Sometimes I think about what it would be like if I had my own fortune 500 company. I don't mean "my own" in the sense of being employed by a fortune 500 company of course, but in the subtler sense of owning and commanding one. It would work like this: I would be the CEO and Head Dude, and everybody else would be my employees and do what I said. I like this arrangement because 1) I would be able to take as many business trips to Hawaii as I wanted, and 2) I would be able to have a plate of mints on my desk.

I know what you're thinking: you're thinking, "Hey! Anybody can have a plate of mints at their desk! My secretary's five-year old brother even has his own plate of mints!"

I won't deny this. But my plate of mints would be different. I would have a robot installed in the desk directly below the mints, so that when someone reached for a mint, the robot would pop out and say, "Let me take your coat!" and take your coat. If you weren't wearing a coat, it would take your shirt. It would then disappear into it's hole with the shirt. This would all be part of my Budget Reduction Program, in which I deterred people from asking for raises. And everybody would have to go through me to get a raise, because I would be the Head Dude, remember?

I would be further protectied from possible intrusion by my secretary, a llama. If you've ever seen a llama, you know they wear an extremely inscrutible look, a llook that (if is means anything), means: keep your distance or I'll spit in your eye. My llama would not only screen visitors, but also screen callers. "Hello. Sullivan's office. Llama here. Hang up or I'll spit on the phone."

Suppose one of my floor supervisors walked in to my office intending on asking for a raise. If he got past the secretary, he would come into my office rubbing his eye with his hand. He would smile at me and say something like, "That's quite a secretary you have, Sullivan!" while reaching for a mint with his free hand. Schloop fffthp pop and he would be standing there in pants and tie.

"Yes, quite a secretary. I wish she would tell me her name, but it's all I can do just to slip past her in the mornings!", I chuckle. "Do have another mint."

"Eh, no thanks. Actually, I came in here to ask you something..."

"There's a good employee for you! I bet you want to take that nasty three month Calcutta assignment. I knew you were made of the right stuff when I hired you. 'Don't take him', they said. 'He'll always be after you for a raise. He'll pump you for money so often that you'll have to make a new department just to handle the demands.' But I told them. 'No sir', I said. 'I know a good employee when I see one.' Reminds me of your predecessor, it does. He was always looking for a handout. An ugly situation."

"Uh, thanks for the assignment, Sir."

"Don't mention it."

The other reason that I would like to be CEO is that I would be able to wear whatever I liked. Have you ever thought about this? Sure, in your typical job you have some selection: "Should I wear the blue tie or the grey tie with my slacks and button-down shirt?" Or, if you're a mechanic: "I just can't decide between the red shirt with oil stains and the white shirt with oil stains. No, I think I'll try the red one. It would go well with my jeans, don't you think?"

This isn't the type of selection I'm talking about. When I mean selection, I mean arriving for a day at the office in a boa constrictor turban and long flannel underwear. "Good morning, sir! Attractive turban! Did it come with the flanels, or did you have to get them seperately?"

No matter what you decided to wear on a particular day, you could count on being complimented on it. Behind your back, of course, they would laugh and say that you were eccentric for wearing a boa constrictor on your head. But at least they would be right.

If you eventually got tired of coming to work in strange clothes, there would always be other ways of amusing yourself. One of my favorite ideas about having my own large large company is that I would create my own in-company Secret Service. This is because, in every large company, there are always a handful of people who are not only unneccesary but lazy. The SS would root these people out and get rid of them. You would call him Vlad.

Naturally, you'd have to get just the right sort of person to work SS. His main attributes would be the ability to smile blandly and the ability to sneak to within two inches of your back without you noticing. He would also have to know something about llamas.

Imagine this scenario: you're an employee sitting in your cubicle, working at your computer, when suddenly you feel a compelling urge to look up yesterday's football scores and see how well the Rams did. You glance around before bringing up the web browser. Click...click...click goes the mouse. Thirty seconds tick past. The web page is taking forever to load. Click, click. You breathe a sigh of relief. The Rams won! Suddenly, your joy turns to terror as you feel a soft breath on the back of your neck. All the hair on your back stands straight out. You turn around....and there he is.

"The Rams is doing OK?", asks Vlad, smiling blandly. "I worry much times about Rams. I think, 'Oh, I hope Rams is doing good.' Do you worry about Rams, too, comrade?"

"Uh, yeah..."

"But not too much?"

"Nyet. I mean, no. I mean, I try not to worry too much about them."

