Ripples. Or, as we in the 21st century call it, “meme propagation”.
How it works
In the USSR, enemies of Soviet rule excelled in the production of political jokes. The jokes traversed the country in a matter of weeks, even in the darkest era of Stalinist purges. Everyone told them to each other, including the secret police executives—because they were funny. The jokes presented the rulers as stupid, unimaginative, or selfish simpletons—a far cry from the idealistic warriors for social justice the rulers insisted they were.
Some people have propaganda as their job to flog the message to the rest of humanity. They get paid for that. They are the stone that disturbs the surface.
And then there are true believers and fanboys. They do the work totally free, because they find something incredibly appealing about the message. They almost never have the same motivation that drives the owners of the propaganda machine. But they find a million reasons to love it. They not only translate the propaganda, they enhance and amplify it with their own words and passion.
They are the ripples.
Enemy ground
An important element of rippling are “useful idiots”. Rumors ascribe the expression to Lenin, who allegedly applied it to left-leaning and pacifist-minded Westerners. But these are to be found on both sides of every divide.
These are people who willingly spread propaganda from sources who objectively are their enemies. Consider alt-righters in the US who pour admiration on Putin, the man who keeps thousands of warheads trained on their homes. Or leftists and anti-Imperialists who admire Putin for his anti-Americanism, even though he espouses exactly the same values of imperial power and oligarchic Capitalism they claim to be fighting.
Funny how the KGB secret operatives who spread around political jokes in the USSR, joined the category of useful idiots. Of course, it was their job that required them to blend with the scene and charm the marks. This is why they told them, not because they were stupid. However, the example illustrates why good memes are golden: they make your enemies your influence agents.
Carrying elements
Useful idiots are a lucky bonus for meme masters. However, the main carrying element of rippling is people who are friendly or neutral to the message. And it’s not easy to tell them from useful idiots. In many cases, it’s your political sympathies that ultimately decide how to tell them apart.
Below, a cartoon from the Russian government propaganda channel. The hand of an American police officer holds a smoking gun. His dead victims’ bodies form the word “democracy” in Russian letters. Putinist propaganda views the idea of accountable government and rotation of power as a hostile meme that serves the selfish agenda of American self-assertion. Russians who criticize President Putin from the point of view of democracy and freedoms are considered “useful idiots” or concious agents of enemy powers.
Image credit: Google Images
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I don’t know of a game developer who accidentally deleted his game before releasing it, but I know of a game developer who had his game irrevocably corrupted before he could finish it.
Set the wayback machine for the mid-1980s, when home computers ruled the video game landscape. A game developer and artist by the name of Jim Sachs (of Defender of the Crown fame) was developing a game based on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for the Amiga and created a custom-boot routine for his game (it loaded from floppy disk, like most games of the era). He had gotten pretty far into development and, of course, had some pretty awesome art along with his game code.
Screenshot from Defender of the Crown, artwork by Jim Sachs
About that time, a virus was going around. As far as I know, it was one of the first instances of a computer virus. It was pretty insidious, but was meant to be harmless. It was developed by a guy who wanted to prove to his friend that all computer memory wasn’t erased when doing a warm reboot on an Amiga. He created a little program that wrote itself to the boot sector of a floppy disk after a warm reboot. After five or six warm reboots, it would reveal itself as a window that popped up and said, “Congratulations, your computer has been infected with a virus!” (it may be the SCA virus, but it doesn’t sound exactly the same).
One of Sach’s screens from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (image credit)
Normally, this “virus” was harmless. It would write itself to disks that weren’t write-protected, but would otherwise leave disks usable. A skilled Amiga user could overwrite the infected sectors to clean the virus away, though it may have infected several disks. But this was only true for disks that used standard boot sectors, using the standard Amiga disk-operating system.
As you’ll recall, Sachs wrote a custom boot-routine for his game, and some of his disks became infected with the virus while he was developing his game. Since it doesn’t reveal itself until after it had infected several disks, and only after the requisite number of warm reboots, it’d be easy to infect one’s entire collection of write-enabled disks. Sachs game disk was write enabled since:
He was actively developing his game
Most game disks were write enabled by default, so they could save game state and other information (this was before hard disks were common)
The virus overwrote part of his custom boot-up routine, effectively destroying several months of work. I don’t know if he had his source protected by an SCM, but there is good chance that he didn’t, since that wasn’t common at the time either.
