CFO Folklore – Page 6 – The Frustrated CFO

CFO Folklore: Watch Out for Sudden Meetings Behind Closed Doors

If you are an executive employee (i.e. hired help, not an owner) in a small business, you know what I'm talking about.

Everything used to be pretty transparent: The owner(s) dropped by your office and discussed strategic issues sitting in front of your desk. They ran their ideas by you, stealing yours in the process, which you didn't mind, because you've learned to think of it as a sign of their appreciation. You were a mandatory participant in tactical meetings with various third-parties and considered a welcomed member of the Board of Directors. You were copied on all email exchanges, etc.

Then, BLAM! All of a sudden everything is hush-hush. And it's not like you did anything wrong or have been slacking. No, you are still your highly professional and ingenious self. Yet, when the owners meet (without you now), they close the doors. You know that there are meetings going on without you. You know that there are important matters that your general business acumen could've helped to resolve, but the owners don't seek your opinion anymore. From what you can see (and if you are a CFO, you see more than anyone else) they need your help, but they don't want it. You are excluded from anything outside of your direct professional responsibilities.

And this is unpleasant, to say the least, because, let's face it:

(a) It's a negative change – it would be better not to be included in the first place, then experience rejection for some unknown reason; one minute you were special, an equal, and another (this is how you feel) you are not different from the receptionist, and

(b) The whole damn thing forces you into a guessing mode, which is a direct way to anxiety and depression.

While this situation is definitely common, I will allow that reasons behind it could vary from business to business, and from one owner's personality to another. Yet, I bet that the following four scenarios, crystallized from years of close observation of various business owners, are applicable to the majority of cases:

1. The owner(s) feel intimidated by you. This happens very frequently. Many businessmen have superiority complex and think that they are the smartest people in any room. And then you enter the picture. At some point the owner realizes that you know more, catch faster, and handle things better than him.

Most hired execs (including yours truly) think it's unfair that We, the brilliant and the laudable, are forced to work for "some schmucks," but the person on the other side is hurting too. No, no, no, I'm not going to feel sorry for the poor millionaire boss, but just think for a second – he is caught between the understanding how important you are for the company and his desire to stop feeling like an idiot in your presence.

This sounds like a difficult situation, but rationally speaking this is the best case scenario. IF the boss is a logical person, who cares for his company's (and his own) well being - he will come around; the doors will be opened again. Of course, if he is a self-centered asshole on an ego trip and nothing else matters… see Scenario 4b.

2. The owners fucked something they are responsible for and the business is not doing well (you, the CFO, may not even know it, because the commercial errors didn't translate themselves into fiscal events yet, but it's coming). The last thing they need at this point is you judging them with your I-told-you-so eyes. They feel so awkward that they'd rather hide away than use your help.

3. The troubles are even worth – to the degree that makes them loose sleep and keeps them in a state of perpetual panic. The problem may not even be caused by the business that employs you. For example, one of the owners just got an audit notice from IRS; he knows that some shit could be found in his other businesses that will destroy everything. Or an owner got busted with large quantities of cocaine on him. Stuff like that. Well, you should consider yourself lucky that you are not invited inside those conference rooms with closed doors - you are better off not knowing anything about it for the sake of plausible deniability.

4. The worst case scenario - the meetings are specifically about getting rid of you, while minimizing the impact on the company. We can further subdivide this one according to the underlying causes:

(a) You are too expensive and the owners, while knowing very well that you worth every penny they pay you, don't think the business can afford you anymore, not even with a 30% base reduction.

(b) That owner in the first scenario simply cannot deal with your superiority any longer. He doesn't care how good you are, you've got to go, so that he can forget about you (and he will) and start feeling good about himself again. I have to say, this one is your own fault – if you needed that job, you should've curbed your attitude. (Oh boy, don't I know how incredibly difficult that is!)

