House of Cards

    The new guy fired everybody. He swirled in, looked around, and fired them all because he thought, no he knew that he was smarter than everybody, especially the people entrenched, (one of his favorite words, entrench), the people entrenched in their bureaucratic cubicles, doing what they did the way they had always done it, following the law, without . . . without . . . without what? Without considering how the smartest man in the world would do it?

    "I'm smart," he explained, more than once. "I'm smart and, from now on, we will be the greatest . . . " The predicate of the statement never mattered. It was the seductive assurance, the outrageous proclamations, statements that sounded like promises, guarantees if you didn't look too closely, statements that encouraged, even reassured, many of us.

    Oh, there was muttering at the water cooler, even a bit of laughter, muffled laughter--what's going to happen if he does what he says, takes over every business on the block, in the neighborhood, on the other side of town, in the next state? Then what?

    Well, the new people weren't worried. They put on their jackets, their matching outfits, sat at the desks, shuffled the papers, turned up the sound, and proceeded to do whatever could catch his attention. It was a blitz he bragged, a purge. Singlehandedly, he was making the company powerful again, great again, the greatest.

    Yes, it was a seductive swirl of action. The company rose and fell, rose and fell, until the last bold assault, aided, he had bragged by AI, AI who was never hampered by stale protocols, practices, guidelines, or laws.

    "It's the wild, wild west," one complainer said, a complainer who was quickly eliminated and, thus missed the satisfaction of watching it from the inside, the whole tower of cards slide, fold, crumple, then collapse--a collapse, well, yes, a collapse, but, as he pointed out, it was the greatest collapse ever.