Soon afterwards, apparently disappointed by the loss of so many month’s work, he gave up game development for good.
Image credit: Google Images
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In 1951, the government of Taiwan instituted measures to curb tax evasion that proved so effective that the total amount of tax collected in 1951 was almost three times the amount collected in 1950.
But before I explain how Taiwan did this, let’s talk a little about how tax evasion works.
One common method used to evade taxes is underreporting income, and then hiding the “extra” cash through money laundering or offshore accounts. But if the government knew about every transaction, it would know whether income was being reported accurately, and tax evasion would be much more difficult.
So, what if the government had consumers report their expenses? Suppose John buys a widget from Sam for $500. If Sam reports an income of $100 from the transaction (and hides the remaining $400) but John reports that the widget costed $500, the government knows that something’s wrong.
While this works in theory, there are two main problems:
Consumers don’t typically keep meticulous records of their spending.
The amount of paperwork required to evaluate every single transaction in the country would be overwhelming.
So, what if we tried a simplified approach? Suppose the government asked every consumer to furnish three random receipts per year. The taxation bureau will examine the furnished receipts and compare them to how the company reported those transactions. If the amount printed on just one receipt differs from the income the company reported from that transaction, the government will assume that the company underreported many more transactions… and stiff fines will follow.
“This is all very nice,” you might be thinking, “But what if companies deliberately print receipts incorrectly?”
Then, consumers have the right to demand a refund equal to the amount underreported.
“But what if companies simply don’t furnish receipts?”
Then, it becomes even more obvious that tax is being evaded. If an undercover agent buys something from a store and is not given a receipt, the company is fined.
“But what if consumers don’t keep their receipts?”
Ah, this is where it gets interesting.
In Taiwan, you’re given a special receipt every time you buy something.
Do you see the big number printed across the top? UF-32473705 is a unique number that identifies this transaction… and it’s also a lottery number.
Every other month, the government picks six random three-digit numbers. If any of the six match the last three digits of one of your receipts, you can turn in the receipt for a cash prize of NT$200 (US$7). Not extremely exciting… but I win the receipt lottery around three times per year. It’s just enough to convince me to keep saving my receipts in hopes that I just might win something small.
But there’s more.
Additionally, three random ten-digit numbers are chosen. If any of these numbers match one of your receipts, you can win NT$200,000 (US$6,700). I have friends who have won this prize more than once… but yours truly has terrible luck.
Finally, there’s also a NT$2,000,000 (US$67,000) prize and a NT$10,000,000 (US$300,000) prize. Last year, an “unclaimed $10 million prize” hit the news. They announced the place and date of the purchase… and everyone who shopped there that day tore through their pants pockets and sock drawers in search of that missing receipt.
Every time someone claims their prize, the government always checks whether that transaction was reported correctly. Businesses are now terrified of underreporting income because they don’t know which transaction will end up being audited.
It’s a brilliant system designed to put the burden of taxation on merchants. In theory, Taiwan can now cut personal income taxes because they receive hundreds of millions of dollars in added revenue from a system that only costs them tens of millions.
Although the government is still working on those tax cuts, I’m sure those who have won the $10 million prize are more than happy with this system.
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The answer to your question? It’s all relative. Relative motion that is!
During a spacewalk, it’s true the International Space Station (ISS) is moving at 17,500 mph about the earth. But the spacewalker, who crawls from within the ISS is also traveling at 17,500 mph. Relative to one another, they are –for all practical purposes– not moving (much).
The author, emerging from the ISS airlock hatch, during a spacewalk in 2007. In this photo, earth is to the left.
In your question you ask if it would be the same as jumping from a car on the freeway. If a spacewalking astronaut jumped from the ISS (and was not tethered to it as is the normal protocol), they too would be moving relative to the ISS and their separation distance would increase (i.e., sorta like “…getting left behind immediately.”) in whatever direction they jumped. But the physics of outer space (we call it orbital mechanics) is a bit different than on earth. It’s possible that, if left alone, the leaping-from-ISS-spacewalker would return to nearly the same point from which they departed one orbit later! That’s orbital mechanics for ya!
The author, re-entering the airlock at the completion of a spacewalk during STS-131. Note atomic oxygen damage on the airlock thermal cover (in my right hand).
