Sam Janes was handed to us as our new CEO and President. Sam had years of sales experience along with having spent several years with a high rank title at HP Canada. His position at HP had been removed, phased out. He went on to tank a few other companies he ran. Sorry, I mean to say he took brave steps leading a few high risk ventures which the market wasn't ready for.

He introduced himself to us, and instead of the traditional 'this is who I am' speech, he just stood there waving big red flags, babbling gibberish and drooling. I flinched as he wrapped up with the my-door-is-always-open speech. I learned long ago that the only people who give that speech are one's living with the constant guilt of skulking and hiding from the people who work in the companies they somehow ended up running.

I invited the new man in Dodge out to lunch later the following week. He obliged and we hit Subway for a quick bite.

I started with some of my naive, tell me how big businesses work questions:

"How does it benefit the people working here to turn the company public?"

"How do we keep people engaged in their daily tasks, especially the boring ones?"

"Why did you take on this job?"

About half-way through my sub I reached over and used my fingernails to scrape away a layer of glaze that had formed over Sam's face. I grasped his head, one hand on either side, and gave it a hard shake. Nothing. The glorified salesman continued his strange mix of newscaster/hey-little-buddy/marketing spiel while I drifted into an internal debate on the merits of ordering the vege patty sub versus the straight up vegetable sub. The patties didn't taste all that great but I hoped there was some protein in them.

We finished eating and walked back to the office. He thanked me for not harrassing him to the point of having to actually answer a question. I thanked him for having the courtesy to make up such confusing bullshit. At the very least, it took some thought on my part to interpret instead of him just repeating variations of "I don't know", "no clue", "don't care", or "why are you asking me this?".

I agreed not to ask him anymore real questions, he agreed to fuck me over behind my back any chance he got. Overall it was a successful lunch.

I wandered back to the numbness of my job and Sam headed back to his bunker to finish his afternoon drooling over a page of dollar signs he'd drawn up that morning. I fired up Photoshop, printed off a sign, and posted it on the office lobby door:

"For Hire: One CEO with their ears still partially connected to their brain."

I realized the next day that wasn't quite fair so I replaced the sign with one that read:

"For Hire: One CEO with their mouth taped closed."

Two days later I changed it again and began a steady stream of variations including:

"For Hire: One CEO with listening skills above the one year old level."

"For Hire: One CEO who doesn't view the people doing the work as a negative sign on their paycheque."

"For Hire: One CEO who talks like a person not a brochure."

Finally I landed on one that stuck:

"For Hire: One CEO willing to work from home all the time and have only fictional power."