Ode to the Valued Customer

Tags

Elaine Stirling, form poetry, humourous verse, parody, The Corporate Storyteller, villanelle

A Villanelle

All I need do is rush you and bore you,
tool die and stamp, units sold, merely digitize
and score you, dear valued customer, woo-hoo!

Smoothly and daily, I frazzle your view
with photoshopped beauty & health, hypnotize.
All I need do is rush you and bore you

with numbers and flow charts, I know what to do
to poison your innate good sense, then to sanitize
and score you, dear valued customer, woo-hoo!

Persuading, dead easy! I’ve built a whole slew
of doubt traps to enslave, victimize.
All I need do is rush you and bore you.

As long as you never slow down to ask who
is in charge, I’ll continue to aim custard pies
and score you, dear valued customer, woo-hoo!

Beyond this cheap dazzle, a market true
thrives where I can’t push in with baubles and lies.
All I need do is rush you and bore you
and score you, dear valued customer, woo-hoo!

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

Time

Tags

Elaine Stirling, poetry for fun, The Corporate Storyteller

I don’t have time.
I don’t have time
to have time.
I don’t know who
took it, but I’m always
in a rush, feeling
on the verge
of being crushed
by forces colder
and meaner
than I, through
lack of time,
am being
forced
to be.

Everything
I do, I try to save
time, so where the hell
has all the time
I’ve saved
gone?

It isn’t here,
so where
is it going?

I don’t know.
I don’t have time
to figure that out.

Right now
is our busy season—

it’s always our busy
season, but this one’s
even worse

—so I’m super
strapped for time,
sending stuff out
as fast as I can
send it, scanning
incomming as fast
as I can scan—
what are these
people talking
about? Does
no one know
how to spell
anymore?

but it’s never
enough. We’re
not making our
numbers

and numbers
are everything

numbers seem
to have become
my reason for being

that doesn’t
feel right, but I
don’t have anyone
to ask about it

and anyway,
who would care?
Everyone’s so busy
moaning, I don’t
dare interrupt.

I barely have
time to moan.

I clearly need
a break, but I’m
decades from
retirement

and I don’t
have time for
holidays

last time
I took a week off
I got so sick when
I got back, I had to
work ten times as hard
to make up for lost time

I don’t know
who keeps
all the saved
time or finds
the lost time

I don’t know
anyone who spends
time responsibly

I think I would like
to know such a person

but they wouldn’t
be real. I don’t think
they exist

they’d probably
be boring. What would
we talk about? All the time
in the world they have…
to do what?

Well, enough
of this. I gotta get
back to what I was
doing. I’m already
past deadline…

no time
no time
no time
no ti—

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
Image from http://www.whoisgarybledsoe.com

The Perennial Selfie

Tags

Archilochus, brave new business leadership, Elaine Stirling, fixed verse, form poetry, iambe, Jeremy Bentham, satirical verse, The Corporate Storyteller, utilitarianism

Behold, friends, my Auto Icon,
perennial display of nattiness and wit.
Reluctant to move wholly on,
I chose to leave for you my bones and choicest bits.

While you across this mortal coil
still shuffle debts, post shots of self while text-obsessed,
believing in the power of toil,
I offer you a fresher choice in form of quest.

I sought through life utility,
maximizing happiness, minimizing pain,
measuring length of amity.
In five million pages or less, I laid it plain.

My felicific calculus
proves truer than it ever has, though the software
has some bugs, I am serious.
The utility of you runs smooth, everywhere.

To the furthest cosmic reaches
you perceive with unerring possibility
all the swells and sandy beaches
of the best alternatives and most variety.

Every grand success rose first
in the imagination of a quicker mind
as a solution from the worst.
The path of least resistance is your greatest find.

Mistake me not! The borderlands
of what will take you and what will leave you behind
are clearly marked with solid bands,
electrified. In every way, they’re well defined.

What you must learn to navigate
is absolute intolerance toward feeling bad,
coupled with refusal to state
in word or thought all that diminishes the glad.