But our friend who leapt from the car will experience wind resistance, gravity, and other variables which contribute to the resultant motion for him/her relative to the car speeding down the highway. In space, gravity’s effect is much less, there is no wind resistance, etc. It’s a slightly different problem. If our friend crawls from the car window… and slowly moves around the car, then our situation is more akin to that of a spacewalking astronaut. Confused? Me too!
The official term for these forays into the abyss of outer space is Extra-Vehicular Activity –activity outside a vehicle. Why it morphed into spacewalk I’m not sure, but while on the moon, the astronauts did walk, as they will one day on Mars.
I’m no genius, and there are those out there on Quora much smarter than I (that’s your cue Robert Frost!) who can perhaps provide a much more technical answer to this wonderful question. But for now, all I can add is “…keep lookin’ up!” (And make sure you’re tethered to something!)
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In 1183 the son and heir of King Henry II of England died of dysentery. There was no strict rule of succession at that time, and it was up to Henry to choose a new successor from among his three remaining legitimate sons. (He had a lot of other illegitimate children too.) The trouble was, none of them loved him much, and besides, they had joined their older and now deceased brother in two different revolts against their father’s rule. The oldest of the three, Richard the Lionheart, was a brilliant soldier and probably gay. The middle one was a schemer whom nobody much liked, and the youngest was John, who turned out to be such a psychopath that no subsequent king in Britain has ever been named John from that day to this. Henry wanted John to be his heir, but his incredibly talented and wealthy queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, wanted Richard. Eleanor had led the revolts against her husband, so Henry was keeping her locked in a castle, but let her out periodically to travel with him and help him run things.
Henry eventually chose Richard, but after he died and Richard was king, John tried to usurp the throne while Richard was away on crusade. Richard got captured; his mother (now freed) ransomed him; he resumed the throne, and was killed by a crossbow bolt in a siege. He died without any children, so John became king anyway and was so bad his barons revolted and forced him to sign the Magna Carta, which is the foundation of the freedoms we enjoy today.
History is about people.
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This is the legend about the rise and fall of the Mapogo Coalition.
A few years ago, a coalition of lions prowled around South Africa basically annihilating everything in its path.
That’s not an exaggeration.
They allegedly killed over 100 lions (I’m talking the whole lot—males, females, and cubs) in a mission to dominate the whole of Sabi Sands.
The Six Players
Makhulu (the leader)
Dreadlocks
Pretty Boy
Rasta
Kinky Tail
Mr T. (also nicknamed Satan, for reasons which will become clear)
Humble Beginnings
In their early days, the group was kicked out of the Sparta pride and forced to fend for themselves.
So the six became their own group and began to develop their hunting skills.
This got to the point where they were able to take down rhinos, hippos, and even giraffes, and buffalo.[1]
The First Clash—Cannibals
In the clan’s early days of 2006, they encountered four dominant males upon entering the north of Sabi Sands, which formed part of the Ottawa pride.
The clan killed off one of them and the remaining three were fended off. They now had to deal with the rest of the Ottowas.
So they killed all of the eleven Ottowa cubs.
Mr T. was probably the most violent of the group (hence his nickname Satan). Some reports stated he actually began to eat the cubs.
With a hell of a lot of slaughtering and a bit of cannibalism along the way, it was safe to safe that the Mapogo lion coalition now dominated the entirety of Sabi Sands.
The Second Clash—A Dysfunctional Family
Even though the clan had successfully gone on a huge killing spree, things weren’t going so well back home.
The leader, Makhulu, was constantly fighting with Mr. T. (Satan). In one clash, Makhulu managed to severely injure him.
So the defeated Mr T. went off to sulk and took his brother Kinky Tail with him.
The two broke off from the clan and went north.
The Third Clash—Kinky Tail’s Demise
The lonesome brothers encountered a new clan in June 2010—the Majingilanes. They managed to isolate its leader and killed him in a pretty gruesome way:
Mr. T bit down on the male’s neck, Kinky Tail ripped apart the male’s groin area inflicting tears and bleeding.[2]
They then broke his spine and left him to die.
But disaster struck.
Kinky Tail attacked four of the clan’s male lions. Bad idea. They pinned him down, wounded him, and feasted on him—alive.
