Archive for December, 2006

The office manager

The best kind of office manager is an All American guy geared to play ball with the gang-somebody they can call “Bert” and not “Mr. Bertram.” He has to be smart enough to run your business, but too smart to start one of his own. He’s called upon to maintain high efficiency with low labor turn-over, a technique that demands a man who knows how to say the nastiest things in the nicest way.

An assembly line superintendent can let the machinery keep the help humping-but the office manager has to deal with human equations to keep the wheels turning; he has to handle girl-hunting clerks as well as man-hunting receptionists . . . and keep them both working at least a part of the day.

The weight of their woes makes these men so prone to breakdowns that engineers are being urged to devise pushbutton thinking equipment to supplement the personnel. If such a machine ever clicks, ‘Lectric Eddy will be adding up the books and Robot Rosie as receptionist, will surely change the look of the gang that gathers round the water cooler.

The water cooler crowd

More and more pay for less and less work is responsible for office loafers, a group made up of gay blades who grow duller by the day. Most of this clique uses coffee breaks for story telling-ticket selling or horse-picking-then gathers at the water cooler to flirt with the busomy bookkeeper. After lolling on the job for twenty-five years, instead of getting a watch somebody should wrap up the water cooler.

This ulcerless watering clan has charter members in the gals from the steno pool who can type while they smoke, chew gum, put on lipstick, tug at their girdles . . . without ever skipping a comma. This lot is different from the executive secretary who keeps her mind on her work and her eye on the boss’s calendar; if all the executives in America took the same day off the country wouldn’t go to pot … it probably would just run more smoothly with all the Girls Friday sitting in the drivers’ seats.

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When a beginner complains at home today about the trials of the hired help, chances are her mother will remind her how it was when she was a girl!

The working girl only Heaven would protect has been replaced by the career gal who’d rather bring home the bacon than bake the beans, because she prefers to go out and earn a man’s salary rather than stay home and take it away from him. The leg-o-mutton sleeved models and today’s trim miss differ as much as a Model T and a Mercedes; they not only have different lines (and a better line!), but they’re also spreading out literally and figuratively. According to office supply houses the size of the seat on stenographers* chairs keeps getting wider and wider.

Way back in Mother’s day the average was eight more men than women in office work, but the ratio’s reversed now to three girls for each boy (and many of these boys now supplement their incomes by getting married!). Those early girls with thick glasses, buck teeth and tight hair-does (adorned with pencils stuck in the bun), worked a six-day week and a ten-hour day for twelve hard-earned dollars. Today’s typists get all the breaks; coffee breaks, cigarette breaks, rest room breaks; if anything happens to be left it’s a work break.

The first thing a new typist types is the boss and if she sticks around for a month or two to look over the bachelors out of bridal curiosity . . . she wants a hundred a week, a month’s paid vacation, dictation from men under forty-three, and a posture chair done in raspberry pink. She should have been around on her Mother’s first job when running the freight elevator on Saturday was part of the standard procedure! Or worked in a department store under these rules:

Rules to employees

Chicago 1888.
1. Store must be open from 6 A. M. to 9 P. M.
2. Store must be swept, counter and base shelves dusted, lamps trimmed, filled and chimneys cleaned, a pail of water, also a bucket of coal brought in before breakfast and attend to customers who will call.
3. Store must not be open on the Sabbath Day unless necessary and then only for a few minutes.
4. The employee who is in the habit of smoking Spanish cigars, being shaved at the barber shop, going to dances
and other places of amusement, will surely give his employer reason to be suspicious of his honesty and integrity.
5. Each employee must pay not less than $5.00 per year to the Church and must attend Sunday School regularly.
6. Men employees are given one evening a week for courting and two if they go to prayer meeting.
7. After fourteen hours of work in the store, the leisure time should be spent mostly in reading.
Signed: THE MANAGEMENT

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When men and women get around to discussing the old reliables, they’re talking about that vast army made up of an unlimited group of stepping stones upon which most other types make their way to the top including “the management” upon which big business depends.

In a conversation about this large percentage of the population, a doting grandfather recently said to his grandson, “I don’t doubt that you’re in the upper ten per cent of your class.” Before answering, the lad raised his head, squared his shoulders, and proudly answered, “No, but I make that ten per cent possible!”

That forthright answer lends itself to food for thought:
Where would the boss be but for his working staff?
Where would modern factories be but for the composite brains of “the management”?
And what would a mayor do if nobody’s sweep the streets?

The “management”

In tracing the evolution of business policies somebody’s always bound to go back to the beginning and talk about the pages of the past being crowded with men who made a mint. But there’s rarely any mention of the ones who did all the detail or the lives they had to live under those tyrannical old time autocrats who ruled with an iron hand. As business expanded and death took its toll of tycoons, more and more industry passed from private ownership to the investing public. Thus the committee system (we call it “the management”) came into being and many of today’s top executives might be compared with a committee chairman. Along with that adjustment, commerce became acquainted with labor relations, public relations, community relations, and other relative problems, and every job gained stature as a cog in the gear. The old free-wheeling business builder ran his own show and did as he’ d pleased. He thrived on long hours, busy phones, and a desk loaded with work. His decisions were made on the spot and the pressure kept him on his toes; his tensions had an outlet, and his own initiative made fantastic fancy turn into fabulous fact.

The organization man who followed in this executive’s footsteps is an entirely different breed; he acts collectively with the rest of the front office management; he has to back up his decisions with other people’s brains, and must rely on statistics, computations and accounting research. Thus deprived of the privilege of making up his own mind, the pressures of the money-making race find him gulping pills, following bland diets, and drinking skimmed milk.

