Today I have a very important job interview. This is yet another position for a representative to customers. The company is “Manager Solutions”. This experience will give me insight on how the world works, how things actually run, are managed. What management is really. I arrive a little early for my appointment. I will maintain silence this time. The company is in a suite of offices in a large new office building in downtown Greater. There is a sign in the large receptions area that says Manager Solutions, followed by a motto: You have to be The Right Kind of Person!  There are also signs in several places that say No Mistakes!  I announce myself to the young woman ‘Receptions Manager’ at the receptions desk. There are a group of young people seated along a long bench over at the side wall. They are all dressed in a uniform of light colored slacks and short-sleeved dark colored shirts. The Receptions Manager signals and the one on the closest end of the bench quickly stands up, swipes a card into a machine on the wall, and runs over to the desk. He looks at a computer screen and picks up the phone and says “Mr. Willson is here.” After a moment of watching the screen he adds “Please take a seat. It will just be a moment.” Then he hurries back to swipe his card into the machine again and takes a seat again at the far end of the bench. I ask the Receptions Manager if these are Interns for the company. She signals the next young person on the bench, a young woman who also swipes a card and runs over. She takes a paper from a stack and reads “The young people seated in the receptions lobby are volunteers working to gain enough time and experience to qualify to be placed on a waiting list to be interviewed for a non-paying job as an Intern in one of the company departments.” She then quickly returns to swipe her card and take the new open seat at the far end of the bench. The next young person up at the front of the bench is waiting for my next question. The Receptions Manager gives me a look and types into her terminal. No question, instead I quickly go wait in one of the chairs on the other side of the area.
 
After a few minutes, and at the exact moment of my appointment, a well-dressed young man comes out and greets me and introduces himself as the ‘Greetings Manager.’ He has a young intern following him carrying a stack of large printed cards. We go back into the Suites and enter a small conference room. “Please be seated Mr. Willson. Before we start the formal interview solutions process I will give you an overview solution of the company. After that you will have a company philosophy solution, and then a tour of the campus.” The intern hands him one of the large cards. “Here at Manager Solutions we always ‘think management.’ All salaried faculty are managers.” Faculty again here. “And as we insist, ‘managers manage.’ ‘Period.’  We provide top-drawer managers to top-line companies. And in recent years we have also taken on the mission of training first-line supervisors.” The intern hands him another printed card. “And now I will take you to meet our ‘Company Philosophy Orientation Manager’.” We walk out and into another larger conference room that had a large computer screen on the wall. The Orientation Manager greets me. Another intern is seated nearby at a keyboard. “Mr. Willson I see you are tall. Tall men make the best company representatives.” I’m not that tall. I see there are also signs on the wall You Have to be the Right Kind of Person and No Mistakes! A projection appears on the screen entitled “How Manager Solutions selects Managers.”

The screen starts showing the main points. As they appear the Orientation Manager starts reading from more prepared cards. “Typically a company will approach us with a top manager need solution. After we determine the type of and purpose of the company we begin our screening process. First we screen for managers that have had any success in the field, or product, or service of the company.” The points on the screen are continuing to roll. I offer “that is a smart way to begin, so they will already know about the business.” I sense some tension; I am just supposed to listen I think. “Yes” the Orientation Manager continues, “we eliminate these right away.” I am silent for now. “Then we screen for anyone who has had any practical experience at all in that, or in any allied field. Or really in any field at all. And we eliminate them.” The screen continues to roll. “The next step is to screen for any outstanding personal qualities. By this we mean any talent in art or music. Is the person well-read?  Has the person traveled widely? Is there an evident sense of humor?  Is the person humane? Gracious? Capable of reflection? And then we eliminate all these.” And then the screen stops at the last frame and he concludes “And this process solution leaves us with a small cadre of top-drawer manager possibilities. And these go through our special training process solution.” The screen goes blank and the intern opens the door. Another young man enters and introduces himself as the ‘Tour Solutions Manager’. I stand up still silent.
 