Mr T. was too late. When he reached Kinky Tail, there were too many lions and he couldn’t fight them. Unable to save his brother, he had to flee.[3]
The End of Their Reign
Makhulu was last seen (alone) in January 2013, entering Kruger National Park, at the (old) age of 16.
The mighty Mapogo lions have certainly had their rise and fall, and after over a hundred deaths because of them, it’s safe to say that the war is, more or less, over.
Because the ‘standards of our time’ are, as a rule, a serving of steaming manure. They are reflective of nothing, least of all our society or behaviour; a hotchpotch of shiny symbols and airy pretensions taught us by our parents, which the literate do-nothings of any age could have thrown together with equal ease.
I don’t feel the need to look very far at all; in his 1959 book Arabian Sands, the British explorer Wilfred Thesiger (1910–2003) describes his solitary, five-year sojourn in the Empty Quarter of Arabia in the 1940s (himself being only the 3rd Westerner to set foot there). Although he could easily have laid claim to one of the most renowned heritages of progress and arrogance in human history, Thesiger is adamant that the time-warped society he encounters is to be considered on its own terms. For instance, concerning the government traditions of Arabia [this was written before the name Arab was extended to non-Arabians]:
It was obvious that, although [a tribe was situated only miles from the provincial capital], the Sultan of Muscat had little control over them. Arabs rule but do not administer. Their government is intensely individualistic, and is successful or unsuccessful according to the degree of fear and respect which the ruler commands, and his skill in dealing with individual men. Founded on an individual life, their government is impermanent and liable to end in chaos at any moment. To Arab tribesmen this system is comprehensible and acceptable, and its success or failure should not be measured in terms of efficiency and justice as judged by Western standards. To these tribesmen security can be bought too dearly by loss of individual freedom.
Such sentiments are easy to dismiss—much like everything can be, really, with the comfort of an engorged distance. Here is some more of his account, that may shed some light on his opinion:
On previous journeys I had commanded respect as an Englishman, and in the Sudan I had the prestige of being a government official. [The Arabs] at first glance seemed to to be little better than savages… but I was soon disconcerted to discover that, while they were prepared to tolerate me as a source of very welcome revenue, they never doubted my inferiority. They were Muslims and Bedu and I was neither. They had never heard of the English, for all Europeans were known to them simply as Christians, or more probably infidels, and nationality had no meaning for them. They had heard vaguely of [WWII] as a war between the Christians, and of the Aden [colonial] government as a Christian government. Their world was the desert and they had little if any interest in events that happened outside it. They identified me with the Christians from Aden, but had no idea of any power greater than that of Ibn Saud. One day they spoke of a sheikh in the Hadhramaut who had recently defied the government and against whom the Aden levies had carried out some rather inconclusive operations. I realized that they thought that this force was all that my tribe could muster. They judged power by the number and effectiveness of fighting men, not by machines which they could not understand. […]
This did not stop them from asking questions about ‘The Christians’. ‘Did they know God? Did they fast and pray? Were they circumcised? Did they marry like Muslims or just take a woman when they wanted one? How much bride-price did they pay? Did they own camels? Were they tribesmen? How did they bury their dead?’ It was always questions such as these that they asked me. None of them had any interest in the cars and aeroplanes which they had seen in the RAF camp. The rifles with which they fought were all that they had accepted from the outside world, the only modern invention which interested them.
[…] Bedu notice everything and forget nothing. Garrulous by nature, they reminisce endlessly, whiling away with the chatter the long marching hours, and talking late into the night round their camp fires. Their life is at all times desperately hard, and they are merciless critics of those who fall short in patience, good humour, generosity, loyalty, or courage. They make no allowance for the stranger. Whoever lives with the Bedu must accept Bedu conventions, and conform to Bedu standards. Only those who have journeyed with them can appreciate the strain of such a life. These tribesmen are accustomed since birth to the physical hardships of the desert, to drink the scanty bitter water of the Sands, to eat gritty unleavened bread, to endure the maddening irritation of driven sand, intense cold, heat, and blinding glare in a land without shade or cloud. But more wearing still is the nervous tension. I was to learn how hard it is to live crowded together with people of another faith, speech, and culture in the solitude of the desert, how easy to be provoked to senseless wrath by the importunities and improvidence.