We proudly point to the “plus” marks on our path of progress but increasing heart ailments and ulcers “up front” are on the minus side. Now that an ulcer is a symbol of success, new management talent is at a premium and has been responsible for some strange consolidations and surprise raids on competitive executive suites. When domestic pressures about social engagements he should keep for “relaxation” proved more than one busy executive could take, he summed the situation up for his turtledove by complaining, “You know the work day I put in-two coffee breaks, a three hour lunch, cocktails with customers-and now I have to go partying with you!”

Keywords: Public Speaking, Public Speakers, Public Speaking Tips, Public Seminar Speaking

You may be sure that when people speak of “moneymakers,” they have in mind calculating people, aggressive individuals, financiers, brokers and bankers. Early formulas for success were often wrapped up in items that cost a dime, sold for a dollar, and proved to be habit forming; but today’s successes must “calculate” beyond such simple things.

If a man makes a better mousetrap, the tax collectors beat a path to his door. He’s harassed by work stoppages (because of the Wages and Hours Act); and by trade discount difficulties (due to the Fair Trade Practice Act). Shortages, stoppages, law suits and patent infringements, are rude awakeners responsible for the difference between being a success and being successful. “Successful” too often is determined by whether a man can salvage enough from his success to live on, and the formula is about the same as for a nervous breakdown.

People cite the old worn out adage that “it takes money to make money,” and that he who puts up the money receives the greatest return. A better one is about a dog with a bone always being in danger. But it doesn’t take any old adages to show us that today’s rich stay rich because they’re resourceful enough to employ every tax dodging gimmick in the book and so shift most of their burdens to smaller shoulders than their own.

It’s a game that’s gone on since history began; an old papyrus, picturing a moneymaker showing a stingy old cadaver. Today he’s the man at the top, basking in luxury. Envious elves mixed the paint in both pictures. Money may not buy happiness, but it surely helps pay for the kind of misery we’d like to enjoy!

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When we have anything to say about righteous people, usually we get around to admitting that they try harder than any of the others to achieve happiness, and the first step toward happiness is learning to hold all things in proportion. The laws of nature have established that all things must be kept in proper proportion to be most effective. Nature has provided us with eyes to see, but too much light dazzles our sight and we’re blinded.

Nature has given us ears to hear, but too much sound destroys that hearing and we become deaf. Nature gave man a nose with which to smell, but too much of one odor destroys that sense and we cannot distinguish other odors. To gain effective use of our senses all of them must be kept in proper proportion.

So it is that with religion too that each life needs the proper proportion; too much leads to fanaticism and too little is equally bad. Religion doesn’t necessarily keep a person from doing wrong; it just makes him uncomfortable while he’s doing it. That’s why religion should be a significant part of our personal lives. Men of the cloth bear the shoulders on which the rest of us weep; when people are burdened with sorrow, they turn to those shoulders for comfort.

Neither a starry-eyed reformer nor a bigot from the Rible belt can tell you what the exact proportion is, but Old Aunt Mehitabel used a pretty good yardstick when she said, “I ain’t what I ought to be, I ain’t what I’m gonna be, but I’m better than I was!”

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When people discuss their “practical” friends, they speak of those capable of putting their experience and skill to some useful purpose, and include both actually and factually practical people. Builders, engineers and architects and manufacturers deal with actual physical things while lawyers, accountants and actuaries deal with less tangible facts and belong to the factually practical group.

The builders responsible for our roads, bridges and buildings embrace a group of practical men who devised running-boards around wind-swept, glacier-paved mountains. They not only grooved ledges where once only an eagle could roost, but also ran roads through bush and muskeg to the icy reaches of the Arctic. These men conquer topography by bridges to span roaring rivers, reach across the ocean’s bay, and even put hinges on the Golden Gate.

Architects who design, and construction men who build our homes, erect our schools and hospitals, dream up dams and levees, power plants and water works, have developed construction until it rates as the largest U.S. industry. Either directly or indirectly about 15 per cent of the nation’s total employment revolves around this tremendous drive to build something bigger and better.

Lawyers devote their time to dealing with physical facts while accountants and actuaries wrestle with fiscal facts
… but whether it’s fiscal or physical, these practical people leave little to chance in determining the “why” of things.

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Whenever aesthetic people are being discussed, opinions differ about “Who’s an aesthetic?” This set is made up of people who live somewhat in a world of make-believe: artists, entertainers, stylists too, all are so devoted to art for art’s sake that they frequently forsake life’s practicalities. The artistic person seeks beauty and tries to express it in ways for others to enjoy. It might be said that his life is devoted to giving rather than to grasping a point which he pursues so intently that oftentimes he lives in a world apart from his fellow men.

In addition to poets, painters and designers, people in the entertainment field are expressionists too . . . from the penguin-suited orchestra playing chamber music (that you keep hoping will turn into a tune) to the hillbilly band belting out something about “Flies in the Sugar Bowl”; from the actor who thinks of himself as another Hamlet to the jelly-muscled queen of burlesque who displays her “joie de vivre.”

The same group embraces those from the three-ringed circus and carny kids born in trunks and reared in dresser drawers; performers from ballet dancers who twirl on their toes to folk dancers who buck and wing at the Sugar Hill Shim-sham. There are those who divert us with everything from Mozart at the Met to tomfoolery on TV; the talented tenor on a citronella circuit and the greasepainted star at a Ham and Leg night spot cavorting on a napkin-sized floor.

There’s an endless list of aesthetics not always practical people perhaps but of all of them it may be said that they are imbued with a passion to express beauty and feeling.

Keywords: Public Speaking, Public Speakers, Public Speaking Tips, Public Seminar Speaking