"That is good", says Vlad. "Jim, he worry too much about Green Bay Packers. But he is OK now. I say, 'Comrade Jim, I think you need more time to worry about Packer.' Now Wally work in Jim's cubicle, eh?"

"I guess so. I was wondering what happened to Jim."

"Good. I leave you now, but maybe next time you come with me."

"Thanks, Vlad."

Vlad would disappear to work on his bugging equipment, which I would buy him. How can you have a decent SS department without proper tools?

Eventually Vlad would show up in my office, rubbing his eye and looking warily at my plate of mints. "Ha! Vlad", I would say. "How goes it? I thought you said you knew llamas like the back of your hand."

"Yeah, only this llama is weird. All I did was ask her name."

"She hates to have people ask her name. How goes the SS business? Want a mint?"

"No mint. I cought Simmons reading football scores. Gave him a good scare, I think, but I'll bet you two dollars he's back at it within a week. Ha! I came within half a centemeter of the back of his head, he was so intent on what he was doing. You should have seen him whip around, though -- nearly knocked my fur cap off. I think we'll have to get rid of him. The usual method?"

"The usual method. I'll call accounting an let them know he's coming."

"Alright. Man, this is a tough life. I'm almost out of straitjackets, you know. This has got to be the laziest, most worthless shotty organization I've ever worked for, and let me tell you, I've worked for plenty of them. Why, "Machine Gun" Ed ran a better show than this, Sullivan. And he didn't make me go around wearing a fur cap and boots so tall you can barely sit down. And nobody called me Vlad, not if they knew what was good for them, no they didn't."

"Stop grumbling, Vlad. You had your choice of names when you signed on, and you said Karl didn't suit you. So you chose Vlad, and if you don't like it, that's tough because you're going to have to lump it."

Before you start to think that I'm too harsh on Simmons for looking at the football page, let me explain that he would be treated very humanely by accounting when he got there. He would probably be employed filling out tax forms. Eventually, they might even let him run small errands, all part of my Comprehensive Employee Rehab program to make him a better citizen and employee.

One of the other areas that I would make major improvements in would be business meetings. Eveyone - except customers, of course - would be required to bring a laptop, pager, and high-power squirt gun. The pagers would all be wired into my central paging system, controlled by me personally via remote control. This way I could try and keep meetings from getting out of hand, because you know how easily that can happen. All you need is to have someone with more mouth than brain get the floor, and you would normally be stuck for the next half hour. This type of person has a vocabulary consisting mainly of half a dozen words that he uses instead of thought. Words like comprehensive, technologically, performance, cohesive, and compliance. These are used over and over in a manner that implies significance, but without really meaning anything:

ENGINEER: What do you want?

UPPER MANAGEMENT NEGOTIATOR: Our company's business plan provides for a comprehensive metastructure, a cohesively comprised network of technologically compliant industry experts. This is why we feel the need for a product that would not only improve our vertical appeal, but display that articulated juncture of scientific application analysis and base line symbiosis that we feel to be essential to the market today. Now, the product that is currently under inspection meets some of these needs, but we feel that further dialogue is necessary to ascertain whether full compliance is only desireable, but not in objective proximity, or one of the attributes that has strong negative and non-disposable properties. This is why I called this meeting.

ENGINEER: Look, I go home in fifteen minutes. Do you want something changed, or not? Please tell me.

U.M.N.: I'm glad that the point has been raised. Naturally, it's probably premature to tell within the attributable time period, per se, but some issues may be appraised....

You see my point. This sort of thing would could go on practically forever in most situations. But not under my plan! If someone started up his talker and left it unattended, all I would have to do is push a button. Instantly, all of my employees' pagers would go off simultaneously! As soon as the talker closed his mouth to look at his belt, two pro wrestler types would stride into the room, grab him by the elbows, and heave him out the door.

Occasionally, however, you get someone who is so good at talking that he falls asleep while doing it and wouldn't notice if his cell phone exploded, much less if his pager went off. This is where the high-power squirt guns would come into play. If the talker continued on even after everyone's pagers went off, all of my employees would draw their squirt guns and begin pumping them up. At the count of ten, he would get a mouthful of water. Then my wrestlers would take care of him.

The only possible trouble that I forsee would be if OSHA started butting in. They would probably do something drastic like force me to supply everyone with ergonomic toothpicks and put waist-height Pepsi machines in the cafeteria so nobody would have to bend over to get a pop. This would probably spoil everyone so much that I would get beseiged with requests for wristpads and free healthcare. This is troubling, of course, but I would be able to deal with it without too much bother. I would just put Vlad in charge of the employee-concerns department. And get him his own llama.