With such people he would travel for the next five years in the Rub al’Khali, 650,000 square kilometres (250,000 sq mi, or 120% of France) of scorching sand that would have killed a less prepared group in a matter of hours. The following incident occured after a full month of non-stop march in the desert, by which time they had been reduced to minimal rations and balanced on the brink of starvation—but were so fortunate as to catch a hare.
^ A hare.
Anticipation mounted, for it was more than a month since we had eaten meat… [we threw all our remaining flour in the pot with the hare]. We sampled the soup and decided to let it stew just a little longer. Then bin Kabina looked up and groaned, ‘God! Guests!’
Coming across the sands towards us were three Arabs. [My companions said to one another] ‘They are Bakhit, and Umbarak, and Salim, the children of Mia’, and to me, ‘They are Rashid [our tribe’s people]’ We greeted them, asked the news, made coffee for them, and then Musallim and bin Kabina dished up the hare and the bread and set it before them, saying with every appearance of sincerity that they were our guests, that God had brought them, that today was a blessed day, and a number of similar remarks. They asked us to join them but we refused, repeating that they were our guests.
I hoped that I did not look as murderous as I felt while I joined the others in assuring them that God had brought them on this auspicious occasion. When they had finished, bin Kabina put a sticky lump of dates in a dish and called us [the ‘host’ group] over to feed.
Hospitality is indeed an ‘outmoded’ virtue in modern society, but I hope the point still gets across. The modern student of history, by and large, has never had to live with the practical threat of starvation, inescapable illiteracy, has never had to make a life or death decision for himself or others, and likely has no conception or responsibility for a ‘tribe’ larger than himself and, hopefully, his 2–5 person family. The greatest threat to his well-being is, in all likelihood, the sheer stress imposed by living in the pampered lap of luxury, or the neuroses of a desolate modernity.
Setting this paragon of Humanitas as judge and jury over untold millions whose joys and sufferings he cannot (or will not) fathom has all the grace of an ox in tights. Nothing stops him, of course: indeed, the shelves of any good library groan with the accumulated judgemental drivel of three millenia, and can easily shoulder more. But it sells the human spirit short: when our student of history could, easily, step outside his little box and behold, however momentarily, a greater reality, refusing to do so is tragic.
Incidentally, the author of the previous extracts – Thesiger – used to affect the full manner of a ‘gentleman of the empire’ when, in the last years of his life, he sometimes spoke to roomfuls of university students. This was of course more fiction than fact: that particular ruling class was already a vanishing thing of the past in his youth, and he had never truly been part of it. But the gesture was quite telling when directed to a mass of liberal university students—”I don’t fit in this little room. So do go ahead and judge me – make my day.”
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Yes. And you kindly do the exam. You do it professionally and politely; compassionately and unflinchingly. And you pay close attention because people don’t normally smell that bad without a reason. Typically a serious infection of some sort. Different disease processes/infections do have different smells. Just by one whiff across a hallway I can tell the difference between a lower GI Bleed poop, and C-diff poop. It will never win me anything on Jeopardy, but smell is a skill set.
If you are asking for my go-to “hack” from years of being an ER nurse: I carry a bottle of citrus essential oil in my work bag. Two drops on a mask will help me keep my composure during difficult exams. If I see you approaching my patient’s room and offer you this divine gift: take it. I’m not offering for my benefit. This is just one perk of not being an ass to the nurses.
If you’re asking for a smell I’ll never forget, I have a top 5:
5: There was a gentleman who — due to mobility issues and lack of assistance at home — did not move from his couch for over a month before calling 911. They had to bring him in with the couch cushions still in place because he was so attached that they would have removed most of his skin if they had tried to separate him on the scene.
4: a gentleman who took shelter from a thunderstorm in a port-a-potty and decided that this was now an ideal location to use his drugs. He had a seizure and the port-a-potty tipped over on him before being brought into the ER by EMS.
3: a terribly unfortunate gentleman who had a rare kind of neck cancer where the tumor was growing externally from the side of his neck like a second head. The tumor was being used by maggots like rodents would use plastic tube tunnels to play in. Side note: in order to remove maggots efficiently, take the yankauer off of the end of the suction tubing and crank up the vacuum pressure. Then just slurp up the maggots with the end of the suction tubing. They will all end up neatly in the canister for disposal.
2. Abscessed necrotic brain matter pouring out of this poor lady’s ear.
1.Necrotic tunneling Labial gangrene.
