Knife Fight

“I’ve read a lot of books…” Stephen said. He folded his hands behind him and looked out directly at the audience.  He paused for a minute.  “A lot of them.” He looked at a few people  at different ends of the room. He looked stern. His direct approach toward public speaking always won people over, and if he didn’t sound friendly people began to respect and fear him outside of the meeting room.  Clients changed their attitudes toward him, coworkers changed their attitudes toward him, even his friends have changed after they’ve seen him give a presentation.  At his height, his simply being in the room added a certain weight.  But lately he’s noticed people whispering. There’s been more giggling and slights from the people he managed. It always happened when he’d leave the room. He pulled this meeting together, even though the company was under a crunch to get a product out by the end of the week. He had a lot riding on this.

“I’ve read ‘Who Moved My Cheese’. I’ve read ‘Swimming With the Sharks’. I’ve even read ‘Rework’, but they were all missing something.” Everyone was still. “Marliene, can you turn on the overhead?” The lights dimmed and a projector turned on. He walked to the opposite side of the screen. The colors from the projected image crawled across him. Behind him on the screen was a photo of a switchblade. “Knife fights”. He dropped it on them. No one moved. He could almost see their Goddamn heads  swimming. He knew he had them- you come out fast and hard, that’s how you win a fight.

“The world of business can’t be planned. You can’t reduce abstract notions like ‘change’ down to something manageable that you can plan.” He said. He could feel the momentum building. This felt good, he was back, even if it only lasted as long as this meeting. “It’s human nature to try to take things you have no control over and reduce them to manageable elements. Like death…” Some of their jaws were dropping. He needed to soften it a little. “When a loved one passes it’s hard for everyone involved. Especially if the process is a long one. It’s terrifying. It’s something most people want to run from- they want someone else to handle it. But if you read the line of self-help style books, they’ll walk you through all the steps of what to expect. If it’s predictable, then it’s not scary anymore.” He had them back. They were getting sucked in. He needed to slap them in the face a little to let them know who’s driving the ship. “Even down to the death rattles. Our company is in a death rattle.” He paused. “But we don’t know, or don’t care because we’ve read all the books, and the books say that this is part of a normal process. We need to be scared. We need to fight. And that’s where knife fights come in.”

Then, he started telling them a story about last week’s trip to Detroit to visit his dying mother. It was perfect. He was tying everything together with a personal message. He never had a mother- he was an orphan that jumped around from family to family all his life. He never loved anyone. But they didn’t know that when he told HR that he was going to need a week off. No one questions you when you toss the words ‘dying mother’ into your reasons for needing the time off during a busy period. He spent the week in his condo, watching youtube videos about knife fights. “Then…” He continued,”she held her hand up and made me promise to make my family proud. I took that hand. I took it and I looked her in the eye and promised that good woman that I would.” He dropped his head down. Damn, he was near tears himself. By dropping his head he could look remorseful without having to actually act like it. It just takes a second. “Then, she took her last breath and left  this gentle earth.” A woman in the back sniffed.  “Shaken, I went across the street to a waterfront bar. I ordered a whisky and let myself sit with what I had seen, and the promise I made. A man- I believe his name was Cutty- he talked to me. I told him what had happened. Cutty was an old salt. He had been in two wars and was no stranger to death. It turns out he was no stranger to business either. After hearing about my great responsibility he gave me this bit of advice.”  Stephen pressed on the small remote in his hand. The image changed from a knife to two knives pointing at each other. Above one was the title ‘Company’, above the other ‘Client’. “And there you have it.” He said.

He started in on his Nietzschian philosophy of great companies having great responsibility outside the norms of conventional businesses. You needed to fight. You had to pull every dirty trick in the book, because in a knife fight you don’t know who you’re up against. You have to take the enemy down. Take them down hard and finish them because you don’t want them coming back later after they’ve learned the limits of your fighting skill. He followed this with instruction manual illustrations of two bland men facing each other, crouching,  with knives in their hands. There were arrows illustrating a clockwise motion, with text saying the types of thrusts and swipes to use. Everything symbolized processes in the business world. The man wielding the knife were the executives. The knife was the designers, project managers, copywriters. He punched out the words with the same severity as when he laid off Timothy. He really liked Timothy. He was the only one that Stephen could confide in. They used to get together to  watch ‘Fight Club’ and get drunk. But it was out of his hands. He didn’t make the decision. Timothy took it hard and he never heard from him again. He felt like he was doing the same to this audience. He was punishing them, he was laying them off.

“I have a question.” One member raised their hand. He hated that. He didn’t want an open forum, he just wanted to say his piece and be done. “Yes?” Stephen said trying to look disapproving. “When you talk about making a series of thrust-cuts to the hands, and swipes to the forearm as a way of weakening the opponent… isn’t that a way of setting up your bases?” The man said, standing up. He wasn’t so much of a man, he was in his twenties and dressed like a child. Only a douche bag wears t-shirts with oversized prints poking out from their side. He was short too, he might as well have been a kid. “I suppose.” Stephan said. “So if you’re setting up bases, and gearing up for the big attack- Wouldn’t Starcraft be a more appropriate analogy?” The audience made impressed ‘ooh’ sounds and started to talk amongst themselves. Stephen cursed inside. He didn’t know how to save this. By continuing to debate the videogame/knife fight analogy he was only giving the kid’s idea more time to sink in. “First,” the kid continued,”you make your drones start mining minerals and have a few start making a barracks. That way you get your troop count up. Then you make some food storage units to feed the troops as you upgrade to more powerful troops. After that you can set up bunkers and look out towers to keep the spies from seeing your numbers. After you’ve expanded to other mineral fields you can attack the opponent.” Stephen tossed his remote onto a nearby table and casually walked out. As he rounded the corner to his office he could hear the kid still talking. People were applauding. That was supposed to be his applause.

Stephen deleted some files off his computer and put the photo of his family in his bag. It wasn’t his real family, this photo came with the frame. He had no family. Except for Timothy. His old fantasy of starting a company with Timothy bubbled up in his mind. He scanned through the address book on his phone and brought Timothy’s number up, then put the phone in his pocket. As he drove away, he hit the dial button on his phone. It rang. He didn’t know if Timothy would pick up. He’d leave a message explaining that he had quit and see what happened. Maybe he’d bring up the fantasy. Who was he kidding, some upstart would ruin what he had built just like the kid did today. What he had to do was figure out how to gain authority without over-doing it and having it end this way. Timothy answered the phone sounding out of breath. “I was just in the shower.” He said.