As your numbed senses come to life,
thinking dumbed by needless loyalties will sharpen
and the instant path will flash, rife
with the next best step, to which all aid will hearken.

Your perennial self lives now
for there is nowhere else to expect and receive
the best. Relax your furrowed brow
and forget the dusty bones of us when you leave…

to meet your great acclaim
and grow into the beauty of your name.

~~~

The bones of this poem are inspired by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) whose Auto Icon (his coinage) resides to this day at University College, London. Bentham is remembered, somewhat simplistically, as the father of Utilitarianism, its objective being the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

The form I’ve employed is called “iambe”, a satirical fixed verse that comes down to us from the Greek poet Archilochus (c. 680-645 BCE). Seventeenth-century French satirists established the meter as octosyllables alternating with alexandrines, eight syllables, then twelve, with a rhyme scheme of abab, cdcd, etc. The quatrains’ awkward swing from long to short works well with a theme intended to stir things up.

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

The Economy of 100 Trillion Friendships

Tags

#longreads, a crown of sonnets, brave new business leadership, Elaine Stirling, form poetry, heroic sonnet, sonnet redouble, The Corporate Storyteller

A Sonnet Redoublé

1

All friendship survives. All rivers divert.
Puddles dry up, and I did see the sky
in your eyes for a time, but those notions
of smallness, of rightness and wrongness, can’t
come any further. I’ve worn a hair shirt
and dammed the itch and the dwindling supply
of consent to great things. My emotions
have voted unanimously to grant
full access to prosperity, no dirt
from corruption, regrets, or treachery,
no dreary committees voting motions,
no states to declare, prevent, or pervert.
I am counting by tens the glory days
when the streams that uphold us find new ways.

10

When the streams that uphold us find new ways
to account for impulses beyond mere
addictions, reactions, ho-hum lazy
factions of issues that go round and round,
the dread that passes for cleverness plays
its last notes. I need no protection here
or anywhere. Your sane is my crazy,
vice versa, no fear. I’m standing my ground
when I say adios to a life of grays.
Opposites do not attract; they adhere
like gum to a shoe, dim love to hazy
retractable hues. Jealousies confound
but will never reach the convivial
to wash over beds of alluvial…

100

To wash over beds of alluvial
sex—do I have your attention yet?—means
the either/or gasms of yesteryear have to
go. I don’t care what you did, or how they
all squealed. Your past to me is trivial.
It’s how I feel with you now that demeans
or excites or relaxes. Overdue
IOUs spoil the view, though I must say,
your original testimonial
exceeds by hundreds the usual scenes
and confusions. I sometimes perceive you
without the old placards, free of cliché,
Olympian, indifferent to old
hurt, you and I came together, a gold.

1000

Hurt, you and I came together, a gold
standard for originality, if
not quite paragons of harmony. So
much we could have done, we did.
Biologies and shouting matches sold
a few tickets, but yuck! Too many are stiff
with boredom in search of a…NoGoPro,
some safe tech magic to strap on their head.
10 x 10 x 10 lovers with great bold
outlooks surround me. I’m playing the riff
I was born to hear above not below,
dancing me to new melodies amid
a transcendent running of bulls, a flirt,
rush of sorts, divine, eccentric, alert.

10,000

Rush of sorts, divine, eccentric, alert,
I’m learning a better kind of hurry,
dawn bursting through the starting gate each day
with gentle laughter and magnificence.
Centrifugal forces who are expert
at throwing off wriggly worms of worry
spy with 10,000 eyes the best array
of what I want with sublime common sense.
An Adriatic villa or a yurt
with you and a few dozen friends, merry
are the possibilities when I say
there’s no end to the good, ladies and gents.
For ecstasy’s sake, I’m launching a phase
to new veins untapped since long ago days.

100,000

To new veins untapped since long ago days,
let us raise our glasses and celebrate
who we are: land dwelling, sea diving, sky
flying, fire breathing, fun loving starfish
of the human variety. Unfazed
by grim statistics, let us underrate
death and those who lust for others to die.
Get used to it, friend, that every wish
finds her match, comes home to greet you. Amaze
yourself and me, for once. It’s not too late!
Grow bigger than your grievances. Let lie
the sleeping pups. Be unwilling to dish
anything. Teach love’s grand tutorial,
investing through time immemorial.

1.000,000

Investing through time immemorial,
I’m spending my first million, knowing more
is on its way. You literal thinkers
need to dream subatomic. That sliced pie
of lessening returns is serial
stupidity, so needless and abhorred
by the Mind who imagines you. Blinkers