All of these patients were incredibly ill, and several died. None of them needed to feel any worse because of an unprofessional nurse or doctor. Compassionate unflinching care is what they deserved and got. And if I smelled slightly of citrus, no one mentioned it being off putting.
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“With all due respect, you’re not paying us $5,000 so I can carry out quick revenge.”
I’ll never forget that line, spoken by a fully armed contractor hired for my personal protection on the strangest day of my career.
The year was 2014 and Dan is falling apart again.
Dan (not his actual name) shows up in many companies. Dan is intelligent, capable of spectacular results but is incredibly inconsistent. Our Dan once led the entire company in our sales rankings and had four President’s Club plaques in his office.
The only thing Dan was consistent at was being a nice guy. Everyone loved him. He gave his time freely to everyone in the office. Whether you were an intern or a manager, he raised his hand if you needed help.
Dan was in his early 50s and was a family man. Married with two kids in high school, he lived a simple life.
Dan drove us crazy. He could be running along with incredible results for the first six months of the year and then look like a completely different person in the second half. He was either sensational or a complete disaster. There was no in-between with Dan.
Most of the time, it just took a stern conversation. He had four different direct managers in his time with the company. I was several levels above him but saw the same three-step process play out every time.
New manager loves him. Dan is helpful, hustles, delivers great results and is a great team player.
Manager is concerned. Dan is missing deadlines, seems overwhelmed and we’ve had some customers complaints.
Manager is done. The entire office is distracted in putting out Dan’s fires and he just lashed out at a teammate (or some similar incident).
Throughout this process, Dan’s manager talks with him about his performance and encourages him to get his mojo back. Dan agrees and commits to improvement while performance keeps getting worse. Each time, a last straw is added to the figurative camel’s back when Dan erupts on a teammate or manager.
We then put Dan on a written performance plan with the direct language of “If Dan fails to achieve the results in this plan, he will be terminated.”
The performance plan always flips a switch in Dan. He would tell us how much he loves the company and needs the job. He would apologize, promise to improve and then deliver on that promise. Results would go from terrible to great.
I am talking about worst to first kind of turn-arounds. We would go from customer complaints to receiving love letters from his customers.
One year later, the process would start over again.
After this cycle happened too many times, I had a conversation with him.
“If it goes downhill again Dan, there won’t be another written performance plan. We can’t afford to keep disrupting the office. You have to get it together and keep it together. Is there something outside of this office that we can help you with?”
He paused for a long time and opened up. He suffered from depression. He drank too much. His family had confronted him. He was in a bad place.
Our company partnered with a counseling organization for just this type of situation. I offered him a leave of absence if he would enter the program, of which we would pay for 100%. He had to attend every session and stay in the program or we would terminate his employment.
He graciously agreed.
We gave him two months of paid leave and he entered the counseling program. He came back energized and we saw the best of Dan.
For a while.
Soon, the process started again as complaints started surfacing, both from his teammates and customers.
This time, it ended with Dan sending an explosive email to a customer at 2AM. This cringe-inducing email was four paragraphs long and all but called the customer an idiot. It was totally out of his normal character.
This happened on a Friday. The customer forwarded his email to me and several other managers the next morning with Dan copied on the email. This customer shared her plans to post it on her blog and social media accounts.
Dan left me with no choice but to fire him and he knew it.
On Sunday evening, I got a call from Dan’s manager. She was rattled.
Dan knew what was coming on Monday and confided in several people in the office, in the worst of ways.
He told one person that he expected to be fired. He went on to say he deserved it and probably didn’t deserve to be alive. Maybe, he should just end it all.
Startling, but it got worse. He called another employee who happened to be an avid hunter. Without talking business, he asked her questions about handguns and which caliber he should look into.
Damn.
This was the summer of 2014 and two school shootings had just taken place on the West Coast within a week of each other. Hints like this couldn’t be ignored.
My first responsibility as a leader is keeping employees safe. Was Dan likely crying out for help? Probably. Was he going to bring a gun to the office? Highly unlikely. Could we take that assumption to the bank? Absolutely not.
I told our manager to sit tight and I got on the phone with my boss. We were not going to take any chances. He had experience with a security firm and knew the owner.
He arranged for an “armed specialist” to be with me the next morning in the office. To this day, I appreciate how quickly my boss worked to arrange everything. I have fired many people but never in a situation like this.
