Dear Biz Whiz:
I am the Vice President for Paint, Glue and Industrial Solvents of a Misfortune 500 company. I climbed through the ranks pretty quickly (making it to the top of the human pyramid in high school cheerleading helped), but I've been stalled in this position for almost five minutes, now. I seem to have hit a wall. A dead end. I'm going nowhere. The worst part is, I haven't even begun to approach my level of incompetence. I think I know why this is happening.
I'm not a psychopath.
It's not for lack of trying. I met a perfectly innocuous man on SpotTheFish. His name was George. Okay, George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was a pretty nasty character. But, George on Suburgatory is pretty mild, and he is, I think, more typical of men with the name. I didn't feel great about inviting George to my home for a little dinner and dismemberment, but my career was at stake.
As I was placing the appetizer on the dining room table, George turned his back to me. That was his fatal mistake! Seizing my opportunity, I stabbed him repeatedly with a shrimp fork. Or, that would have been his fatal mistake, if it had been something more dangerous than a shrimp fork that I had stabbed him with. When George finally deforked me and asked me what the hell I was doing, I apologized profusely and told him I had Tourette's.
The next day, I felt so guilty about the lie that I donated $1,000 to the Tourette Syndrome Foundation of Canada.
Have I hit the glass straightjacket?
Corporate Climber with a Conscience
The Biz Whiz: You do know that the phrase "burying the bodies" is just a metaphor, don't you?
Psychopaths come in two flavours. Vanilla psychopaths are charming, ruthless and totally lacking in empathy for the feelings of other people. According to the latest pop economics theory, they make great corporate executives. Heavenly Hash psychopaths, on the other hand, kill people and use their body parts for furniture. According to culture critics, they are most likely to be featured in Alfred Hitchcock movies and Bret Easton Ellis novels.
Your problem seems to be that you are not especially charming or ruthless and you actually care about how other people feel. The good news is that there are cures for this condition. It helps, for instance, to grow up in a wealthy family and go to private schools. If this is not an option for you, you could try a steady diet of vodka and Fox News.
You should know, though, that faking psychopathy is not the same as faking laughing at a boss' jokes or enjoying working with the boss' nephew until he takes over your job. Psychopaths are the basset hounds of the emotionally disturbed set: they can smell weakness a mile away. And, they are experts at exploiting the weak - are you sure you wouldn't be happier working for a non-profit NGO?
Oh, and real psychopaths generally don't appreciate being called psychopaths. In future, you should refer to people with this condition as "differently temperamented." The reason for not wanting to make them angry should be obvious.
Greetings, Biz Whiz:
There's this Vice President for Paint, Glue and Industrial Solvents in my Misfortune 500 company who is trying very hard to take the differently temperamented path to upper management, but he clearly doesn't realize that everybody already in upper management can see that he is trying too hard.
The other day, he came to work with ketchup on his tie and tried to pass it off as blood. Ketchup instead of blood! As if really differently temperamented people wouldn't know the difference! To be honest, we were all kind of embarrassed for him - that's no way to get ahead!
How do you think I should deal with him?
Wannabe Wannabe Destroyer
The Biz Whiz: If you truly are differently temperamented, you know what to do. If you are not differently temperamented, anything I could say would be wasted on you, and I would gain readers among people who are fans of Eli Roth films. Sorry, but they're not my target demographic!
The economy is too important to be left to economists! If you have a work, financial or otherwise money-centric question, quiz the Biz Whiz at questions@lespagesauxfolles.ca. Quiz the Biz Whiz appears every second Tuesday and Friday, every third Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, and seven of the 12 days of Christmas.