The Teflon Man

The Teflon Man is walking around today with his legal pad, quick stepping, yet relaxed, hands in pockets and eyes disaffected.  I know well this affect:  He is proud of himself today.  He is like a cock pruning himself before the open door of the barnyard.  Upper management must be on the meeting schedule; he feels like a winner.  The Teflon Man is a fascinating corporate creature, and I’m sure I cannot do him justice.  Yet, allow me to share the following observations:

Distinctively middle-management, the Teflon Man survives by his wits and his allegiances.  His problem is that he is under-educated.  He is an associates degree amid the MBA’s of the meaningful people, and of this he is painfully aware.  His primary defense mechanism is an office-legendary knack for jargon.  A meeting with the Teflon Man is an immersion in business acronym.  The subject is stunned, feeling unaware of the conversation, knocked off balance, providing the Teflon Man a powerful advantage.  Those close to the Teflon Man are usually in the know about this or that catchword, and by such gnostic knowledge he maintains a tight circle of favorites communicating in three-letter grunts and clicks.  Jargon is a powerful wall and he knows how to use it.  In the eyes of the big fish, this ability gives him access to meetings he wouldn’t normally be in, and grants his opinions a weight that they may not ordinarily have had.  Consequently, he has, over the last five years, constructed a web of allegiances in key places throughout the entire company.  In short, he is untouchable.

Also, one has to admire the Teflon Man’s skillful manipulation of that most important form of office currency: the personal anecdote.  See, the basic attitude taken by American business is that people are resources akin to electricity or a power plant.  If the business was fire, some of us would daily be carted off to the incinerator.  Business prefers its resources be easily stored and transported, but people are annoyingly difficult.  They have personal wills and this irritating need for meaning.  It would be best if those who are going off to die remain serial numbers rather than human beings.  It is easier to think of people as collections of marketable skills or label them according to their allegiance to the ideals of the firm (as betokened by little things like elemental tardiness or an arbitrarily discerned but too large percentage of sick days taken, things which don’t apply to those who matter.)  Personal anecdotes dispel this.  Sharing personal anecdotes says, “I am not a resource!” It is political speech of the highest order in cube-ville.  Teflon Man is a master.

Amazingly tight-lipped, the Teflon Man simply does not talk about his family life save where a tale is needed to extend or confirm personal power.  He uses an anecdote to form a buddy-chain with a big fish in a meeting.  He uses an anecdote to advertise his position as a living person, as one who matters.  He uses an anecdote to communicate his willingness to be “one of you little people.”  Oh yes, this is especially true in that silly, adolescent exercise called: the personal review.

Now, I worked for the Teflon Man for years, and found him to be a good boss simply because his ambitions kept him out of mine.  No one would call him a good manager.  He is no good for the furtherance of others; mentoring is out of the question (though the Teflon Man enjoys considering himself a mentor.)  A personal review by the Teflon Man is a nightmare, simply because he hates doing it.  Therefore, one expects that criticism will predominate simply because it must and not because he actually has anything of substance to say about an actual job.  What he most desires is your invisibility and his visibility to all those who actually matter in the workplace.  So, the way he uses the personal anecdote in a personal review is extraordinary.  Always just enough to qualify as an anecdote and no-more (not an actually sharing of life but a revealing of himself as one who matters), he smiles glassily and first asks you to share one.  It is like having one of the popular kids offer to share a smoke with you.  “Tell you what,” it says, “I’ll give you the privilege of acting like I care while you tell a personal anecdote.”  Not expecting this (honor?) you sort of muddle something, and -- this is where the mastery comes in -- then he shares one of his own. It isn’t like brotherhood.  No, that shared smoke is actually a way of communicating whose in and whose out on campus.  What he’s actually saying by doing this is that he is the one who matters and you do not.  The Teflon Man is a fascinating corporate creature, and I’m sure I cannot do him justice.