For the first time in my life, I was headed to a business meeting with a loaded gun.
I talked with our manager in the office and asked her to arrange an office meeting at our satellite office across the street. In essence, I asked her to get everyone out of the main office to start the morning. If something happened, I would be the only employee in the office with Dan that morning.
Next, I called Dan and asked him to meet me the next morning at my office.
I didn’t sleep that night. My imagination kept taking me to dark scenarios. I wanted to tell my wife more of my fears but kept them to myself. I didn’t want her to start imagining all the crazy stuff I was dreaming up.
I met with my bodyguard two hours before I was scheduled to meet with Dan. He was an older gentleman, short and lean. He wore a dress shirt tucked into jeans with a leather bomber jacket on. He gave me his credentials. Twenty years in the military and another twenty years in private security, both overseas and domestic.
He wanted to know where all the entry points to the office were. We walked the perimeter of the building and did the same inside. We walked back to my office where I planned to meet with Dan.
“Too many doors to get here. Also, what if one of your employees comes back to the office and is back here with us? I like the offices in the lobby.”
“OK.”
We walk up front and sit down in one of the lobby offices. He asked me how I planned to conduct the conversation and what I am expecting.
“Well, I can meet with him in this office. I will leave the office door open since no one will be here yet. You can sit right outside the office on that couch.”
“With all due respect, you’re not paying us $5,000 so I can carry out quick revenge.”
It takes me a few seconds to comprehend what he is saying.
“Ian, I won’t do you any good on the couch if he brings a gun into that office with you. I’ll be sitting right next to you.”
“Of course.”
“I will have my gun covered by my jacket but trust that I can get to it quickly. I don’t want to show it and get him more nervous than he already is.”
We agree to announce him as an “HR specialist” hired to assist in the discussion. This sounds much more comforting than telling Dan that my bodyguard will shoot to kill should Dan pull out a gun.
Dan walks through the door on time. I am anything but calm. I am not sure if I am worked up because of potential danger or simply because I am sitting next to a trained killer.
Dan knows what the meeting is about. He sees the paperwork in front of me. I introduce the person on my right who smiles and shakes his hand. I immediately get to the point.
“Dan, today is your last day with the company. We tried to make this work but feel that we need to move on without you.”
“I understand.”
I walk him through the paperwork. All standard stuff. When his benefits end, who to call in HR to learn more about Cobra, severance details, etc. He signs everything quickly. Next, I pivot.
“Dan, you said some things to people in the office that concern me.”
“Oh, that. Is this why you have someone here with you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not going to do anything crazy.”
“Dan, we want to help you continue with the counseling if you are interested.”
“Thank you. I am interested. I’m sorry for scaring everybody.”
I took his computer and access keys to the office, shook his hand and he left without incident. We paid for additional counseling and an outplacement service that helped him find new employment.
Since Dan had already been enrolled and worked with the same counseling organization, we alerted them as to what had happened and they reached out to him immediately after our meeting. He started counseling again that day and they continued to work with him for several months.
Our security detail remained in the lobby the rest of the day, guarding the front door. We took it a step further and paid for him to show up every day for the rest of the week, watching the front entrance.
Excessive? Maybe, but it gave our local managers peace of mind. As an organization, we had the safety of 30 employees to worry about. Many were nervous as word got out about the calls he made over that weekend.
Count me as one of the nervous employees. Scared is a more honest word. Scared he might hurt himself, other employees or me.
It was an incredibly difficult situation as you want to do right by the employee while also protecting the people he works with.
I left work early that day. I went home and hugged my wife and kids for a long time.
Then I poured a tall glass of Scotch.
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Herb Gibson is probably not a name you have heard of.
He had nothing to do with Walmart or Kmart or Target. What this serial business owner did have was an idea:
“Buy it low, stack it high, sell it cheap.”
Sounds familiar? It might be a statement you’d associate with Walmart’s Sam Walton or Kmart’s S.S. Kresge, but Gibson is the man who voiced the concept in 1958—four years before the launch of the Big Three.
It seems a rather obvious philosophy for retail success, but the reason Gibson could not have executed before then was simple: Texas, where he operated 34 distribution warehouses, forbade selling merchandise to individual customers at wholesale prices.