are for horses and those who never try
to overthrow their own authorial
rebellions. There’s a superior floor
of thought that takes into account stinkers
and lousy worn-out excuses for why
you’re still not rolling in riches untold.
We’re growing sums others scarcely behold.

10,000,000

We’re growing sums others scarcely behold,
which includes greenbackian euro yens.
The buck grows here where wealthy feels at home.
Chuck the shame in all its spots; they’re cheap change.
What use is approval by a glum fold
of disexpectant sheep with their dark lens
and woolly hearts? The CNNs may roam,
but not from here to eternity. Range
expands the instant I choose to uphold
more of the universal market. Friends
who dream of me, we haven’t met…yet. Loam
in the fields of the Lord is rich! Deranged
has always been the mark of a true shirt.
The shell-shocked still wander, rhyming a spurt.

100,000,000

The shell-shocked still wander, rhyming a spurt
when they feel some intestinal upset,
but never ask them to explain—oh, no,
holy writs must not be tampered with! Cheese
and purple prose know their place. Good yogurt
has a culture of its own. I can let
it abso-posi-lutely be, and go
where my gut sings. How lovely not to please
what displeases. It’s easy to subvert
when requirements are nil. A touch of fret,
I know at once that what I used to know
I have outgrown. Sleeker is my new ease
toward life, sweet poetry of these long days,
now and then hints of the epic always.

1,000,000,000

Now and then, hints of the epic always
startle me in the wee hours, choruses
of dead physicists more frisky than ten
herds of Pan’s demonia. Atheists
arm in arm with Dutch reformers, the blaze
of them is something to behold. Isis,
all the pieces of her son whole again
and eager to re-dismember. New trysts
hatching, old wars stirred to sonnetry. Days
of grief embrace relief. Now, realists,
you’ll find me catching, so beware, and when
we get to who sleeps where, bring lotuses.
I do know your shy smile and its special
unfolding, saturnine droughts, jovial.

10,000,000,000

Unfolding saturnine droughts, jovial
excesses, conversations that roll us
across the floor, clutching our bellies. More
of this, please, more! Gladly, says Universe,
who delivers in heaps, a merry ole
supersoul is He/She, an omnibus
who’ll drive us anywhere and not keep score.
I’m in the billions now, here to converse
with peers of agreeability. You’ll
know us by our success, so obvious
with markets in our hands while we explore
what lives under the limitless obverse.
Holy moly, sister, we’ve found pure gold
floods of the heart, penny stocks bought and sold.

100,000,000,000

Floods of the heart, penny stocks bought and sold
like the former wolf of Wall Street knows, brings
the kind of loose and breezy life we came
to live. We came to live, brother! Give up
with the odes to bloody sorrow. They’re old
unwearable hats for shrunken heads. Things
matter as we think, not say them. The fame
you dreaded is a feather bed, so sup
with me tonight. Let’s talk it over. Fold
that army cot; give it some good will. Rings
off the hook clamouring for your name
to spell it right on the victory cup,
enhanced with unforgettable itunes
in the Poets’ Exchange, add to fortunes.

1,000,000,000,000

In the Poets’ Exchange, add to fortunes—
go ahead, no one’s counting. (Yes, we are!)
You’ve reached your first trillion of debt-free joy,
and you’re still just beginning. Genesis
is forever. I’m germinating boons,
and so are you. Step up, please, to the bar
of eternal revelation. Enjoy
the view and the grand reviews. Exstasis
runs the show. There are hot sweet air balloons
with gondolas for two, and lots of bare
back riding, if you know what I mean. Oy
vei, that’s Moses over there! His thesis
on Exodus is done. His arc of runes
we’re holding in trust like pirates’ doubloons.

10,000,000,000,000

We’re holding in trust like pirates’ doubloons
infinite multiples of circular
stances—that’s circumstance to you and me.
Squared off no more, scared off by even less,
I slip into Creator garb. The loons
outside my bedroom cry in jocular
profusion, while fabulously wealthy
settles on my shoulders in soft caress.
I’m off to tango now, the sultry tunes
that I adore play a particular
rhythm just for me—and that gorgeous he.
We’ve all the time we want for happiness.
Outside our door, I post a true advert:
All friendship survives. All rivers divert.

100,000,000,000,000

All friendship survives. All rivers divert
when the streams that uphold us find new ways
to wash over beds of alluvial
hurt. You and I came together, a gold
rush of sorts, divine, eccentric, alert
to new veins untapped since long ago days.
Investing through time immemorial,
we’re growing sums others scarcely behold.
The shell-shocked still wander, rhyming a spurt
now and then, hints of the epic always
unfolding. Saturnine droughts, jovial
floods of the heart, penny stocks bought and sold
in the Poets’ Exchange add to fortunes
we’re holding in trust like pirates’ doubloons.

