by Martin Kihn
But never mind. No war talk, peace talk, tax talk, or talk show talk. No blather about Ireland, North Korea, southern Canada. No moments when frustration escalates, the rage appears upon the surface of your blood and you thwack! the team room table—say, “What an ASSHOLE!” No. No assholes. No whats. No frustration, escalation, genetics… no rage.
A calm complacent demeanor with the slight hint of a smile is best. Glasses are to be encouraged, though not with square or ovoid rims. Earrings are acceptable only in females, and only in partner females at that. Tiny earrings. Pants must be Brooks Brothers gray in wool or cotton blends, depending on the season. Large-breasted females must conceal their large breasts in loose fabric. Shirts do not bear logos, even little men with polo mallets; even alligators on a Saturday when all the clients are abed. There is likewise no sense in constructing a style for which you will be remembered. You will never be remembered.
There is not a single famous consultant on the face of the earth.
No reactions. Your client says, “This work is shit! You are a first-class loser!”—your nostrils do not twitch. A calm complacent demeanor with the slight hint of a smile… “What don’t you like about it?” you say almost happily. “How can we squeeze more hours out of the day and guess more often about your vague hopes and dreams and give to you something that doesn’t make you want to have a meeting?”
“God, we should have gone with McKinsey…”
No mention of McKinsey, or BCG, Bain, AT Kearney, Deloitte, BearingPoint, Accenture, IBM Consulting, Monitor, Whiziwig, and whatever other enemies lie in the scrublands, awaiting your failure. To hear you talk to the client, there is no competition. It’s one-way propaganda of a hopeful kind.
No phone calls. No cell phone calls from home. No cell phones turned on, even during lunch breaks. No lunch breaks. No food procured by any means other than stealth-quiet raids on the vending machines. Don’t call your mother to talk. No check-ins with friends on the sly to set up something for Friday night when you’re back in the city. No friends. No Fridays. No back in the city. Stare at the phone but don’t use it. Stop sending warm e-mails and they will all stop responding.
No unnecessarily loud taps on the keyboard. These are the signs of an amateur. No room-level conversations—the very best senior partners are quiet folks, almost whisperers, the kind of men and women you have to lean into to understand. This spills over into private life, this silence of the mind…
No mind. No silence.
No no.
You find a conference room that appears to have been warped in from the Ike age. The walls were advertised on late-night TV in the seventies. A risqué calendar from Ollie’s Auto Mall dates from two years back. Two years ago this company was on life support; by now, the Black Maria is in sight.
“Okay,” says Davo, “here’s the thing.”
You sit in this room—you, Martha, Baloo, Davo, and Jeff. Jack has not been seen yet.
“I talked to the client. I caught him when he got in at six. We had a good discussion about what he wants from us, how we can help. And it’s like this. They have too many tires. They’re all over the place—in the warehouses they own, in outlets they own, in retail outlets they just supply to… in the factory. They’re piled up in the factory, piles and piles. They have all this inventory and it’s a problem.”
“Why is it a problem?” asks Baloo.
“I’ll get to that—but now, basically what the deal is is they don’t really know where these tires are. They don’t have a clue. They don’t know how many there are or where they are. Their IT stuff is old and doesn’t work, the info they get from the outlets is incomplete. Plus they don’t trust the outlets are reporting real sales levels. But they need us to find the tires and count them.”
“Why is inventory a problem?” re-asks Baloo.
“I’ll get to that—what we need to do—”
“We have to go around the country, counting tires, right?” asks Martha, who appears to lack a sense of humor.
“No,” says Jeff, “we’ll use their data. They have a lot of data.”
“But it isn’t labeled,” you point out.
“We’ve got to label it.”
“It’s just numbers. Numbers and numbers in rows,” you insist.
“We’ve got to get them labeled.”
“Did it occur to anybody these numbers might be random?”
“They’re not random.”
“How do you know?”
“For Christ’s sake, look for patterns. Look behind the numbers at the message that’s there…”
Baloo loses patience with this philosophizing—“Can I ask a stupid question?”
“Yep,” says Davo.
“Why do they have so much inventory?”
“They make too much stuff.”
“Why?”
“They run these factories full blast, all year long. It doesn’t matter.”
“Why?”
“That’s what they do—make tires, right? What else are they going to do?”
“What if nobody buys them?”
“Then,” says a gruff voice swinging open the conference room door, “you have got a problem.”
It’s Jack. He comes in.
“You all know what you’re doing?” he asks.
There’s a tactical silence.
“Good,” he snorts. “Because we are already incredibly behind schedule, right?”
The next day—it might be Wednesday—even Jack concedes the team’s efforts have been adequate. Intrepid professionals, you have met the descriptions of your jobs. Each of you has spent your sixty nonstop working hours vigorously performing your time-honored duties, which vary by rank. (See the box below.)
Critical Tasks for Consulting Pod Members
Rank Job Description Key Action
Associate Pecking feverishly at IBM ThinkPad Typing
Sr. Associate Reminding everyone about deadlines Annoying
Principal Talking furtively on the phone Whispering
Partner Holding forth at long, long meetings Hectoring
You have not actually made any progress at all toward solving the client’s “problem,” whatever it is—but you certainly have been diligent. So Jack decides to present to you his own form of reward. This particular “reward,” as we shall see, is in fact no reward at all, except perhaps to Jack. But the inspiration may be a kind one. This much is possible.
