making and losing yet another fortune a fact the book reveals but the movie does not. I seem to recall from reading his book after being disgraced he returned to liberated Cambodia for some land development deals and did eventually return to the United States where many forgave him harkening back to the fact he gave them a start.
While the book was more focused on Ngoy the documentary pays more attention to the cloistered Cambodian donut community and the choice many of the sons and daughters of successful donut shop owners about working in the family shop or using their higher education in a more prestigious workplace. Many did stay revolutionizing the conservative Cambodian donut clique with new packaging, new donuts, donut festivals and of course the cronut.
This is not only an interesting documentary about the American Dream but a snapshot of American and Cambodian history and what it takes as a small operator to make the American Dream happen. It is also a warning about the dangers of gambling.
“Thus week by week the prisoners of the plague put up what fight they could. Some like Rambert, even contrived to fancy they will still behaving as free men and had the power of choice. But actually, it would have been truer to say that by this time, mid-August, the plague had swallowed up everything, and everyone, No longer were there individual destinies: only a collective destiny, made of plague and the emotions shared by all. Strangest of these emotions was the sense of exile and of deprivation, with all the cross-currents of revolt and fear set up by these.”
Albert Camus (1913-60) first published “The Plague:” in 1947.
A Bird's Eye View of Fashion, Food, Travel, Culture, Beverage and Curiosity 