I knew a man who would wake his wife up in the middle of the night, just from the sound of his teeth grinding. He was a senior executive at a company whose name everybody knows. Not something you could walk away from. He wasn’t selling his body, but his soul, with each compromise, each negotiation to satisfy a would-be satrap or potential enemy, each polite gesture to a creature who should never have been put in charge of money or people.

His response was to carefully plan his retirement, including the house he planned to live out his days in far, far from corporate HQ. So far as I know, that’s exactly what he did.

My response was to outline a book, and I just kept going.

I can’t help but wonder what would happen if one or more execs from the company happened to hit the strip club while she was dancing (“business meeting”, you know). One the one hand, it would be a cheap coincidence, on the other hand, it would resolve work issues at one or both places ;) Will just have to see how this unfolds.