What is to be the team’s reward for accomplishing nothing with great application?
Two words that shoot a hard shard of terror into the glands of anyone who has escaped their sentence in consulting… two words that conjure up a reef of memories so demanding, so entirely unsupportable that they reduce a grown woman to her knees with hands clasped tight and chest susurrating in dry heaves… two words so freighted with despair they drive large-headed men to throw their spines back, openmouthed, a deep scream surfacing, a rumble at first—speeding northward to splatter on the aluminum craftwork overhead… pleading, No—for the love of all that’s HOLY—NOOO!
These two words are: Team Dinner.
So it’s around about 8:15 p.m. on Wednesday night and the odor in the associate cube has become quite sweet with Skittles wrappers… and Jeff gets off one of his quiet calls and peaks over your shared cube partition and says, “You guys want to have a team dinner?”
The answer, of course, is NO.
Nobody ever wants a team dinner. You haven’t slept in three straight days. You are not hungry; you are filled with Skittles and sheer crap. Your stomach hurts, your mind hurts, you want to crash and call your wife in privacy and watch the news. The last thing anybody wants is a team dinner and yet…
“Great,” says Baloo.
“Okay,” says Martha.
You say, “Uh.”
Jeff glares, then remembers himself and perks up. “All right,” he says. “We’ll go at nine.”
Team Dinners are held at good restaurants and charged to the client. But goodness in
product and service varies widely from coast to coast, and in between. Your suspicion is that world-class comforts are about as endemic to [Sadtown] as are wide-open lesbians.
You are right.
Jeff selects a target, recommended by Jack. Jack in turn dredged it out of some half-remembered engagement with this same client twenty years before. The restaurant’s name is O’Neal’s and Jack is delighted to find it still exists.
“They’ll remember me,” he asserts. “I used to go there all the time.”
Old people can be charming in their childishness.
Because nobody wants to go to a team dinner, they always start late. Very late. The stated start time is simply a target and appears to be set about one hour prior to reality.
9:00 p.m.—associates are typing, principal is whispering.
9:25 p.m.—associates are typing, senior associate drops by to remind about a deadline.
9:47 p.m.—associates check e-mail, senior associate drops by and says, “Okay?”
9:52 p.m.—you all head out to the Taurus parking lot to locate your cars.
As you cross the road toward the [Client] Museum of Rubber, you see them—the line of Matador Red Ford Tauri, awaiting orders. There are seven of you and six of them. You all take out your Hertz key chains and push the unlock button. And simultaneously, six Tauri unlock and light up—come to life.
There is no way to tell which one belongs to whom.
No problem—you have a secret backup plan. On occasions like this you quickly press the trunk-open button and head for the car with the open trunk. In fact, the trunk-open button is a far better locator than the unlock button—the trunk makes an audible noise when it opens, and its swift motion is visible from many yards away. The blare-horn button is embarrassing. In the daytime in crowded conditions unlock alone rarely works; you can’t see the lights going on, and there is no noise. So more often than not, you’ll shoot open the trunk to find your car.
You press the trunk-open button and your trunk flies open.
Simultaneously, the other five Tauri trunks pop up.
O’Neal’s is not hard to find, unfortunately. It is on Montgomery Street in downtown [Sadtown]. Parking is more than easy; there is so much space around back you wonder if it might be closed. But no, it isn’t.
“This place is great,” Jack spouts with gusto as you walk toward the small front door. “The ribs—they’re unbelievable.”
Only partners can eat ribs.
Inside, the restaurant is a combination of a Denny’s and a welfare office. It is very dark and warrened, with low ceilings and walls plastered with posters of boxing or wrestling matches; the floor requires some diligence, sloping up and down and sideways at bad times. Why are the ceilings so low? It’s like this old inn in Rhinebeck you went to one time that was headquarters for George Washington and his troops in the eighteenth century, when people were shorter, much shorter… but the brown vinyl walls and the Wal-Mart chandelier don’t seem to speak of historical monuments…
“Can I get your coats, gentlemen,” asks the waiter.
“No,” everybody says.
Keeping your coats is tactic number two for getting out of the team dinner early.55
The table is round and the place mats are plastic; your water glass makes you wonder, so you do not touch it. And you are a massive consumer of water. A few other tables are occupied—young kids on dates, on a second or third bottle of Robert Mondavi. The waitress, when she comes, is out of it.
“You guys want a drink?”
“You know what?” asks Jeff. “Can we see the wine list?”
“You’re already seeing it.”
You look around the table—under things. You can’t find a wine list.
“I don’t think we got it,” says Jeff.
“Oh, you did.”
“Do you see it?”
“Yeah—it’s right there.” She points to the menu Jeff is holding in his hands.
“This,” he says, as he no doubt would say to one of his children back in Cleveland, “is the menu.”
“Uh-huh,” she says, and leaves it at that.
