Corporate abrasions

I was the kind of kid who opted out of long summers by the South Carolina shore so that I could stay in muggy Philadelphia to work in a life insurance shop, mimeographing newsletters and keeping score for salesmen.  Or, if I did go to the beach, I worked the sunny days in shops with names like The Mole Hole.  At the University of Pennsylvania, I catered meals among museum mummies or checked in musty library books at Van Pelt.  At twenty-five, I started a business.  I've been serving clients since.

Some of my very best friends have emerged from the ranks of corporate America—creative people with philanthropic hearts, cure-finding people, galvanizers, idea men and women.  But this past year, as the economy has changed and pressures have mounted, as people supply has far outstripped people demand, a new mood has set in—an underlying rancor and shout, an impulsive do-it-now-though-I'll-change-my-mind-later, a you-don't-count-just-listenism that foils honest attempts to get good work done.  It's not like that everywhere, of course, but where it lives, it defeats, it rankles.

Conversation yields results, not confrontation.