“Now Mr. Willson I will show you around campus so that you have some sense of how we train managers and first line supervisors. We believe our first line supervisors also will become good candidates for management at some time.” I follow the Tour Manager and his intern follows us. The intern opens the doors to various classrooms. The classrooms are labeled with the current lesson. The first we come to is labeled “Managers’ Stance and Gaze.” The intern opens the door. The room is empty of furniture; the managers in training are lined up in rows. There is a lecturer at a podium in front. Signs on the wall have such words as “officiousness”, “judgmental”, “disapprovement”, etc. There are also posters of photos of the ideal manager in an officious pose, with a judgmental look, and so on. There are mirrors where some trainees are practicing facial expressions. The lecturer is signaling different poses. A staff member is walking through the rows correcting posture. I see another sign that says “Your lack of knowledge is your strength!” The intern quietly closes the door and we move onto another classroom labeled “Managers’ Vocabulary.” And we look inside there are more signs on the wall “I’m disappointed”, “I’m offended”, “What some of you have forgotten is that the purpose of this company is to (blank).” “This (or ?) has always held you back!” “What are we paying you for here?” The manager trainees are repeating these in unison while maintaining stance and posture. And there is the usual signs saying No Mistakes! And another that says Know the Bad Apples!
 
As the intern quietly closes the door and as we continue I just have to ask about the ‘No Mistakes’ slogan. The Tour Solutions Manager stops and the intern hands him another card. They exchange looks. “That is the whole purpose solution of our manager screening. When you visit a client offering our managers you can guarantee them that they will get a manager that will allow no mistakes. That is why we present managers who have never done anything. Anyone who has ever done anything has made mistakes. Such a person might have some understanding of subordinates who make mistakes. Mistakes are un-solutions to a company’s purpose solution.” I could have stopped here, but no; “if you as a manager have never done anything how would you have the experience needed to direct subordinates to do things in a way that will avoid mistakes?” Another exchange of looks; I sense some growing impatience as the intern hands him another card. “That is the purpose solution of the training you have seen. The manager conducts himself in such a way as to make the subordinates believe he does know all that is going on. Therefore they will make extra effort to do things correctly because they think the manager will know when they do not. That is really how you get people to do the most.” We quickly walk by, but do not look into, another classroom labeled “Posture behind the desk.” And then past another “Know the Bad Apples Advanced Seminar”, with a uniformed security guard at the door. A few more interns have joined us; they are all looking at me with disapproval now.
 
The intern hands the Tour Solutions Manager another card. They are walking a little faster so I have to hurry to keep up. We come to the Supervisors section and look into a “Supervisors Vocabulary” classroom. They are repeating words and phrases like “No Problem,” “Absolutely,” “Sorry about that,” “We talked about this before,” “I don’t like your attitude,” and so on. Signs on the wall say “Learn the stock words and phrases” and “Never let a subordinate finish a sentence!” An intern quietly closes the door; a class is scheduled for later “Tantrum, Shrieking, and Sighing Practice for Men.” Next stop the Tour Solutions Manager brightened up a little as the intern opens a door on to an outside patio. We step out and I see they have those new hover disks. “We have started making all our Supervisor candidates hover solution capable. This allows them to hover ten inches or so above and behind subordinates. And also to move about in silence.” The trainees are nervously learning to operate their hover disks. The Hover Instructor offers that they are getting the bugs out of the system. “When the disks first started being used on the job some bad apples figured out how to use television remote controls to make the hover disks take off suddenly. They crashed against the walls, went through windows. There were injuries.” I am trying not to laugh. No one else is amused at all. The Tour Solutions Manager looks at the intern, who looks at his watch. More interns join us. More looks of disapproval. I see that some large security guards have appeared down the hall in the direction we have been going. One is carrying one of those familiar rods. “Do you have any questions” I am asked as our group is now pushing me back in the opposite direction towards the reception area. And then the Tour Solutions Manager is escorting me out the front of the building. The two security guards are now behind us at the door.

So much for this job but I have another question “how can you explain that sign I saw ‘Your lack of knowledge is your strength’.” He is enjoying this. “Very simply” he answers, as he first looks side to side to be sure no one is listening, “low-information, uncurious people are good at acting like they know more than they do. They have to as part of their nature to get by. They can discuss things they don’t understand, explain matters in a way that obscures. They make excellent managers in my solution.” I angrily ask “how do you explain then how when one of our industries has any competition from a like industry anywhere else in the world, we lose?”  He laughs and replies “that is easily explained; all we have to say is our industries are either not using my solution, or they are not using it thoroughly, or they have not given it enough time.” As I walk away towards my car he adds “you would have been a good representative. You are tall.”
 
I’m still not that tall. He did say ‘his solution?’ He is the manager! The tour was the interview. Wow! The tour guides are the managers. The interview was the tour. I did not stay silent. I did learn a lot today. I think good apples do not ask questions. Stay silent. Big chance that will happen Willson! I am on my way back to Foothill. I need a break after all that! Tomorrow I am going to have a day out at Westside. On the Pier.
 
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(To be Continued)

Thomas McDonald, Arroyo Country, 2014 © 
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