~~~

Once in a while, the urge hits me to write a sonnet redoublé, also known as a crown of sonnets, or the heroic sonnet. It consists of fifteen stanzas of fourteen lines each, “crowned” by the final stanza. Each line of the final stanza opens and ends the previous fourteen, so you have a sort of step-by-step expansion of the heroic theme.

While my style is conversational, I do pay attention to meter. I’m choosing to call this iambish pentameter. The rhyme scheme is a manageable abcdabcdabcdee.

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
Image of sunflowers comes from http://www.outdoorphotogear.com.

The Warring Clans of Not My Job & To Feel Good

Tags

brave new business leadership, creative nonfiction, Elaine Stirling, essay, The Corporate Storyteller

As wars often do,
it began with shopping carts
and two kinds of people:

1. those who see patterns in everything
2. those who wish that pattern observers would get off their lazy butts and unload the dishwasher

Because this is a kind of true story, we’ll call the pattern observer Florence, and the one with the unloaded dishwasher, Seymour. They live on opposite sides of the street and do not know each other.

So, one fine Saturday morning, Florence woke up to see a shopping cart abandoned on Seymour’s side of the street. It reminded her of the cart she’d returned to the grocery store yesterday and how good she’d felt picking up after somebody else’s laziness. That cart had been on Seymour’s side of the street too, but it was okay because the store was on that side, and she had to buy eggs, anyway.

Then Florence went out to water her garden, and that’s when she saw the second cart. On her side of the street. On her patch of grass. Well, not technically hers—it belonged to the city, but it was her job to maintain the grass on which the second abandoned cart now sat.

Seymour woke up happy to see sunshine. While unloading the dishwasher, he noticed the carts through his window and hoped that someone would return them to the store. Then he drove off to play golf. Florence sat down to blog.

Both shopping carts were visible from her study window, which inspired her to write about the good deed she’d performed the day before in returning someone else’s cart. She ended her piece with a tidy little moral: If each of us would just do our part, what a wonderful world this would be!

During her fitness routine of 30 minutes cardio, 30 minutes yoga, Florence received 873 likes, 74 comments, 14 shares, and 6 reblogs. The carts didn’t move.