Oh yeah, I almost forgot! There is a possibility of a fifth scenario (also straight from my experience with rampant business owners): If the boss starts having frequent (and kind of longish) meetings behind closed doors not with other execs or third-party relations, but with his secretary, you probably need to read my post When Your Boss's Secretary Becomes His Girlfriend, written 2.5 years ago. It is, by the way, one of The Frustrated CFO's Top 5 most popular posts to date. So, I know that this particular scenario is very common.

While the reasons for the closed doors vary, your course of action is limited two just two options: (a) suck it up and continue doing your job for the sake of your paycheck, or (b) look for another job and, if you get lucky (real tough for CFOs nowadays), get out. Take my advice: don't lower yourself to passive-aggressive stance, or seek an open confrontation with the owners, or attempt to "ask around." You will not achieve anything this away and it will only make you feel worse.

CFO Folklore: A Dumb Boss Can Ask Questions That Will Leave a Wise CFO Stunned

A Boss comes to his CFO. In his hand he carries a report bound into a vinyl cover with a clear front. The CFO recognizes the presentation booklet she prepared for prospective institutional lenders and private financiers (the company is in the process of restructuring its operating capital). This particular one is the Boss's personal hard copy: the CFO notices his doodles, scribbles, and squiggles right there on the title page.

The Boss gives the booklet to the CFO, "I've met these two guys yesterday over drinks at the Harvard Club. I didn't quite understand what they do, but I want to send them this. They wanted it electronically. Can we send it as a whole? I forwarded you their email addresses."

"Of course," she replies, "It's been combined into one file."

"But I've added a few pages."

The CFO skims through the presentation and sees that amid her slick statements, tasteful tables, and vivid charts, there are three pages of text she's never seen before. She feels the habitual wave of anger she has learned to hide deep inside a long time ago. She bites her tongue and doesn't tell him that the unprofessional pale blue arial font he chose clashes with the aesthetics of her report and that his text is too verbose. She just looks him in the eyes and says, "Just send me your Word file and I will incorporate the pages."

"Files," he corrects her.

The CFO nods silently. It's clear to her: a separate file for every page – three pages, three files. If they were all in the same file, he wouldn't be able to print them separately. It would be too difficult for him.

The Boss still lingers. "But are the pages all going to be, like, that scanned type?" he grimaces.

"I'm not planning on scanning anything, but yes, I will convert the Word pages into the PDF and insert them into the presentation, which is a PDF file itself."

"But then I will not be able to edit my pages if I want to," the Boss's tone is a mix of whining and irritation, as if the CFO makes his life difficult. (Which she does, by the way: He always thought of himself as a brilliant man, but this bitch knows too much, understands everything quicker, and her level of expertise and professional standards makes him feel inadequate in HIS OWN COMPANY, for crying out loud.)

"Well, technically if you have Adobe® Acrobat® XI you can edit any PDF file." She thinks for a split second whether she should go on, then continues: "We can also insert the PDF as an object into Word. Then you can edit your pages. However, it will most likely, screw up the entire layout of the presentation, which is not good in case someone decides to print it. I really do not recommend this."

It all sounds like Chinese to the Boss, who, shockingly, doesn't speak a word of it, even though he used to have a business and lived in Hong Kong – for 25 years, no less.

"I don't know how to use any of that," he says, "Can't you just insert my Word pages without converting them into your presentation?" (It almost sounds as if he is about to say, "Is that too much to ask?")

This is just too funny, but the CFO keeps her face in check. She decides that she's had enough of this conversation and it's time to stop explaining: "No, even I cannot perform that sort of magic" she says, "It has to be either Word, or Excel, or PDF file. And PDF is the format of preference in this case."

"Oh, Okay." The Boss leaves.

Now, the CFO smiles to herself. And at that moment she realizes the true cause of her dissatisfaction with this job. It's not this heightened level of irritation. It's not even the fact that she's undervalued and underpaid. It's the unfairness of life that forces professionals like her to work for dilettantes like her boss.

The Dangerous Business of Whistleblowing, or George Orwell’s Worst Nightmare

The global blockbuster thriller of our government's hunt for Edward Snowden (the man who informed us that Big Brother has secretly expanded its reach beyond our most pessimistic expectations) has pushed my mind into the territory I usually try to block out – the silent knowledge of wrongdoings, the discouragement of honesty, and the plight of whistleblowers.

