Structural Integrity

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IIc. Example #2, further proof. Try to innocently draw them closer to the point, but don't look at where you're trying to go or they'll see and the effect will be ruined.

Of course a road trip, it turned out, wasn't required in order to charge a bender to the company. Anything that could be dressed in the guise of "networking with customers" could be turned into an eighty-proof inferno, and safely expensed.

Booze is free and road trip rules are temporarily in effect. Infidelity is thick in the air.

It's rodeo time in my current hometown, where rodeoing is taken seriously, although not so seriously that it gets in the way of vengefully focused drinking. The event draws people from all over the world and transforms the entire city into a rolling orgy of cowboy-themed, alcohol-fuelled, mayhem. Anyway, two out of town VPs and myself have just had temporary tattoos applied to our asses by a cute blonde girl in the middle of a packed ballroom (there are still ballrooms out there - this never ceases to amaze me). It's a weekday morning and the basement of the Marriott hotel is an oozing, pulsing mass of drunken businesspeople in jeans and cowboy boots. Booze is free and road trip rules are temporarily in effect. Infidelity is thick in the air.

We return to our table where an oversized gentleman is buying door prize tickets. The saleswoman is measuring his inseam with the tickets and provides him with as many as can be fit between his crotch and cuff.

"That's the purchasing manager for one of our distributors." Jeanette, one of our salespeople, points at the pleased looking man receiving his tickets. "I should probably go and talk to him for a bit. Eventually."

At that moment, the VP of Sales appears with a vodka screwdriver in one hand and a rosy glow on his face. "Ok, don't introduce me to anymore customers today. I'm no longer prepared to talk to them." With his free hand he scoops up several of the plastic tubes full of premixed shooters.

"Pace yourself Dan," Jeanette adds to his glass from a pitcher full of dubious orange liquid. "We have three more of these functions to go to after this one.

Then our accountant stumbles up next to me, slides one hand over my ass a few times and asks to see my tattoo.

IId. Summarise further examples for efficiency. Three examples is the magic number, more is too much, less isn't convincing. The arc towards our conclusion should get a lot tighter here.

Oh, and don't for a minute think that these are isolated incidents. My entire professional career is an oily haze of frat-boy calibre benders in strange cities. And I'm not in sales. In everyone's defence, I should probably admit that sometimes customer relationships get established at these things. Eventually some stuff gets sold, although I find it difficult to believe that enough money is made to justify the spectacular expense associated with these events.

III. Summary. Ok, present the conclusion and hope like hell that the examples have already lead everyone close enough to it that the presentation ties it all together and everyone feels like it was their own conclusion, thus strengthening their commitment to it.

Yes, it took me a few years to figure it out, but eventually I came to one of those great realisations about the world, the kind that one sometimes stumbles upon, usually on a weekend while one is doing things of no particular value to anyone. I stumbled across the realisation that a significant portion of what goes on in the business world is a scam. An excuse to party and get out of hand that just gets dressed up in fancy rationales and is eventually summarised in trip reports and PowerPoint slides. It was the realisation that even though we dress better now, we're still the same people we were when we got arrested on the roof of the law building in university with a blood alcohol level that would kill a twelve year old. It was the realisation that a lot of business is really about doing all those childish, uncivilised things that we want to do, and then dressing the whole thing up to make it look respectable, because we can. And, to Mr. Smith's eternal despair, as long as we all agree to keep our mouths shut, it should all continue to work just fine.

You didn't hear it from me.