After playing eighteen holes, two under par, Seymour drove home feeling pretty good. He had a few things to pick up at the store. It was a nice evening, so he decided to walk. He didn’t notice that the shopping carts on both sides of the street were still there, but Florence who’d been at her computer all day, except for that hour of exercise, noticed Seymour ignoring the carts. That’s when patterns started forming:

People don’t pay attention to what’s around them. (I do.)
People used to take pride in their neighbourhoods. (I still do.)
That man who just walked past the cart on his side of the street is typical. (I’m not.)
Why hasn’t anyone on my side of the street returned a cart? (like I did yesterday)

By the time Florence reached “What is this world coming to?”, she felt totally exhausted but knew she wouldn’t sleep. She always had trouble sleeping. To help herself feel better, Florence logged onto Facebook. Half her friends posted about national and world troubles; the other half posted photos of their smiling family and pets. Some did both. Normally, she preferred the photo friends, but after checking for additional likes to her blog (there were none), she glanced out the window and noticed the man across the street remove his groceries from a cart and leave it on the grass, right alongside the other one. Now there were three abandoned carts with no one caring enough to return them. Florence felt the heat rising to her cheeks.

She scrolled through her FB newsfeed and clicked Like on every post where somebody complained. Aches and pains first—sympathy is always easy—then assorted bad news—sad face, boom, done. Finally, she moved on to posts that blamed one political party over another for all that’s going wrong, one religion over another, one nationality over another; and with every hit of dissatisfaction, the man across the street whose name she didn’t know, loomed larger in her imagination as part of the problem.

Seymour and his girlfriend, who’d arrived while Florence was educating herself on watershed issues in Kyrgyzstan, spent a happy night together. Florence needed three glasses of red wine and two pills to fall asleep.

The next morning, first thing Florence did was look out her window. First thing Seymour did was look out his window. The shopping carts were gone. Seymour remembered he’d forgotten to return his cart. His girlfriend had phoned while he was bringing in the steaks he would barbecue that night. He remembered the two other carts and appreciated whoever it was that returned all three. Then he headed to the kitchen where his girlfriend was making pancakes.

Florence had a headache. She imagined a grocery employee on minimum wage driving around all night picking up after people’s laziness. The kid probably had a university degree and debts up to his ears. That was the trouble with today’s economy: the haves and the have-nots drifting further and further apart.

Seymour and his girlfriend spent their Sunday at the beach. Last thing Florence wanted to do on such a beautiful day was write her blog, but readers were expecting it. She got as far as the title:

“Whose Job is it to Feel Good Anyway?”

That evening, after Seymour finished coaching at Big Brothers, Florence, who took three naps, ate burgers and fries for lunch, and skipped exercise, wrote her shortest blog ever, in answer to the question, whose job is it to feel good?

Mine.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

The Closest Coin

Tags

brave new business leadership, Chant Royal, Elaine Stirling, medieval fixed verse, narrative poetry, The Corporate Storyteller

A Chant Royal

The mongering in misery is brisk today.
A pint of pain for three quarts of sting,
fragments of dead love affairs, whaddya say?
I’ll even throw in the nasty, helpful thing
I said to a friend a few minutes ago.
I’m quick to bring the spirits of everybody low.
There’s no greater trafficker in grief than me,
with expertise in creeping, gnawing jealousy.
You got nothing to gain, everything to lose—
may as well put your trust in me.
The closest coin is yours to choose.

Wish I knew how I’d managed to stray
into this ville of shops that can only bring
me wriggling anxiety and disarray.
This poison pit stop has me wondering:
I have a fine purse that’s just below
half full, no earthly need for me to blow
it here, where a disengaged economy
deflates and battles for supremacy.
Who was it said, I’m quick to bruise?
You cling too much to skewéd memory.
The closest coin is yours to choose.

Aah, yes, the great philosopher, Duprés!
I’ve read him too. Brilliant how he’ll wing
you out of sunny skies to sullen gray,
two seconds flat. But here, ooh! The bling
and crap, I guarantee, will make you feel so
fabulous, you’ll want to stay to grow
your business here in toiling perpetuity
by investing in how alike and sad we
are. Consciousness rising, that’s the cruise
you wanna book, right here, see?
The closest coin is yours to choose.

