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from: Benjamin Cheever

Free Lattes

Posted Wednesday, Nov. 11, 1998, at 10:28 AM ET

How come I don't get a free Lattes for deleting my email? When I worked as an editor at the Reader's Digest, lunch used to cost 25 cents. If there was a heavy snow and you came to work anyway, lunch was free. We didn't have email. Or lattes.

The Digest's masterpieces are going to be auctioned off next week at Sotheby's. They used to be in the halls. Digest founder DeWitt Wallace had that great Chagall in his office, the one with the lovers floating above the town. We were supposed to call him Wally, but nobody ever dared. Mr. Wallace, that's what we called him.

By the time I got to the company in the mid-70s, Wallace had stopped caring terribly about making money. He did still care about treating people well. He'd had a good idea. He had good people. He made a gazillion dollars. When he died, the business types took over. "No more Mr. Nice Guy," they said. "We need to make a profit." Cafeteria food went up in price and down in quality. Free bus service was cancelled. "Unnecessary Workers" were fired.

Surprise! Surprise! They earned less. By going public, they made it look as if they'd made money, but all they'd done, really was discover what DeWitt Wallace had under his mattress.

I have a passage in my new book I'm proud of. I have an editor say that the great secret about the new breed of American businessman is that he's not always good at business. We know he's interested in short-term profits. We know he's ruthless. We know he is unfamiliar with his product and extravagant in his lifestyle. What we haven't figured out yet, is that often he's no good at business either.

The media are quite tough on politicians. Give them a Justice Department source, and they can be tough on businessmen as well. About businessmen at large, they are credulous in the extreme. It's too much work to check out the lies told by most corporations. When the Digest took its index off the cover, which was a desperate move, the new editor came on the Today Show to boast about it, and Matt Lauer went on and on about the Digest's success. Didn't anybody at NBC run NEXUS? Reports of financial illness were widespread. Not even the money folks liked the company anymore. Investors had put Digest management in the hall of shame.

The Wallaces used to give out gifts for length of service. I got the Mark Cross pen & pencil set with Digest logo on clip. They had length of service parties. After both Wallaces had died, the new chairman hosted a length of service party in which a man who had been on board for 40 years was recognized because once, during a blizzard, he was the only one in his department to get to work. Two weeks later the man was fired.

I dream of a length-of-service picnic, to which the chairman is invited. Everybody at the picnic takes a different body part home in his or her basket. Justice! If a kid who holds up the 7-11 with a water pistol can spend a year on Riker's Island, then what about a man who gives himself $50 million dollars, while firing thousands of people, many of whom were doing their job well, and all of whom were doing their jobs more competently than he did his own? I run ex-Digesteers all the time, driving limousines, selling cars, seeking to repair busted lives.

I suspect there will always be a lot of sentimentality about kind leaders, but why must we assume that the meanest guy is always the best for the job? And also, that successful men are cruel?

the breakfast table
entries
123456789101112131415161718192021
from: Benjamin Cheever

Free Lattes

Posted Wednesday, Nov. 11, 1998, at 10:28 AM ET
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Benjamin Cheever is a novelist and author of the forthcoming Famous After Death. Susan Cheever is a teacher, columnist, and writer. Her memoir, Note Found in a Bottle: My Life as a Drinker, is forthcoming. They are siblings.
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