Most people don't realize that the largest professional group exposed to secrets, transgressions, misdeeds, and abuses of power is us, the corporate accountants of different levels – from junior clerks to CFOs. We are on the front lines of dealing with numbers and money, which are the subjects (and the reasons) of most violations one encounters in business.

Daily we witness and, as our job descriptions demand, participate in the tweaking of performance numbers, breaches of contracts, violations of tax code, systematic bribing, manipulation of truths during negotiations, scheming, and what have you. Most of this mendacity, especially in the private sector, is not really that significant in its magnitude. And no matter how high on the corporate ladder, we are just employees attending to our jobs. Many of us cannot even do anything about it – not only because we need our paychecks, but also because we are legally bound to be liars and conspirators by means of non-disclosure agreements and implied fiduciary duties.

Some of our employers, however, are just 100% pure scum, constantly skirting the edges of real frauds. At first glance, they present appreciative and earnest facades: something is wrong with their business and they want to hire you to straighten it all out. Then, as soon as you make the first probing incision, such foul stink and puss comes out, you are stunned with disbelief: There is an appropriation of nearly $1 million that belongs to a major corporate client, the devaluation of a $28-million private equity investment, unpaid payroll taxes, and unreported taxable income. Eventually these criminals swindle you (i.e. me) personally out of a large chunk of money too.

Yes, I sincerely considered to report them to various regulatory agencies and injured parties as well as to sue them myself. First, I sought legal advice. The attorney was eager to proceed, but had enough decency in him to paint a realistic picture for me. "Look," he said, "they will sue you on all possible grounds. It will cost you at least $50-$60K in legal fees. They will pour buckets of dirt on you. Their lawyers will be ripping you apart at every deposition. You will have to live through this for at least 5 years and the outcome is unknown. But let's fucking do it!" With that in mind, I called one old-timer I know. Two decades ago, as a CFO of a public company, he sued his employer for fraud and lived through all the consequences of his actions, including a revocation of his CPA license and his wife's heart attack. His advise was laconic: "Don't do it!" So, I didn't do anything.

Then again, some frauds are terrifyingly large and affect a lot of people. Uncovering them has a potential of creating public scandals and attracting media attention to the whistleblowers. Both WorldCom and Enron were brought down by female career accountants: the first one by Cynthia Cooper, VP of Internal Audit, who first spent years building her resume at PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte & Touche; the second by Sherron Watkins, VP of Corporate Development and Arthur Andersen alumnae. (The cynic in me cannot completely believe in the pure righteousness of these women. There could've been some sort of grudge they held against their employers, which were run predominantly by male execs.)

While both Cooper and Watkins shared their 15-minutes of fame and public applause as Time's "People of the Year 2002," their carefully crafted top-tier accounting careers were over. No large or mid-size company will hire an executive with a whistleblowing history. And accounting firms? That's the funny part: even though both women acted in accordance with the ethical code imposed on them by their CPA licenses, they rendered themselves practically unemployable in a public accounting sector. Both published books about their experiences (well, we've already discussed the rewards of such endeavors) and now give speeches in colleges and high schools.

Still, it could've been worse: if any corporate remnants of WorldCom and Enron have survived, I'm sure Cooper and Watkins would've been sued by their respective former employers on all kinds of legal grounds and ended up losing much more than their careers. And this is what makes the governments and their agencies the scariest targets of the whistleblowing: while their individual employees may be shuffled around and even removed, the institutions don't go anywhere; no matter what, they retain their power to harm.

Try scrolling through Wikipedia's List of Whistleblowers – it gives you a pretty good idea about bleak plights that befell the people who publicly unveiled secrets of their government employers (FBI, State Department, Department of Justice, Department of Defense, CIA, EPA, US Army). The stories are pretty gloomy: professional licenses challenged, people fired, discharged, accused, extradited, prosecuted, indicted, sentenced, found with two bullets in the head.