The monger’s got me in a power play.
I feel my will and joints slow stiffening.
The sign I couldn’t read well yesterday
above his wares and oily grinning
head says, Come on, baby, just let go!
Rigor mortis of the mind will show
you, an impulsive shopping spree
cures all. We throw in guilt for free!
How ‘bout it? Cheaper than booze,
a slow, lazy drag to the cemetery!
The closest coin is yours to choose.

I look him straight in the mug. You play
dirty. I play differently. I love ca-ching
as much as anyone, but you, you bray
the same old donkey chords of suffering.
I thought at first I saw a special glow
in you—still do, too bad. I have to go.
You’ve built yourself a match stick society
that flames to ashes every night. The fee
you charge for feeling good, your dos
and don’ts, all sorted, they don’t interest me.
The closest coin is yours to choose,

and I am spending mine most happily. Be
well, my friend. I hope you’ll one day see
resentment held is counterfeit and strews
more prolonged misery for you, not me.
The closest coin is yours to choose.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

Proposing to Agora

Tags

brave new business leadership, Elaine Stirling, poetry, The Corporate Storyteller, the Ten Intentions

I am
the agora
the space of
constant redefining
is my specialty

the stalls
of exclusivity
you seek I rush
with bundled reeds
and switches

walls, dear
god, of wounded
sensitivity I crush beneath
my calloused
pretty heel

assign
to wild boars
the task of rooting
out your grubs of small
necessity

I do
not need
the agora draws you
to me through appetite.
What do you want?

guards
at every point
I call the daimons
home at dawn
to rest

with me
you will not fear
the market is my brother
vast are his accommodations.
What do you grow?

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
Image of barefoot sandal is from etsy.com.

Agitating Lace: Advice to a Writer

Tags

advice for writers, brave new business leadership, Elaine Stirling, poetry, The Corporate Storyteller, the creative process

I – Ordinance

You, who chase markets,
predictor of trends, I need you
to give up the ghost of the writer
you tend. I know you don’t know me—
the cut and the grind of your lens
amplifies everything I am not.

If it helps to pretend
I’m a trick of the light from
too many nights at your desk
or the meds to control your attack
of the dreads, I don’t care. Just
for this moment, get out of
the hair of the writer
who’s gone to a shipload
of trouble to summon me here,
where you are old news, though
a headline, the 10 millionth ripple on
a pond where the stone, unaware she’s
a diamond, now sinks all alone to the
silt and the muck, hearing bubbles
of guilt, thinking thoughts like
I’m f*cked, when she ought
to be gleaming the brighter for
all that you’ve stirred, so again,
marketeer, do not lend me
your ear, just GET OUT!

II – Assemblage

Hello, dear writer,
a pleasure to meet you
alone for the very first time
through these inlets of rhyme
where tycoons of business
lack sense and the timing that
comes with the work that you do
to create how we sail from the jetties
and airs of Paul Getty and heirs
to a seamless provoking
of all that impairs.

Though I have no real name,
you may call me Lacy. I’m your
highest ideal, I’m the reason you
came. I’ve been growing like blazes
and making you crazy creative, do you
hear? Never lazy! But you, you’ve been
reared by well-meaning posteriors to agree
that a park bench or stump is the finest
career. Why, look at the endless succession
of buts that have muffled and squashed you,
while you, gifted writer, are plus, plus, & more!
Now, get up off the floor and listen, no buts.
If you hear them creep in, little bums, just
go back to Ordinance and read me again.

III – Agitation

How can I put this?
Agitation is everything.
The discomfort you feel
is a story that’s reeling you
in like a fish—maybe true, may
be wild, a confession, a rant.
What you never must do
is to dribble the story
like a bucket of worms
for approval, attention.
Baiting too soon is
the biggest mistake
of the writers who die,
the flounders, the flakes.

On those days
when the words are
elusive, stay away from
the news of literary markets.
They will only confuse between
dis- and encourage. A writer is
something outside and beyond units
sold, saturation. You’re leading edge,
friend! Best thing you can do is
indulge relaxation.