In the silence that follows, Jack emerges from a reverie; he flips the menu over and behold—“There it is!” he proclaims. “It’s on the back of the menu.”
You all take a look.
There are a dozen or so bottles of wine mentioned, plus things like a Kahlúa Kahuna and a King Kong Kahlúa—O’Neal’s appears to have some kind of kickback deal going with Kahlúa. All team dinners start this way—you get the wine list and the principal ponders it knowingly. A senior associate might chip in an observation or a wine-related anecdote. No associate speaks; no associate knows, or pretends to know, anything about wine.56 At this point, Jeff doesn’t seem too happy with the selection, but for some reason Jack is in his element—as though a personal song is zinging through his brain, making him smile.
“Let’s just get the Mondavi,” Jeff says after some considerable while.
It’s after 10:00 p.m. now and you can’t believe how terrible everybody looks. Martha’s eyes are closing, and Baloo appears to have a sinus issue: can’t stop sneezing. Choo! Choooaoohchch! Chooagohkoaicjokqz!
You stop saying “Bless you.”
From the pondering of the wine list to the ordering of the meal, the team dinner can be quite peaceful. There is very little talk. People are tired and topics are restricted; if there is any excuse not to yap—I’m looking at the menu for thirty minutes in case I missed a nuance—it is taken.
Very quiet.
You order. You all order chicken or beef. O’Neal’s does not give the vibe of being a safe place to get fish. You are like people on a transatlantic flight and your options are kept binary. Chicken or beef. Fight or flight. Eat or be eaten.
As the waitress walks off you notice a panty line visible under her tightish black dress in the dim light of dinner. She appears to be wearing a thong. Two rolls of fat push past it like the lips of a trout.
Now the ritual begins, like machinery. Jeff looks over at Jack, who stops humming to himself. Jack knows his role now—knows it better than anyone.
“When were you here before?” Jeff asks him.
The first question postordering always goes to the highest-ranking partner. This is the way that it is.
“Hmmm…” thinks Jack. “I guess it was—maybe ten years ago. It was when [Retired Client President] was here. We went to business school together, so we’d been back here a lot. Our firm was all over [Client] at one time. We did so much work for them—supply chain, working capital, logistics. We did all their trucking routes. There was a huge piece on optimizing trade promotions—in fact, the whole trade promotions thing started here.”
Trade promotions—or cutting deals with stores to try harder to sell your stuff—is one of the few real specialties your top-tier firm has. It is very statistics-heavy work. Like most midwestern consultants, Jack was once an engineer.
“We were here last year, weren’t we?” prompts Jeff.
“I think so. Last year or the year before. It was… it was… difficult…”
Nobody probes this point. Team dinners are not about difficulty.
“So,” says Davo, also to Jack, “you live in Florida now?”
“Yes,” he says, remembering himself. “We moved to the beach about two months ago.”
“That recent, huh?”
“Oh yeah. I was in Cleveland my whole career. I had retired—they brought me back. The old man’s still good for something, right?”
Nobody laughs. Team dinners are not about laughter.
The Robert Mondavi merlot arrives and you all partake, except Jeff, who doesn’t drink. Whether this is because he doesn’t drink or because he used to drink too much is a question you cannot answer…
… and some minutes later, Jack plays his part by commencing the lecture portion of the evening. After a start, all team dinners turn into a lecture from the highest-ranking partner, which often takes the form of an inst
ructive fable or anecdote.
“That reminds me,” Jack says, cradling his lean gray face in the crux of his right-hand forefingers. “We were on some island some time out in—in, I don’t remember. There were—we landed on this private airstrip and we got off the plane there, and there was no building or anything, just this green tent and this little guy standing down there in a—in a, like a hat. And he greets us when we get down off the plane—this is the emperor of this island, whatever it is. He tell us this, ‘I am the emperor of this island.’ ”
Jack lightly chuckles to himself, a cue you are to find this amusing. So you all join him.
“And we get into this—this Jeep he has and drives himself. And we’re driving, and he says, ‘On this island, the emperor has to drive himself. We have seen better times.’ And Pablo—who was the lead on this job, I was just coming along—he turns to the guy and says, ‘That’s why we’re here.’ ”
You see Jeff reach for the Mondavi bottle, then stop himself.
“Anyway,” Jack continues, “the client has this factory on the far end of the island, and the emperor gets lost—and, but that’s another thing. We get to this factory and it’s eight in the morning. Now I know the shift is supposed to start at seven, but it’s empty. There’s maybe one guy in there doing something. It’s a canning factory—they put fish into cans and label them. We find the foreman and we say, ‘Where is everybody?’ and he says—he looks kind of sad at this—he says, ‘Island people very lazy.’ ”
You’re hoping Jack isn’t one of those old-timers who missed the ’60s and still makes racist jibes.
He stretches his body out now, reaching up, up—he’s a very tall man, Jack. Like an elongated, slightly shambly James Coburn.
“This poor guy—he tried everything to try to get these people to come in on time. He moved the start time up an hour, but they were coming in two hours late instead of one. It didn’t even work one day. He starting firing the really late ones but it didn’t matter—he had to hire them back ’cause it’s a small island and there’s nobody else. What can he do?”