Just In Case You’re Wondering What Happened to Corporate America
People might want to lock up their bell towers right about now.
According to Kara Spak at the Sun Times, prospective students at De Paul University no longer need take the ACT or SAT. Instead they can answer questions like these;
1. Describe your short- and long-term goals and how you plan to accomplish them.
2. Describe a personal challenge you have faced, or a situation that you found to be particularly difficult. How did you react and what conclusions did you draw from the experience? Were you or others treated unfairly? Were you able to turn to others for support?
3. Discuss how involved you have been with your community through volunteer, neighborhood, place of worship, or other activities. Describe why community is or is not important to you. Give examples of playing a leadership role in your school or community.
4. Think about the interests you have pursued outside of your high school classes (e.g. independently or through a student organization, part-time work, sports, playing a musical instrument, volunteering, independent study, etc.) Describe any knowledge or mastery of skills you have gained as a result.
Seriously? I could have gotten through this stuff blind drunk while intimately occupied by a female of the opposite sex. College is supposed to be where kids go for ADVANCED learning, not New Age group speak. Not keeping score in soccer when your kid is 4 makes some sense. Not keeping score for future leaders of America breeds losers.
Of course, knowing now that a college degree is the equivalent of having seen an episode of Oprah, the following makes sense. Domino’s Pizza is opening a franchise on the moon.
Domino’s Japanese arm has proposed a branch on Earth’s nearest galactic neighbour is the latest escalation in a pizza publicity war.
Rival chain Pizza Hut set the bar high in 2001 by delivering a pizza to astronauts orbiting the Earth in the International Space Station, but Domino’s fought back last year in a series of events to mark the 25th anniversary of its arrival in Japan.
In December, the company paid one person Y2.5 million (£20,046) to work for one hour delivering pizzas.
The competition has been taken beyond the stratosphere now, however, with construction firm Maeda Corp coming up with a plan for a dome-shaped concrete Domino’s restaurant on the surface of the moon.
The company estimates the entire project will cost Y1.67 trillion – some £13.4 billion – of which Y560 billion (£4.5 billion) will be required to transport 70 tons of construction materials and pizza-making equipment to the moon aboard 15 rockets.
Keen to make the most of local resources, Domino’s said it will keep costs down by using mineral deposits on the moon to make the concrete, which is likely to cost around Y194 billion (£1.5 billion).
An artist’s impression of the restaurant anticipates a two-storey dome with a diameter of around 26 metres and a basement level constructed of steel plating and an area to prepare pizzas. Staff would be required to live on the premises.
“We started thinking about this project last year, although we have not yet determined when the restaurant might open,” Tomohide Matsunaga, a spokesman for Domino’s, told The Daily Telegraph. The company also expects to be able to offer delivery services.
“In the future, we anticipate there will be many people living on the moon, astronauts who are working there and, in the future, citizens of the moon,” he said.
Oh yeah, this is a great idea. I saw a Domino’s delivery driver yesterday run over a cat, freak out and then reverse into a light pole. The cat’s fine, the pole is not. But, seriously, these are the people we want manning 15 rocket ships full of enough explosive fuel to wipe out a major city? Who the heck thought this was a good idea?
Oh, never mind. I have an answer to that. Nick Collins of the Telegraph UK reports that 1 in 25 CEOs are psychopaths.
Yep, that explains everything.
Psychopaths are defined by their lack of moral instincts, but many are able to hide this by a natural ability to charm and manipulate both their seniors and subordinates.
While some psychopaths are outwardly aggressive and destructive, factors like a happy upbringing can help others to mimic colleagues and fit in at work.
The capacity of the ‘successful psychopath’ to identify and outwardly display the qualities corporate leaders admire helps them climb the career ladder quickly despite being poor managers.
This makes it virtually impossible to tell the difference between a psychopath and a genuinely good boss, leading psychologists said in a BBC Horizon programme to be screened on Wednesday.
Paul Babiak, a New York psychologist, said: “Psychopaths really aren’t the kind of person you think they are … you could be living with or married to one for 20 years or more and not know that person is a psychopath.
“Part of the problem is that the very things we’re looking for in our leaders, the psychopath can easily mimic.
“Their natural tendency is to be charming. Take that charm and couch it in the right business language and it sounds like charismatic leadership”.
Prof Bob Hare of the University of British Columbia in Canada said as many as one in 100 Americans have some psychopathic characteristics.
He added: “A psychopath can actually put themselves in your skin, intellectually not emotionally.
“What this allows them to do is use words to manipulate and con and to interact with you without the baggage of feeling your pain.”
Oh course, their manipulations are made easier when all the college graduates they get to work for them have the skill level of a tree.
So there you have it, if you have the intellect of a rock, and the willingness to eat pizza on the moon, you can be a CEO. Me? I wondering if I can get a gig at a web site in India.
Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!
