Spotlight on the News

Tuesday’s NY Times Business section carried an article on how to travel with your boss, a mostly common sense review of proper behavior while spending time with one’s superior (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/business/22boss.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=lewis%20liu&st=Search). I was particularly drawn to the following sentence because of an incident that happened at my former company some 25 years ago: “Mr. Tulgan said employees should err, in general, on the side of decorous behavior and conservative dress and should pay close attention to the cues from their boss.”

As an offshoot to my publication, we had launched a separate apparel magazine, staffed with its own publisher, editorial and sales teams. The publisher traveled to Los Angeles to make calls with his new resident salesman. They planned to visit Ocean Pacific the first day. OP was an emerging brand at the time.

Carl, the publisher, showed up at our LA office in our standard corporate uniform, meaning a suit. Not even a sports jacket and slacks was acceptable back then. His salesman, on the other hand, came dressed in a T-shirt, cutoff shorts and flip-flops. The contrast could not have been greater. The salesman explained that when they would arrive at Ocean Pacific Carl would see that casual was the norm, that Carl would be the one whose dress would stand out from the crowd.

Sure enough, the salesman was correct. The next day Carl fired him. He had been guilty of either failing to properly uphold our corporate profile on a business call, or failing to properly communicate in advance the appropriate dress code to Carl for the OP call. Either way, he was history, one of the shortest-tenured salespeople in our company’s history.


Back in the News: Allianz is back in the news and back in my crosshair sights.

A survey reported in USA Today of 3,257 adults ages 44-75 revealed 61% feared outliving their money compared to just 39% who feared dying.

I have no reason to challenge the findings (brought to my attention by Monday’s Colbert Report), but am bemused it was Allianz that funded the survey. Allianz, you might recall, is a German financial services company whose U.S. holdings include Fireman’s Fund. But to me the Allianz legacy is its history as the company that insured Auschwitz and other concentration camps along with Nazi factories that used slave labor during WWII. For many years after the war Allianz also tried to avoid paying claims to Jewish survivors or their next of kin.

How ironic the two choices mentioned in the survey—dying and outliving their money—fit so neatly into Allianz’s past.

For those not familiar with my personal history with Allianz, here’s a link to an old blog entry: http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2010/01/chain-of-one-person-events.html


Union Dues: Several readers questioned what they perceived as my blind support of labor unions the other day. So let me clarify: Public service unions have secured for their members salaries and benefits that have contributed to the financial distress of many states. I believe compromise, in other words, give backs, are in order.

But unions must be permitted to retain their right to collective bargaining. That way all members of the union will give back the same amount or percentage in pension and health insurance benefits. And the unions will be able to provide other protections, as well.

Let's not blame unions for asking for the moon—that's their job, to represent workers and get the best deal. Like pro athletes, unions shouldn't be blamed if management or politicians gave them what they asked for, even if long term it was not in everyone's best interests.