As soon as Texas relaxed that law, he began converting his warehouses into large discount retail establishments. He did so well that the new Gibson’s Discount Centers were soon offering franchises, and by the following year had expanded beyond the state.
One of the towns Gibson’s Discount Center opened was in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where a certain Sam Walton had recently launched his first independent variety store. (He also owned 15 Ben Franklin five-and-dime franchises in other cities, the equivalent of today’s dollar stores).
“(Gibson)…branched out to the square in Fayetteville and started competing with our variety stores. We knew we had to act. He was the only one discounting out this way, and because I had made all those trips back East, I was probably one of the few out here who understood what he was up to. By then, I knew the discount idea was the future.
While that was the immediate trigger, there was a broader reason for large discount stores like Walmart and Kmart emerging around the same time.
Dig into the early history of these stores, you will discover that they grew out of the suburbs and Middle America, rather than in the large cities on the East or West Coasts. Why? That had to do with the fallout of the Second World War.
Up until then, the big cities were the magnet for people as it was where the jobs were. When the war ended, the U.S. government suddenly had a problem. Some 15 million G.I.s were headed back from Europe, Asia and the Pacific, and they needed somewhere to live.
Finding affordable housing in the cities had become almost impossible, and with these mostly young soldiers getting married and starting families, a crisis was developing.
Times of great adversity often lead to great opportunity, and large construction firms sensed theirs. Rather than build on expensive city lands, they bought acres upon acres of outlying farms and fields, and began mass-producing homes on them.
Aerial view of Levittown in Long Island, New York, showing hundreds of small, identical houses set along curved streets. Completed around 1950 on 4,000 acres of potato fields, it formed the template for scores of suburban towns across America. Image: Mark Mathosian
, via Flickr.
Crucially, too, for the returning soldiers, President Roosevelt had introduced the GI Bill
, which, among other things, gave them loan guarantees and made the low-cost 25-year (rather than five-year) mortgage the national standard. In many cases, veterans were able to move into their new homes for little or no money down.
It was the perfect recipe for a suburban boom, and by 1960, the percentage of people living in the suburbs had almost caught up to those living in the central cities.
The explosive growth outside of the cities brought with it opportunities for those willing to think big.
Enter Eugene Ferkauf, who despite his unfortunate-sounding last name, was a rather enterprising New Yorker.
He had started by selling appliances at large discounts from his upstairs loft in 1948. Discounters operated on the fringe of retail at the time, but with the rise of the suburbs, Ferkauf decided to gamble. In 1954, he opened a full-line department store, E.J. Korvette, selling everything from clothes to furniture at well below list prices in the heavily populated New York suburb of Westbury, Long Island.
It was massively successful, and over the next few years, numerous other retailers aped his model, launching 70,000–200,000 square foot discount stores in the suburbs of virtually every major city.
Among them were newcomers to the business like Fed-Mart, Bargain City, Spartan and Unimart, but also several large, respected retailers which launched discount subsidiaries including F.W. Woolworth, L.S. Ayres, and—as the Sixties rolled in—S.S. Kresge (then an 800-store variety chain) and Dayton Co.
You might better recognize those last two by their discount store names, Kmart and Target.
But let’s get back to Sam Walton.
The rise of discount stores wasn’t lost on him. Indeed, as he notes in his autobiography, he “stole as many ideas from Sol Price (of Fed-Mart) as from anybody else in the business.”
In 1960, as the owner of 15 Ben Franklins, he was already the largest independent variety store operator in the U.S.
And yet, he was deeply dissatisfied. Total combined revenues from all 15 stores was a mere $1.4 million—a pittance compared to the $2 million plus that he learnt a single large store could bring in.
But it was only when Herb Gibson opened his discount center in his backyard in 1959 that Walton knew he had to act.
He had already refined the art of discount retailing with his Ben Franklin franchises. Within three years, he used those lessons to launch the first Walmart in Rogers, near Fayetteville.
Crowds outside Walmart’s first store ahead of its grand opening in 1962. The launch ad, inset, notes “Plenty of Parking”—a definite plus with suburban and rural residents.
What then was so special about 1962 that Walmart, Kmart and Target (and Kohl’s for that matter) all launched in the same year?
Nothing more than a coincidence, for they were just a few among many that rushed to take advantage of the explosive suburban growth that began in the Fifties.
The discount retail store was, quite simply, an idea whose time had come.
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