CEO Shooter
A fictional short-short story
I felt such pressure to succeed — from my parents, from society, and from the college club I got active in: Badass Business Babes. Its alumni got me interviews at places that had ghosted me when I just applied, and that’s how I got into a management training program at Global Trading, Inc.
I was often tempted to quit: the scutwork, the “expected” 50-hour work week that really demanded 60+, and when I got raises, barely half showed up in my after-tax paycheck.
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Fast forward 15 years, including an expensive, not that practical MBA, and I became CEO. My exhilaration was quickly replaced by feeling marionetted. The board screamed, “How come we’re barely making a profit?” while the union screamed for raises and made it yet harder to replace marginal employees. Even more stressful, the union often threatened to sue because of some alleged, almost always bogus, grievance.
But what put me over the edge was when my very worst employee — and this was completely bogus — accused me of racial discrimination. Why? Because I rarely called on him in meetings or put him on important projects? I was shocked, and not just because I’m a minority woman — Korean. I rarely called on him or put him on important projects because his work is near-idiotic and he’s lazy. Yet because, bogus or not, he was ever threatening to get the union to sue, I felt I couldn’t fire him without risking a heart attack in defending myself.
So today, just before our open board meeting — and I’ll admit that, for the first time in my life, I did something crazy — I went down to the warehouse, pulled out a realistic-looking toy Uzi, hid it under my jacket, and proceeded to the meeting. I waited for the right moment. As an agitator was yelling for yet more DEI, more green, more supply-chain monitoring, right from the dais, I pulled out the toy Uzi, pointed it at him, then at the most unreasonable board member, and then at that so-incompetent ever-threatening employee. Everyone gasped, I dropped the “Uzi,” whereupon everyone heard it was plastic and thus a toy, I said, “Bye,” and I strutted out.
I read this aloud on YouTube.
Marty Nemko is a career and personal coach, and author of 36 books including the just-published Favorites: his best articles and short-short stories. You can reach him at mnemko@gmail.com
