Sunday, November 04, 2007
Bear Necessities, Cayne it!:A salutary lesson in workplace presenteeism
"Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy"
The Wall Street Journal is a pretty run of the mill paper.Editorials tend to be good.The quality of the rest of the journalism is quotidian the rest of the time.So there I was reading this weekend's European edition.There's an article on page 12 & 13 on the great and the good-how the top dogs spent the summer of 2007, but mainly focusing on James Cayne's behaviour.
The writer, Kate Kelly reproves Mr Cayne's behaviour,apparently "James Cayne hit golf links,bridge tournaments amid summer turmoil",and shock horror "In the critical month of July,he spent 10 of the 21 work-days out of the office,either at ..(a).. Bridge event or golfing".
Worse still the cardinal sin of a puritan and largely stupid work ethic,"In summer weeks,he typically left the office on Thursday afternoon and spent Friday at his New Jersey golf club"..and -oh my god-"out of touch".Burn him.It does sound like he's definitely in league with the Devil.
God forbid the poor man should have outside interests and put his leisure time ahead of 'work' interests.The writer goes on the compare and contrast this with Lloyd Blankfein who "cancelled plans to spend to spend the last two weeks of August at his Beach house,missing a chance to spend time with his sons before they headed to college.Through the summer's market gyrations,Mr Blankfein frequently visited Goldman mortgage desks."Yes his family must be really pleased with him.I think we are all supposed to admire Mr Blankfein.Instead he ends up sounding like a work obsessed,boring,lonely,control freak,micro manager,with literally no life outside work.A similarly Stakhanovite picture is painted of other wall street managers,like Chuck Prince of Citigroup.
Lets put it another way,I bet Stan O'Neal and his cronies were in the office all summer long.All he managed to do was get fired and tank the company.Later today the Citi Board will be sacking Mr Prince. NICE.
The Wall Street Journal is a pretty run of the mill paper.Editorials tend to be good.The quality of the rest of the journalism is quotidian the rest of the time.So there I was reading this weekend's European edition.There's an article on page 12 & 13 on the great and the good-how the top dogs spent the summer of 2007, but mainly focusing on James Cayne's behaviour.
The writer, Kate Kelly reproves Mr Cayne's behaviour,apparently "James Cayne hit golf links,bridge tournaments amid summer turmoil",and shock horror "In the critical month of July,he spent 10 of the 21 work-days out of the office,either at ..(a).. Bridge event or golfing".
Worse still the cardinal sin of a puritan and largely stupid work ethic,"In summer weeks,he typically left the office on Thursday afternoon and spent Friday at his New Jersey golf club"..and -oh my god-"out of touch".Burn him.It does sound like he's definitely in league with the Devil.
God forbid the poor man should have outside interests and put his leisure time ahead of 'work' interests.The writer goes on the compare and contrast this with Lloyd Blankfein who "cancelled plans to spend to spend the last two weeks of August at his Beach house,missing a chance to spend time with his sons before they headed to college.Through the summer's market gyrations,Mr Blankfein frequently visited Goldman mortgage desks."Yes his family must be really pleased with him.I think we are all supposed to admire Mr Blankfein.Instead he ends up sounding like a work obsessed,boring,lonely,control freak,micro manager,with literally no life outside work.A similarly Stakhanovite picture is painted of other wall street managers,like Chuck Prince of Citigroup.
Lets put it another way,I bet Stan O'Neal and his cronies were in the office all summer long.All he managed to do was get fired and tank the company.Later today the Citi Board will be sacking Mr Prince. NICE.
RB
