The Secret to Corporate Success

Ohhhh, so that’s how they do it.

As I near the completion of my first year of further edumacation in the business discipline, I feel that I have learned many things from my program. The law of diminishing returns applies to amount of time studying. Always grab an extra soda at the beginning of the class, because they’ll be all gone by the second break. Don’t leave your cell phone lying out. How easy business would be if the only raw materials I had to buy was lemons and ice. Yep, folks, this is learning at its finest.

Unfortunately, the road to knowledge I have chosen may not be the one most productive. A graduate degree might not be the way to a cushy salary hike and the oversized leather executive chair that all have come to expect. As I found out while sitting in a financial review meeting yesterday, the cost of success isn’t two years of extra homework; it can be acquired for $24.95 on the Internet.

(I feel like I should hawking my find in a TV commercial wearing a blazer rife with neon question marks, no?)

This meeting was held in the office of one such man who had found the path to executive-ship. The salary, the chair, the everything. I do not know if he pursued the same method of further edumacation that I have since embarked upon, but one thing is clear: he has made it. And then I saw IT.

What? Pronouns aren’t descriptive? Fine, here’s a picture of IT.

Sitting on the table in front of me was this calculator. Although, I don’t know if I can vouch for sure that there was a table under it. After all, this is the BIGGEST CALCULATOR THAT EVER WAS. You could operate this thing with two hands if you wanted to. And unless my company starts hiring kangaroos to crunch numbers, this is the farthest thing from a pocket model I can possibly imagine. The display might as well be a drive-thru monitor at McDonald’s, and the numbers are so big you could use them as templates for NHL jerseys.

Am I exaggerating? Is Jeremy Roenick King?

So, yeah, at this point you may think that I am trying to convince you all that the man in charge became the man in charge because he had the world’s biggest adding tool. (You’re an adding tool.) Well, your thinking is wrong. The YABNews Desk has no archival evidence that bigger technology is always better technology. A cell phone is far more useful than a telephone booth. A microwave is way better than a microwave. I even concede that my laptop Attica is a better machine than my old compumate, Mookie. And finally, the little calculator I have with the tiny buttons and the miniscule screen can do battle with the aforementioned “NASA Can See Me from the Shuttle” model.

So why are we still talking about this?

Go back and look at that calculator one more time. Notice anything … peculiar? (Other than it’s the size of Texas.) That’s right – an ANSWER BAR! Most calculators have an enter key that yields the final result of your complex computation. This one has an answer bar. I have to think that an answer bar can be far more useful than wanting to know what the square root of forty-two is (6.4807407). Just think of the questions you could ask your calculator…

What is 24 to the 4th power?
ANSWER = 331776

Who is the answer to the Flyers’ Stanley Cup hopes?
ANSWER = FORSBERG

What am I having for dinner tonight?
ANSWER = CHICKEN

But these are all frivolous uses. There are more important things at stake. Which brings me to my conclusion. In order to become a powerful executive, buy an ANSWER BAR calculator, and ask your way to profitability.