Tag: Business

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When hearing stories about swindlers and marks, Americans have a peculiar tendency to be angry at the mark instead of the swindler. The mark is almost as guilty as the swindler for being so gullible. If there weren’t so many dumb marks, swindlers would all be out of business.

This odd belief has created a rather interesting way of looking at business transactions. The basic assumption in business is that the other guy is somehow trying to screw you and you need to be extremely vigilant in order to avoid being taken. People expect salesman to overpromise, overcharge, and avoid talking about problems with the product. Since swindling is a part of the salesperson job description, people aren’t much bothered when they learn that the salesperson they are dealing with is a swindler.

Swindling is part of the American DNA. Swindlers began arriving on these shores pretty much the start. I remember Sister Mira telling the story of the Dutch buying Manhattan from the Indians. It amused her to no end how stupid the Indians were when they sold the island for $24. How could they sell such prime real estate for such a low price? Couldn’t they see that New York would soon become one of the most important cities in the world? The Dutch, on the other hand, were smart businesspeople. Doing what businesspeople do screwing over people to get a better price. The Dutch were smart, the Indians weren’t. There was no shame in underpaying the Indians.

Of course, Manhattan was not the great city it became when the Dutch settled, so the $24 might have been a fair price at the time. That, however, isn’t the story the Sister Mira was telling. She was telling a story about how the Dutch outsmarted the Indians and it was perfectly acceptable business practices to do so. Yes, children, at a Catholic school no less, learning that it is perfectly all right to screw people over in a business transaction. Being fair is not a part of capitalism. If the Indians wanted a fair price it was their responsibility to bone up on Manhattan land values and not for the Dutch to offer a fair price. Deception is just a part of business.

When I moved to California, I learned that my car would not meet California pollution standards. It was an older car. I decided it would be easier to buy a new one in California and sell my old car in Kansas rather than driving an old car half way across the country and upgrading. Since I never sold a car before, I asked for advice from a guy who I knew had experience in buying and selling car. He immediately offered to buy my car, giving me the impression, that, oh shucks, I know you are in hurry to leave, I don’t need the damn thing but let me just take this off your hands so you can leave without worrying about selling your car. I took him up on the deal. Once the title and the check changed hands, he couldn’t wait to tell me how he just screwed me over. The car was worth at least a thousand dollars more than he paid.

I should have known, right? Absolutely I should have known that was why I asked him in the first place. I wasn’t trying to sell him the car, I was trying to learn how. Instead of telling me how, he, knowing I didn’t know what I was doing, offered to buy the car. Then, after the sale, he gives me the lesson that I wanted in the first place. He took advantage of me and felt absolutely no guilt about it. To add salt to the wound, nobody felt the least bit sorry for me. I should have known better.

These stories litter the American Business history. Antique dealers going to garage sales and finding a treasure. They buy the treasure for a song and then earn a fortune on the resell. The antique dealer is admired for his business savvy while the seller is a chump. If the seller doesn’t know what he has that is his own damn fault. The seller got the price he was asking for. There are no moral qualms about it that is just the way Capitalism operates.

Getting a fair price is different from getting a good price. One is laying all your cards on the table and the other is just deceiving someone. Shamelessly deceiving at that. This is particularly annoying when many pro-Capitalist apologists try to argue that Capitalism is the only moral system. I am uncertain what lesson Sister Mira was trying to impart to her class. What I learned, though, was that you don’t have to be fair when working in business. Do whatever you need to do to get the deal done. Be the swindler and not the mark. How this jibes with making me a good Catholic, which I mistakenly believed was Sister Mira’s primary responsibility, is beyond me.

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I love this guy.

His boss hassled him whenever his company’s Instant Messaging software told the boss how long he has been gone. You know what I mean. Every employer uses some form of instant messaging software that always narcs you out — think Microsoft Lync that tells people how long you have been gone with the green light/yellow light red light gizmo. This tool fights the boss who needlessly monitors your work time when they are happy as a clam with you work otherwise. This guy’s device moves your cursor while you are away from your desk which tricks Microsoft Lync into thinking you are at your PC. Green light instead of yellow light or red light — if you know what I mean. And image what your boss will think with all of those nine and ten hour days. And, really, who gets harmed in the deal.

Here is the link. https://slate.com/technology/2021/12/mouse-movers-market-corporate-productivity-tracking.html

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The resignation of Jon Gruden has raised a lot of hackles with conservative columnists. It was a little shitty how his emails came to light, but when you make enemies, as Gruden has, you should expect these enemies to use any weapon they can find against you. The bottom line is that Gruden sent prejudice-laden emails. If he had paid any attention to the HR videos that every other employee in the civilized world is subjected to, he would have refrained from sending them in the first place. After years of incessant lectures regarding appropriate e-mail procedures, everyone should know that once you press send your email is both stored forever and can be sent absolutely anywhere. So, this incredibly responsible and privileged man ignored the rules of corporate e-mail etiquette and got caught. He now paid a high price for doing so.  

This is why HR departments worldwide conduct classes to instruct employees what is appropriate behavior to avoid such embarrassing situations.  HR, also, reminds us that if that e-mail is sent on a company server and/or with a company email address, your company has the right to read your emails.  If your emails are deemed inappropriate, you could be disciplined up to and including termination. I find it difficult to believe that someone at Gruden’s level didn’t know that words like “faggot” and “pussy” are offensive words. Everyone knows that e-mails are not private that is why HR instructs employees to be careful when sending them.

More importantly, Gruden is using blatantly homophobic, sexist and racist words while communicating with other top executives associated with football. He says he doesn’t have a racist bone in his body. Maybe Gruden reasons that he was only talking about the size of DeMaurice Smith’s lips. He could be talking about any person of any race who happened to have big lips. Right. Context is everything here. He was describing a black man using one of the most frequently used stereotypical descriptions of Black people.   

Even if we could give him some wiggle room for his big lips comment, what was his intention for “faggot.” Any person living in 21st century America knows that the word “faggot” is an offensive term. There is absolutely no debate about “faggot” which undermines his argument about not having a racist bone in his body. He seems pretty comfortable using homophobic language when describing gays, then it also seems likely that he is just as familiar with the racial epithets.

Some argue that OK he may have used colorful language but this was a private email. He never intended for anyone other than Bruce Allen to read it.  This is a troubling argument because Gruden manages blacks, women and gays.  How can a person be a private racist and a public non-racist? Is that even possible? It is not something you can turn on and turn off whenever you move from public to private. If, as a work colleague, you have Gruden’s homophobic statements, how confident could you be that Gruden treats his gay employees fairly. At the bare minimum, it should make you suspicious.

You would think that someone would have reminded Gruden about his phrasing. From what I can determine, absolutely nobody said a word to him about his choice of words. None of these men owed their jobs to Gruden, they could speak freely without fear of losing their jobs.  Yet, they said nothing. Indeed, they carried on with their conversation as if this is the way they talk every day.  Conversations filled with racist, sexist and homophobic innuendo.

And, to their argument that Gruden doesn’t have a racist bone in his body.  These men probably believe it. They don’t see any harm in talking like this with other white men. They have a very narrow definition of racist. To them, a person has to be a member of the KKK or the Nazi party before a person can be considered a racist.  Every other White is basically OK.  Their casual racists remarks are forgiven.  He was just being funny. He doesn’t really mean it. He would never do anything to physically harm someone. The KKK is a racist but a white man noticing that a black man has big lips – that isn’t racist, it is observation.

So much for all these HR trainings having any effect on the workforce. Clearly Gruden and Allen need to attend another course.