This is all public knowledge. Obviously, Edward Snowden was aware of these possibilities. Moreover, he was also prepared to fight against them. Whether he succeeds at protecting himself or not, the fact remains that he took the responsibility for disclosing to the Guardian and the Washington Post a certain set of classified information, including a secret court order forcing Verizon to yield clients' telephone records as well as the existence of PRISM – the program that allows National Security Agency's analysts to access servers at Microsoft, Google, Apple, and other Internet firms with the purpose of extracting customers' (yours and mine) audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and other materials.

Apparently, ever since the Snowden ordeal started, the sales of 1984 got a tremendous boost (it's presently #62 on Amazon's Bestsellers list and #8 among Fiction Classics). Well, good for George Orwell's estate. But, truth be told, even he couldn't cook up a plot this thick. At least the residents of Airstrip One knew that they were always watched; they were aware of what kind of behavior could result in repercussions. We, on the other hand, have been kept completely clueless.

It has always been a position of the Labor Department that there is no Right to Privacy in a workplace: whatever we say or write at work is opened to our employers. Now, thanks to Mr. Snowden, we have learned that everything we say or write in our own home became secretly opened to the government – our very own government, which, like a bad parent, thinks that it knows what's best for us. Perversely they believe that they "represent our interests," without even asking what we think about it, basically reducing us to the level of retarded children.

And it seems that we are just scratching the surface with Snowden's revelations. Check out the news of the police departments' unregulated photo scanners: Police License Plate Scanners.

According to the numerous Internet pundits, the Obama administration holds a record for prosecuting the largest number of whistleblowers. Obviously, this government is very sensitive about the secrecy of its operations: "the enemy cannot know." Does that include us, the US patriots? Is it OK for us to be treated as one with the enemy for the sake of the "larger good?"

Well, Machiavelli's famous maxim "The end justifies the means" was a favorite and much-repeated slogan of the Soviet mass murders Lenin and Stalin. But our founding father Benjamin Franklin said, "Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."

And here is what the Senior Director of International Law and Policy at Amnesty International had to say about the hunt for Edward Snowden: "No one should be charged under any law for disclosing information of human rights violations by the US government. Such disclosures are protected under the rights to information and freedom of expression."

YES, that's what we used to believe. Yet, this alarming news had an immediate impact on me: I thought REAL HARD before finally deciding to write this post.

Warning: Unpunishable Plagiarism

Plagiarism – the wrongful appropriation or purloining, and publication as one’s own, of the ideas, or the expression of the ideas (literary, artistic, musical, mechanical, etc.) of another.

OED, Vol. 11: 947

As OED’s definitions go, this one is pretty straightforward: you create something, another person passes it as his own – that’s wrong. It is also linguistically polite. Authors unrestricted by the structural conventions of dictionaries, can be more blunt about it. Late Alexander Lindey, a copyright attorney and author, in his 1951 Plagiarism and Originality wrote: “Plagiarism is literary – or artistic or musical – theft.”

Note that OED’s definition includes both
ideas and their expressions. Legally, however, only actual products are protected. The United States Copyright Office clearly states:

“Copyright does not protect ideas, concepts, systems, or methods of doing something. You may express your ideas in writing or drawings and claim copyright in you description, but be aware that copyright will not protect the idea itself as revealed in written or artistic work.”

To simplify: Copying Van Gogh’s Sunflowers to a stroke and passing it as your own work is illegal, but producing endless still-lifes of vases with flowers in Van Gogh’s style is absolutely OK. By the same token, reproducing somebody’s words verbatim without giving a proper citation is plagiarism, but recasting somebody’s original idea with your own words, details, and attributes cannot be legally challenged.

Generally speaking, the intention behind the exclusion of ideas from the copyright protection is founded in the possibility of several people coming up with the same thought at the same time. This indeed happens from time to time. However, more frequently than not, the law, as it stands right now, makes what I call an unpunishable plagiarism an okay thing.

