The Beast's Management Philosophies

Years ago, when I finally assumed my long-anticipated position in company management, I noticed that there were several inherent bad habits I had to resist whenever it came time to managing my staff.

(Note: "Years ago" is a more important sounding way of saying "two years.")

I say inherent, because I had not gained these behaviors from years of managing people using flawed methods, there just seemed to be instinctual things which kept springing to mind--things I had to be sure not to do.

It did not take too much self-reflection to realize that I was subconsciously drawing from the infamous management style of The Beast.

In my youth, whenever we were expecting company or preparing to leave on vacation, The Beast would decide that the house had to be rendered immaculately clean. Perhaps this desire is common to many mothers, but The Beast was unique. She had a conception of clean that was much akin to the unattainable concept of beauty created by cosmetic companies.

As a result, on countless Saturday mornings, Jake and I scoured the house with disinfectants and toothbrushes, vacuums and mops.

The Beast's primary duty amidst this massive outpouring of manual labor was to roam from room to room wearing curlers, a sneer and no makeup--all while complaining about how the linoleum in the guest bathroom needed more toothbrushing, or how the insides of the light fixtures needed to be re-polished.

Since we did not have any coca leaves to chew, we resorted to listening to cassettes on devices resembling microwave ovens with belt clips.

The Beast felt that these new-fangled inventions distracted us from our work, however. "How on earth," she reasoned, "can you expect to get all the dust out of that carpet with those tweezers when you're listening to some crappy band?"

Around the halfway point of the protracted cleaning process she would begin offering us incentives. "It looks like you're almost done cleaning those baseboards with a cotton ball," she would keenly observe. "Well, as soon as you're done here, you can dust off, go outside, and start trimming the grass to a height of exactly 3.45 inches. Don't give me that look, you should feel lucky--your brother's downstairs polishing the floor with his face."

Typically, when all of the tasks were completed, she would change out of the pajamas she woke up in, and put on a fresh pair before heading downstairs to watch a handful of Law & Order reruns before falling asleep on the couch.

Still, to this day, whenever the office is faced with a particularly stressful project, my employees are left to wonder why I start talking about the need to mop the conference room while I storm around the office with my wife's CHI Turbo and a pair of slippers.