I was raised in a family where children were taught that it is bad manners to initiate a conversation with someone who is 1) not a blood relative, or 2) you haven’t known for at least 10 years. To behave otherwise would simply be presumptuous and annoying. Yes, respond if someone seeks your help or advice, but in all other situations, mind your own business, keep your mouth shut and stick to your knitting.
It is to this training that I attribute never having developed a facility for small talk and an impression that people who know me slightly have voiced–that I am aloof. It isn’t true. I will listen to anything you have to say, I will cook you a meal, fix your roof and read your poetry–just don’t expect me to talk. I’m just not that good at it, and I don’t want to bore you. You probably wouldn’t listen, anyway. You’ll get the best of what I have to say by reading what I write. Enough said.
But I admire people who can talk. In fact, I’m drawn in by it. I consider anyone who can sustain more than three minutes of conversation with me to be a hero and a committed friend. This soft spot has led to my undoing more than once.
Perhaps the most painful instance that comes to mind occurred many years ago when I was editor-in-chief of a large-circulation, consumer-facing home-improvement magazine. When I got that magazine it was kind of a mess, but after a year or so I had successfully repositioned it and gotten the staff to meet their deadlines. Bottom-line results were improving. It was time for me to stop running the day-to-day and spend more time thinking ahead–travel with the ad sales staff, hob-nob with the corporate executive committee, dream up franchise extensions and the like. I needed a No. 2
A guy I knew called me. I didn’t actually know him very well. He’d inherited a senior technical editor’s position I’d once held with a shelter book–a job that I’d lost when the magazine’s West Coast-based owner abruptly decided to move the New York City editorial operations closer to home and replace the entire staff with Californians.
At any rate, I had met the guy from time to time at trade shows. He was very friendly, a prodigious talker. Of course, I was aloof. I read his stuff routinely in the due course of my competitive reconnaissance–not bad. So when he called me to ask if I needed an executive editor, I was open to the idea. He was eager to move east to fulfill a promise to his wife, who wanted to be closer to her family in Connecticut.
When No. 2 came on board in New York he became my new best friend. The guy spent two or three hours a day in my office yakking. He confided in me that he felt a little ill at ease now that he’d come east because he didn’t have a network. He seemed genuinely interested in me and my problems, and I came to like and trust him. He came to work early, he was good with the copy, and when he wasn’t in my office yakking, I had time to do some of the things I needed to do. I no longer had to work nights and weekends.
A year or so into this arrangement, I began to notice that No. 2 wasn’t in his own office when I came in early in the morning–but way down the hall yakking with our colleague the publisher. I didn’t think much of it–better him than me. The publisher was one of those guys who’d been an important football player at an unimportant college. Made it to the top of our little enterprise on the strength of his competitiveness. He was a bully.
I wondered what No. 2 and the publisher had to say to each other. But I knew that my friend would happily talk the hind leg off a donkey, and I figured that he was just trying to build his network. In any case, it was none of my beeswax.
In the meantime, in an effort to extend the magazine’s franchise and begin getting a foothold in new media landscape, I dreamed up a concept for a home-improvement TV show that could comfortably wear the magazine’s brand. It was based on the TV news magazine format, with short, punchy segments on new products and gadgets, design ideas, stylish furnishings and whatever else might pass for news in the home-improvement space.
I wrote a pilot and shopped it around in hope of finding a TV production partner. I had help from the new corporate new media director, but I argued with the publisher about the venture. Yes, he needed TV spots to dangle in front of his print ad clients, who were unimpressed by the magazine’s middle-aged, middle-income male demographics. But create something original? Too expensive. Why not hook up with one of those Bob Vila wannabes, one of those good old boy remodeling contractors who’d put together TV shows that were being distributed in minor markets? Just slap our title on their show. It’d be a win-win. I was pretty sure that such a move wouldn’t address the fundamental business problem.
Other projects were on the burner, too. Find a new title for the magazine. The current title, which just a few years prior had been derived from an even earlier, iconic title, was thought not to be female-friendly. Yes, we needed to shift the demographics, but I’d always been told that if you change your title, you alienate your loyal audience and destroy the institution. I worked on the project, but without much clarity or enthusiasm.
And then there was the order from above to contribute to the corporate downsizing plan. I was pretty much told who from my staff I was to fire–including my 70-year-old administrative assistant who had the same birthday as my mother and who had worked at the magazine for 30 years. Natalie was the only real link to the magazine’s iconic past.
No. 2 kept up his daily chat sessions with me, but he wasn’t much help on my main issues. About a month before the downsizing deal was to go down, I got word that responsibilities at the top of the magazine division were being shifted. I had reported to Jim, a 60-ish group publisher, a consummate ad sales type–handsome, smooth, an impeccable dresser, legendary for his golf outings and his Detroit connections. Now it was to be Pat, an MBA from a good school, legendary–in the company, at least–for her impulsiveness and having mishandled a number of earlier assignments.
In the month leading to D-for-Downsizing Day, Pat arranged no meetings between us–except for one. Having been raised not to speak until being spoken to, I did not approach her. The subject of the meeting that did take place on the day before D-Day was, Pat informed me, that my job “had been eliminated.” It was, no doubt, some kind of legalistic circumlocution designed to protect against an age-discrimination suit or other litigation, for indeed, they had not eliminated the editor-in-chief’s position. But firm in my belief that people are responsible for their own motivations, I didn’t ask for any further explanation.
I did not hear a word from No. 2–who, of course, had in the aftermath become No. 1–for six months. This man who had spent 10 hours a week in my office chatting. My friend whom I had helped to fulfill a promise to his wife, my friend whom I thought really liked me, whom I’d been too polite to interrupt so I could get down to business. Didn’t matter. Now I knew what he and the publisher had been talking about.
Sometime later I ran into Brutus at a trade show. The faltering title we’d both edited had been bought and folded by a competitor. The name change, the TV show-cum-wannabe, the firing of secretaries had all failed to save the magazine. He was again No. 2 behind an incumbent. But, he said, management was telling him that he’d one day take over as editor-in-chief. I wonder who initiated that conversation?
I guess he saw the look in my eyes. He asked, as if seeking affirmation, “You’re competitive, aren’t you?”
“Well, yes,” I said, “but not in that way.”
–Writes-A-Roni, Publishing, Self-employed Professional, 50-something