Of course, it is infrequent that someone copies a painting, or steals a score from another musician’s computer. Actions like that can lead to criminal and/or civil law suits. From time to time, we hear about people being expelled from schools or lose their jobs and professional creditability on account of plagiarism.

Sometimes, such allegations are unfounded and cleverly used to mar the innocent competition. The fabulous Alan Rickman, whose character in the Broadway production of Theresa Rebeck’s Seminar became a victim of such a scam, moaned with all the heart-wrenching pain his ample talent was capable to deliver: “Oh, to be accused of such a thing…” For him it’s the worst possible shame. A rare man!

However, when it comes to original ideas, only individual morals stand between one person’s precious imaginative jewel and another person’s grabby hand. Unfortunately, morality being what it is in the present time, theft of the original ideas is far more common than pickpocketing and purse snatching. As originality becomes more and more of a deficit, the stealing of it becomes more and more pervasive. I personally don’t care whether it’s legal or not. To me it’s worse than a theft – it’s an intellectual rape, a snatching of babies born in a torrent of a creative labor.

In business environments it happens every day. Those who watch NBC’s popular series Grimm know that the show’s core feature is to give a fairy-tale spin to contemporary life. In a second season’s episode Nameless, a video game company celebrates the development of a groundbreaking code. Everyone involved in the programming of this extraordinary algorithm stands to make millions. As it turns out, however, none of the people taking credit for it had actually authored the breakthrough idea. It was appropriated by the team leader from a tech guy who came to reboot her system and offered the brilliant solution in exchange for a date. Not only that she had no qualms about accepting the praise and the rewards, she wasn’t planning to keep the date promise either. She didn’t even remember the guys name.

Whether in business or arts, the worst idea thieves are your peers, especially those who work with you. Trust me, I know it first-hand. One such incident occurred during my time as a high-tech CFO. We were preparing for a teleconference with our venture-capital investors. My fellow board member, the VP of Marketing, strolled into my office and asked for my opinion about the topics to be discussed. You know, at the time the Internet companies were marked by a sense of democracy and camaraderie. So, I let my guard down and laid out my thoughts. All these years later, I still remember the shock I felt, when this guy took the lead of the meeting and repeated everything I told him verbatim, without giving me any credit, of course.

It goes without saying that the world of arts and entertainment is a fucking snake pit that lives by the motto “Everybody steals.” It’s pretty much an every-day practice.

No matter how many musicians and fans scorned Vanilla Ice’s shameless “re-phrasing” of the Queen/Bowie genius bass riff, “Ice Ice Baby” made millions, was nominated for a Grammy and won the American Music Award. It only got worse since. I happened to personally know a human equivalent of a music encyclopedia, and I constantly hear from her: “Wait a minute, I already heard this on…”

In Woody Allen’s Vicky, Christina, Barcelona Penelope Cruz’s character Maria Elena bluntly states that Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), a commercially successful artist, stole his entire painting style from her. First, he reluctantly acknowledges that, yes, she was “influential,” and later admits that “maybe he took from her more than he likes to admit.” Really? With a hint of sarcasm Maria Elena says: “It’s okay. We worked side by side for many years, and you adopted my vision of the world as your own.”

Speaking of movies, it’s impossible to get an unknown writer’s script into a decision-maker’s hands. 99% of studios and production companies do not accept unsolicited (i.e. not represented by an agent) material. And even if you do get someone to read your script or to hear your pitch, the first thing you will need to do is to sign a legal document promising that you will never-ever sue that entity for stealing your idea. Why? Because, if they don’t like the script but like the idea, they will most definitely steal it.

There is this tiny (in terms of viewership – $342K gross) Craig Lucas’s movie called The Dying Gaul (2005). It is a feeble attempt to expose Hollywood’s perversity and corruption. In spite of the presence of indy VIP’s Campbell Scott, Patricia Clarkson, and Peter Sarsgaard, whose pull must be responsible for a $4 million budget, the movie is an unremarkable failure. (Let’s be honest, ever since Robert Altman’s The Player (1992), you really need something extraordinary up your sleeve to embark on this theme.) Yet, the film has one valuable tidbit of a real truth in it: When the main character refuses to change his script from a tragic gay love story into a heterosexual romance, the big-time producer with a $1 million check in his hand warns, “If you refuse, you will walk out of here with nothing, and I will give your story to someone else to rewrite.”