Start to believe
in those moments
of ease, you’re surrounded
by masters who went on
before you—call them ghosts,
friendly hosts, doesn’t matter,
they’re real. Read the best of the
best of them, never descend, and
address them as if they were here in
the room. “I can be just like you.” Tell
them: “Yes, I might even be better!”

Your writing, I promise, will start up
again. Succumb every dawn to that small
agitation, and soon the whale will turn to
see what is biting him. You will be the splash
you came here to be, the diamond at the center,
and I the lace you have quietly donned.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

The Four Most Powerful Words Never Used in Business

Tags

#longreads, brave new business leadership, Elaine Stirling, essay, The Corporate Storyteller

I don’t often talk about the day I was fired, ordered to clean out my desk with a security guard in attendance, and escorted off the premises like I was some kind of criminal. A shocked colleague pressed $20.00 into my palm in case I needed cab fare, mouthing the word, “Why?”

When I do talk about that day, it’s to my corporate clients when they’ve hit a log jam, when nothing else will persuade them that finding—and using—their own voice is everything.

I’d been working four months in the corporate head offices of what is known as the second most regulated industry after nuclear. The security investigation prior to hiring is fierce. Their internal, tongue-in-cheek tagline is, “People watching people watching people.”

But that’s not the fun part of this story.

Where it really began was the year before, on a Saturday night at 2:00 a.m. when I was so exasperated with my cash team, I wanted to throttle every last one of them. The honeymoon period of our gorgeous new bookstore was over. Cashiers leaned against walls, chatting. Crap piled up on the cash desks. No one wanted to work the upstairs cash, where they’d miss the best gossip.

I’d finished counting and locking up the cash and was about to leave the store when an impulse hit me. I sat at the computer, and my last lucid thought before entering a fugue state was, “You wanna act like 3-year-olds? Fine, I’ll treat you like 3-year-olds!”

The two-page document, written in 14-point Comic Sans MS, took me twenty red-hot minutes to write. I slapped a copy into the staffroom communication binder where all ninety employees, forty of them my team, would have to read and initial it before beginning their shift. Sunday was my day off. I didn’t give any of them a second thought.

Monday morning, I returned to work, mildly curious as to the effect of my vent. Most likely, the GM, with whom I got along well, would have read, chuckled, and removed it.

The smiling faces started to gather as soon as I entered the store. Floor staff who’d never wanted to work cash, thinking it was intellectually beneath them, asked if they could be cross-trained. Members of my cash team came up and hugged me, some with tears in their eyes, for reminding them of how much they loved their jobs.

Over the next few days, my management colleagues thanked me for making Manager on Duty the new dream job. Our GM, thrilled with the soaring morale, sent a copy of my doc to Head Office, calling it genius. Of our ninety employees, eighty-five made a point of coming up and telling me how much they appreciated what I’d written.

That was only the beginning.

Over the next six weeks, our store sales climbed higher and higher. Customers were so happy with our service that I designed a campaign for employees to record the testimonials. We called them Indigo Moments, and the results were so measurably positive that Head Office invited me to to launch the program, nation-wide.

We were in the midst of working out the logistics when I was recruited by a training director who no longer worked at Head Office. She was now at that other place, the super-regulated one. She had created a position for me at twice the salary because of my demonstrated skills in motivation, innovation, and creativity.

They were the same skills that would push me out the door four months later, especially that last one. “You seem to think that every problem has a creative solution,” said the director who’d once sung my praises. “Well, it doesn’t. And it’s obvious you have no understanding of corporate restraint.”

On that last point, I had to agree. Corporate restraint, which consisted, as far as I could tell, of staying at one’s computer with shoulders hunched and no clue of what anyone else did made no sense at all.

Within six months of my being let go, the first of a series of corporate scandals hit the “people watching people watching people” industry. Senior executives were charged with fraud. Theft and corruption were revealed at the lower ranks. Over the next eight years, CEOs were brought in and let go, board members and entire executive teams replaced.

Their reputation and morale must have hit a new low when in 2010, I received a phone call from the HR director inviting me to design a set of workshops for their senior executives. “We want you to teach us how to tell stories, how to be creative.”

