Bite my Tongue or the Hand that Feeds Me

Every three months I have the plea­sure (duty?) of sit­ting through a sum­mary pre­sen­ta­tion of back­ground infor­ma­tion related to the per­for­mance of the cor­po­ra­tion I work for over the pre­vi­ous fis­cal quarter.

Dur­ing this pre­sen­ta­tion, there is always some addi­tional topic cov­ered that the powers-that-be feel they need to com­mu­ni­cate to us minion-level exec­u­tives. Some­times the topic will be infor­ma­tion on the next and great­est new ini­tia­tive that will make every­thing work so much bet­ter. Some­times it is infor­ma­tion and warn­ings about legal issues or changes that the pow­ers feel we should know.

These addi­tional topic pre­sen­ta­tions are usu­ally made by a per­son from some part of the bureau­cracy that I have done my very best to avoid; often with an amaz­ing amount of suc­cess caus­ing some jeal­ousy among my peers. More often than not the pre­sen­ta­tion by the bureau­cracy mem­ber includes at least one strong, unveiled polit­i­cal state­ment that the audi­ence is clearly sup­posed to uni­ver­sally accept. Also more often than not, I am faced with a choice of bit­ing my tongue or bit­ing the hand that feeds me.

The lat­est such infor­ma­tional warn­ing was actu­ally quite rea­son­able; at first. It started out remind­ing the assem­bled minion-executives that we must com­ply with all rules of the For­eign Cor­rupt Prac­tices Act (FCPA). This is the por­tion of US law that restricts US busi­nesses from engag­ing in brib­ing for­eign offi­cials in order to obtain busi­ness. Very good so far. Even fine when we were informed the Depart­ment of Jus­tice has stepped up enforce­ment of the FCPA; quite hon­estly a move I per­son­ally totally sup­port. But the com­ment that the 22 exec­u­tives with mil­i­tary and security-related com­pa­nies the who arrested fol­low­ing a mas­sive ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion were essen­tially “tricked” into vio­lat­ing the FCPA through an FBI sting; I do not think the blood dripped down my chin.

It is a good thing I work at a site remote from main head­quar­ters and “attend” the ses­sion through a Web meet­ing with no two-way cam­era. Also very good for the “mute” but­ton. Also good I keep this blog anony­mous. Occa­sion­ally, I am tempted to turn back into a 1960s ide­al­ist. So far I haven’t. But my tongue hurts sometimes.

Is Still Here