But don’t think that only the unknown writers fall victims to Tinseltown’s shameless pilfering of ingenuity. The moment I saw a poster for Night in the Museum, I had a bizarre thought that Ben Stiller somehow managed to convince Gore Vidal to lend the movie a brilliant plot device from his novel The Smithsonian Institution (1998) . You see, it was Vidal who made the historical characters come to life, most notably Teddy Roosevelt (but not dinosaurs). Apparently, I was not the only one who noticed the uncanny similarity: the great writer himself openly spoke about it in various media. Of course, he wasn’t going to attempt any legal action – he’s been around the block way too many times (his first publication is dated 1946 and his oeuvre includes 14 screenplays).

Some occurrences of unpunishable plagiarism are simply ridiculous. In 2007, Joe Swanberg (another semi-known indy writer/director) made a practically unseen ($23K gross) movie called Hannah Takes the Stairs: Hannah (Greta Gerwig), a recent college graduate, is an intern and an aspiring writer, who is cruising from a relationship to relationship, trying to find her direction in life. Hmm… Wait a minute… Doesn’t this Hannah live on HBO now? Wasn’t she shoved into everyone’s face by the hipster media for the past 18 months or so? Wasn’t she supposed to be an alter ego of her “oh-so-original” creator, a “genius” on the list of “100 Most Influential People,” the one whose name I promised not to mention in my posts anymore? A coincidence? Nope. If anyone did see the 2007 movie, it would be this HBO’s you-know-who. After all, she is a friend and a collaborator (Nobody Walks) of Ry Russo-Young, who co-starred in Hannah Takes the Stairs.

Speaking of those Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, it is my firm opinion that the biggest scrounger in fictional writing ever is J.K. Rowling. Don’t get me wrong, I love Harry Potter, but that woman sponged her material off everything she ever read (granted, she is a very well-read person). Let’s not drown ourselves in the boundless sea of magical names representing wizardly attributes: Lupin = wolf (Latin); Sirius = dog (Latin via Greek); Severus = serious, strict (Latin); Dumbledore = stream of gold (a combination of “dumble” – a Nottinghamshire local for a forested stream, and French “d’Or”), etc., etc., etc., etc. Instead, I’d like to point out a few very specific items:

Let me remind you that in 1961 Roald Dahl wrote a very popular book James and the Giant Peach about an orphan boy James Henry Trotter (Harry James Potter, anyone?!), whose loving parents were destroyed by a brutal rhino and who is forced to live with cruel aunts until a magician helps him to get out.
In Gaudy Night Dorothy Sayers’s lead character Harriet Vane describes her alma mater, Oxford’s Shrewsbury College, as an incredibly confusing place with seemingly moving stairs.
During Victorian times, British citizens started depositing their money in the banks in increasing numbers. Funny, they developed a slang term for the sovereigns the deposited – they called them “goblins.”

Actually, my list is so long, I can write another book. How about “Harry Potter Genesis, Or Did J.K. Rowling Come Up With Any Original Ideas?”

Obviously, I am very apprehensive about the usurping tendencies all around us. I know talented young people bursting with artistic ideas. Extraordinary pearls of originality simply roll off their tongues. It’s painful to admit it, but instead of enjoying their creativity, I behave like a robotic warning machine: “Keep it to yourself! Don’t share it with anybody! Stop dropping your pearls publicly! Why did you post that brilliant thing on fucking facebook?!” I know it makes me sound like a paranoid maniac (and it makes me feel real shitty), but what else can I do to protect them? Their artistic expressions are incredibly unique. Their verbiage is so catchy, their “friends” not only repeat it, but have the gall to claim it for themselves.

How can we possibly control this? How can we safeguard the originality? We can’t: There is no legal way and most humans lost any shreds of shame a long time ago. The only way to protect your ideas is to constantly convert them into products, so that you can stake your ownership via the copyright. And even then, as examples above show, you are not secured from various brands of scavengers.