I had only one moment of panic re-entering those halls, when the executive assistant to the woman who fired me stepped out of an elevator. But no one recognized or remembered me. And no one, presumably, had checked their files.

As it turned out, they never ran the workshops. They’ve had two more CEOs since.

Now we come finally to the four most powerful words never used in business. Only I did use them on a Saturday night at 2 a.m., and they changed everything.

The four words are, Once upon a time…

The rest of the sentence read, there were three little cash desks.

And here is the whole story, exactly as it appeared, except for the Comic Sans MS font.

THE STORY OF THE THREE LITTLE CASH DESKS

Once upon a time, there was a store called Indigo Yorkdale, and in this store lived three little cash desks. Their names were Lower Cash, Upper Cash and Front cash.

Lower Cash was the oldest of the three. He was also the largest. He had six registers, a look-up and lots of nooks and crannies to put things in. Some people believed that’s all there was to Lower Cash, but they were mistaken. Lower Cash also had a mall entrance where customers could be greeted, an extensive magazine section that always needed straightening and which felt very sad when people didn’t take the time to find out what was in it. Lower Cash had octagons with new releases, a What’s New What’s Hot section, a place for biographies and, because of the computer and telephone, had access to every other part of Indigo Yorkdale.

Upper Cash was the lonely middle child whom people overlooked because he was off in a corner, quiet, unassuming. They sometimes resisted going to Upper Cash because they thought he was boring, even though, in his way, he was a terribly important cash desk. This was where the mysterious Indigo Circles were processed, where many carts of books were stickered and where customers could also be greeted through the upper mall entrance. But Upper Cash was more than all of these. Upper Cash was also the gateway to Indigo Kids where stories and parties and magic happened every day. And it was the portal to Indigo Music where Mozart could be found, and Motown and Bocelli and CDs of just about anyone you could imagine. Upper Cash had so much to offer, and he wondered why cashiers didn’t see him that way. He hoped that one day they would.

And finally, there was the youngest of the three little cash desks. Like most babies of the family, Front Cash quickly became a favourite. He was full of light, laughter and could always be found in the middle of everything. Front Cash was surrounded by Presents, a stone’s throw from Travel and was a popular spot for Home lovers and Business people alike. Front Cash said hello to everyone because it came easily to him, and most everyone said hello back. Front Cash didn’t know that his older brothers were misunderstood, that their talents were ignored, or that arguments sometimes broke out because of them. If he had known, Front Cash would have taken that silly person by the hand and shown him or her what delightful cash desks they were. And he would have told them that anyone would be lucky to have Upper Cash or Lower Cash as a friend.

Because that’s what all the cash desks really want to be. They want to be everybody’s friend. So next time you’re asked to go to Upper Cash or to Lower, or you’re lucky enough to be chosen for Front Cash, give the desk a tiny little pat. Let him know that you’re happy to be there and looking forward to sharing experiences. If you do this, you can be certain that when all the lights are dimmed, and all the customers and cashiers and managers and floor people have gone home for the night, the three little cash desks will be dancing in the aisles, hardly able to wait for a new day to begin at Indigo Yorkdale.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

Elaine Stirling is the author of The Corporate Storyteller: A Writing Manual & Style Guide for the Brave New Business Leader. She is a corporate communication consultant, novelist, short story writer, and poet.

104 Words of Advice

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brave new business leadership, Elaine Stirling, poetry, sonnet, The Corporate Storyteller

Accept no predictions from a seer
who places small value on happiness.
He may have a way with ropes and pulleys.
So do cable cars, and the view is clearer.
Unless poverty is your goal, say less
if not nothing to those artists who freeze
at the thought of financial thriving. Wealth
is no crime. Life is the time you have been
given to increase your gifts. Ignore rifts!
Beyond forgiveness and permission, health
in all her juicy flavours seeks to win
your favour. Sour grapes can never uplift.
If you must, heed only the prophet who
views profit with no opposite as true.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014