The seven stages of business life

(Fortune Magazine) -- All the world's a stage, particularly where we work. We have our costumes, our hair and makeup, and the characters we play - and, in time, come to be. Every career has its entrances and exits, its high points and valleys, its scenes in shadow and sunlight. And in our time each of us plays many roles, one modulating into the next with alarming speed.

At first here comes the tiny associate, barfing with nerves outside the meeting room. All he wants is to be ushered into that hallowed hall. He knows that Lowinger and Gretch are sitting at the long boardroom table, drinking coffee from china cups.

Why are they there and he is not? Are they not his fellow infants in the corridors of power? His soul aches with envy. When the chairman greets him in the elevator, a glow fills his body. He is all yearning and desire, with nowhere to put it.

Then the smart young manager with his first BlackBerry, standing on the platform waiting for his train to whisk him to headquarters. Every e-mail is a ruby shining on the cushion of his self-regard. Look! Here he is copied on a mass communication that includes the executive vice president of finance! He is in the morning meeting now.

Still, when the telephone rings on Saturday and there is something he must do, a tickle of resentment stirs his bowels. He's not making enough money to put up with this!

And then the vice president, a new aqua plastic card in his wallet, in love with the company and all it does. On his business trips he has clearance to stay in a Four Seasons or a Ritz-Carlton, as long as it's under the corporate rate. In the morning he strolls out onto the patio of his hotel room and takes in a lungful of Los Angeles air. Ah! What a life this is! God bless Adam Smith!

Then an executive vice president, heavier now, full of steak and vodka and red wine, surrounded by droves of worker ants dedicated to constructing whatever hill may blossom in his imagination. He is angry all the time, ready to kick butt and assemble names. Once content to buy his suits off the rack, he has Arturo now, who knows his expanding dimensions and constructs his persona to order.

His mind teems with potential acquisitions and financial manipulations, and there is a number in there - a big number with a dollar sign in front of it - and looming behind that integer is a beach, and on the sand is a shimmering image of himself, lying in the sun, the cares of the world behind him.

And then the ultra-senior officer, a $350 tie failing to obscure the rotunda of his girth. He is now on so many committees that the idea of being in any meeting for more than ten minutes makes him want to cry. He spends a lot of time delegating and traveling to escape the shackles of his job.

The shoreline in his mind's eye is capped by a mountain now, and on that mountain is a 12,000-square-foot house with an elevator down to the beach. He has a press person assigned to press his person, and he grimly attends every cocktail party, industry panel, and convention and is miserable unless his face is in the papers.

Now the chairman, the bee in the center of the hive. He is lean, very lean - doctor's orders, you know. He wouldn't admit it, but he is sometimes confused. Everybody has these new electronic gizmos that he doesn't know how to use. People have meetings to which he is not invited. Why not!? Doesn't he run the joint?

Oh, yes, he now owns that beach in Mexico, and the massive edifice adorning the clifftop nearby, but of course he never goes there. What's there? Is his driver there? All the restaurants that know his favorite tidbits?

Last scene of all: our old friend at the his retirement dinner. At the end, he rises to thank the crowd. Look at them all there in the Waldorf ballroom in their black ties, leaning into each other, chattering, gossiping, young, strong, still hungry.

Afterward they shake his tiny, trembling hand, and then they are gone into the night. He takes his limo home and falls asleep in his big comfy chair. In the morning, Esperanza comes in to feed him his porridge.

Stanley Bing's latest book, Crazy Bosses (Collins), is available at finer bookstores everywhere. He can be reached at stanleybing@aol.com; for more Bingstuff, go to his website, stanleybing.com