This Is What It Feels Like When the CFO Cries

When I was a little girl, a preteen, a teenager, my parents always teased me, "Why are you crying? Feeling sorry for yourself?" I could've been weeping about some really heart-breaking moment in my life or over a beautiful passage in a book – it didn't matter, their reaction was always the same.

Well, if that was their way of toughening me up, it worked. But discouraging crying? Nah, their badgering wasn't successful - I'm still a crier. Blatant injustices, the disappearance of Earth's beauty, the unfairness of life; but also a goosebumpy music passage, a powerful piece of acting, an especially brilliant bit of storytelling, a rare instance of mesmerizing artistry – all are known to bring quick tears to my eyes.

But all these occasions allow me to cry secretly – in a privacy of my home; in the darkness of a theater; sometimes in the middle of a crowded place, where nobody knows me (which is the same as being alone); or in front of a few people (can count them on one hand), who are so close to me, most of the time we cry about the same things. To the rest of the world, however, I'm known as Marina of Steel, always composed and together. In fact, most people think that I am a gruff bitch. The mother-fuckers would probably have panic attacks if they saw me all snotty and whimpering - the way I get, when I fight with my daughter.

In my entire career there were only a few occasions, when, while in the office, I simply couldn't hold back tears – the ducts just acted on their own accord, the way they do when you get hit on the nose. One time, during a meeting, my CEO threw some reports straight into one of my subordinate's face, and I couldn't do anything about it: couldn't protect the victim, couldn't say anything to the boss – just had to watch it happening. I remember thinking, "God, if somebody else did that in front of me, I would've fucking slapped him. But I have to pretend that I'm paralyzed, because I need my job! It hurts!" And the tears just rolled out involuntary.

Nearly 20 years ago (God! I was still young then!), a different boss, always insecure about his origins and education, got angry with me, because he forgot to request some analysis he urgently needed, yet expected that I would telepathically infer his wishes. I was already a Controller and have accomplished some pretty amazing stuff for the company (for which, truth be told, I was very well compensated). So, I felt pretty secure to simply explain that he never asked for it. To this he retorted: "You're probably lying that you were always a straight A student. No doubt your mother bribed your teachers." There were other people around too, listening… The randomness and the absurdity of the insult hit me like a ton of bricks. I was lost for words and my eyes just swelled with tears. Nothing was to be done or said, of course – my family's well-being was much higher on my list of priorities than my self-esteem.

Just the other day, a business owner, who was my torturer-in-chief at that moment (he is the one who thinks himself a Good Boss), demanded some pretty serious piece of performance analytics to be delivered to him the next day, before his meeting with X. Considering the available resources, this was impossible to accomplish. So, I informed him accordingly. And yes, I'm too fed up with all this bullshit now, so I let a bit of a sarcasm escape me: "How long have you known about this meeting anyway?" I asked him. "Let me explained to you the idiocy (Miriam-Webster: extreme mental retardation) of this question," he replied and then embarked on a long-winded rant about… Well, who cares? And I wasn't listening anymore. I wanted to laugh, but somehow sparse teardrops started falling down instead. Thank God, I cried – at least it stopped his blabbering and he left the room.

Yeah, things like that… So, it's true – I cry because I feel sorry for myself. I'm sorry that my life is nothing what I hoped it would be. I'm sorry that I don't have enough time to do things that I truly love. I'm sorry that I always work harder than anybody else would in my place and the rewards never match my efforts. I'm sorry that I always work for people who are not sophisticated enough to understand my value and appreciate my contribution. I'm sorry that they always turn out to be insecure assholes. I'm sorry that, even though I held them in my hands, I let all the means of my personal security slip away. I'm sorry about so many of my choices that led me to where I am…

…What is that you are saying? A pity party? So what if it is? Nobody else pities me – everyone thinks that I'm some fucking stone.

Top Female Execs Tell Us Whether It's OK To Burst Into Tears At Work

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