How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life by Scott Adams Page B

probably seven or eight layers of management above me, and described all ofmy naive suggestions for improving the bank. My ideas had one thing in common: They were impractical for reasons a twenty-one-year-old wouldn’t yet appreciate. I closed my letter by asking for a rare and coveted spot in the management training program, a fast track to upper management. It was a long shot for a guy who had on his permanent work record some version of “too incompetent to write numbers on a piece of paper.”
    I included in my letter a list of my qualifications that contained a witty reference to getting robbed twice at gunpoint in the course of my work, which was true. As luck would have it, the senior vice president was a six-foot-ten, red-headed, bearded elf of a man who had a great sense of humor. He read my letter and invited me to his office for an interview.
    The senior vice president told me that my suggestions for improving the bank were underwhelming, but he liked my sense of humor, and because of that he had a hunch about my potential. A month later I started the management training program. Somehow I had failed my way to a much better job.
    In my eight years at the bank, I was incompetent at one job after another. At various times I was a branch banking trainee, project manager, computer programmer, product manager, lending officer, budget supervisor, and a few other jobs I’ve forgotten. I never stayed in one job long enough to develop any legitimate competence, and I’m not entirely sure additional experience would have helped in my case. It seemed as if my only valuable skill were interviewing for the next job. I got hired for almost every job I pursued in the bank, and each was a promotion and a raise. It was starting to seem as if I might be able to interview my way to some sort of senior executive position in which no one would notice I was totally skill free. That was my hope.
    My banking career ended when my boss called me into her office and informed me that the order had come down to stop promoting white males. The press had noticed that senior management was composed almost entirely of white males, and the company needed to work harder to achieve something called diversity. No one knew how many years that might take, so I put my résumé together and sent it to some of the other big companies in the area. I had officially failed at my banking career and, against all odds, my incompetence wasn’t the cause.
    Thelocal phone company, Pacific Bell, unwisely offered me a job, and I accepted. Once again I got a big raise, thanks to my interviewing skills and the fact that I had nearly completed my MBA at Berkeley, attending classes at night. I looked great on paper. Little did they realize that looking good on paper was my best skill.
    A few weeks after I left my job at Crocker, an acquiring bank fired everyone in the department I’d left behind. My failure as a banker allowed me to escape to a new job before the firing. This was one of many examples in which the universe makes sure there isn’t much of a link between job performance in the corporate world and outcomes.
    Pacific Bell put me on its version of the fast track, which employees referred to as being “in the binder.” Higher levels of management kept printed lists of the up-and-comers in three-ring binders, so they could mentor us and, presumably, so they could hedge their bets in case one of us passed them on the management ladder. It’s a bad idea to be a jerk to someone who might be your boss in five years.
    About 60 percent of my job at Pacific Bell involved trying to look busy. I was in charge of budgeting, and the actual work was far from challenging, even for me. Most of my budget spreadsheets had formula errors, but that didn’t matter because all of the inputs from the various departments were complete lies and bullshit. If anything, my errors probably smoothed out some of the bullshit and made it closer to truth. It was a truly absurd