I was afraid to enter the world of business. I’d be eaten alive.

Chapter 1. You Can’t Always Get What You Want

I was supposed to be an elementary school teacher. Teaching middle school was my goal. That way I avoided the tiny kids and didn’t have to wrestle with high schoolers. My end game was to be a Principal.

None of that happened.

I graduated in 1978 from McGill University, Canada, with a B. Ed. I’d started out in Chemistry and received a GPA of 0.87/4.0 after the first year. I guess I should have gone to classes and not skipped all the labs. After the Chemistry failure my Dad bellowed that I had nowhere to go but join the army. He was pissed. I felt like crap.

Fortunately, I learned that when you changed faculties, you started with a brand new GPA. So B. Ed. it was.

The problem? When I graduated in 1978 there were no teaching jobs.

Actually, that was only kind of true. I was offered a position at Miss Edgar’s and Miss Cramp’s school for girls in Montreal. I would be teaching Physical Ed and music. Uggh. Sure, I’d been classically trained in piano and was somewhat athletic, but that wasn’t where I saw myself. I wanted to teach Grade 4 or 5 in a “normal” school, not a private school for girls.

I turned it down and went back to my summer gig, working as a waiter on Canada’s long distance passenger trains. Fun job, but career-wise, I was lost.

An opportunity came up to work with that rail company’s head office in a clerical position. That was my first step into the world of business. And I was petrified by my perceptions of the business world. Dog eat dog. Eat what you kill.

Why? I was a softy…didn’t have that killer instinct. I was going to be miserable and eaten alive.

It turns out, I was wrong. In particular, about myself.

Chapter 2. A Co-worker Evades the Reaper

Ever been fired?

I have. Twice. The first time was because of my ethics. I had refused to screw someone over. It was called “restructuring”, but I know what it really was.

The second time was because I hated my boss. And the feeling was mutual. He won. More on these two events later. I wasn’t a CEO in either of these cases.

The train company head office gig was good. Good co-workers and I met a lot of other employees since my work station backed onto a main aisle with people passing continuously throughout the day.

At a government-run organization, there is always the risk of down-sizing. In my ten years at head office there were four. Those were incredibly sad times. People you had worked with for years were let go. Some of my office friendships evaporated.

One particularly sad case was the termination of a work acquaintance who was the sole earner in his family of a wife and 4 kids. It was sad because his boss had neglected to tell him (and give him his walking papers) and he kept showing up to work. My perception of business as a dog-eat-dog world became reality.

There was some kindness however. Maybe it wasn’t kindness… more likely the boss’ embarrassment, but the man with the four kids wasn’t terminated.

I was fortunate. During three of the four restructurings I was mysterious promoted. I didn’t have any internal job interviews. It just happened. What a mix of emotions.

Chapter 3. Stand and Deliver — Or Else

Other than the down-sizings, I didn’t see a lot of kill-or-be-killed activities. Until an attempt was made on me.

A bit of background first.

I was a marketing research analyst and had a wonderful teacher as a boss. Our goal at the company was to turn around our abysmal first class service in the Quebec City to Windsor Corridor. This also included Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa…most of Canada’s largest cities.

My role was to figure out, based on marketing research, how the first class service could be improved and what the market potential (i.e. revenue) forecast would be based on different service scenarios.

As part of our market potential analysis for the revised first class, our new Harvard-educated VP Marketing asked me to come with him to New York to ride Amtrak’s first class service. He ended up scaring the crap out of me.

At the beginning of my career, I was intimidated by those who had big titles. Directors, VPs and naturally, CEOs. Traveling with the VP Marketing was nerve-wracking. But I settled down a bit while we traveled and chatted on the Amtrak train.

He knew I had recently applied for a Manager of Market Research role. (My goal at the company was to be a Manager by 30. I had more ambition than I realized.)

The VP brings up my job application. Surprisingly he asks “I’m going to offer you a choice. Do you want to be Manager of Research, or a new role we’ve created — Manager of Market Development? The new role creates new markets through product changes and new products. The first task is to fix the First Class.”

I jumped at the new role. What an incredible job for someone in their late twenties I thought.

After I accept, he turned to me and said: “Good. Now I know who to go after if things go wrong.”

An uncomfortable tingling coursed through my body.

I’d never been held accountable at work before. I stumbled through my work up until then. I did good work and delivered as asked but this was something different. “…who to go after if things go wrong”. Fuck.

Marketing is a funny career. You do your best research, create your best estimates for the size of your product’s success, but you still don’t know absolutely whether it is going to succeed to the extent you believe it well. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a bull shitter.

In hindsight, my VP was setting the stage for my drive to become a CEO.

Chapter 4. The stabbings Start

Coming soon. I’m working on a new business launch. I’ll get to this when I need a break. Thanks for reading so far. If you have any questions, comments or insights you’d like to share please comment to let me know.

Note to self: Advertising manager, croissants and shaming the engineers. Dealing with backstabbers.