Status anxiety

I recently heard an apocryphal story about a tycoon - let's call him M, who has been facing more than his fair share of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. With expenditure way above income, he had what accountants call 'cash flow issues' with the banks hounding him and the CBI giving him grief; in short he was up shit creek without the proverbial paddle. It was late December and without quite realising it M found himself wandering into a nearby church, drawn by the peal of Christmas bells. In he went seeking spiritual solace, followed hopefully by divine assistance in dealing with his toils and troubles. With commendable zeal he beseeched the Almighty to rescue him from the snares his enemies had laid for him, when all of a sudden, he realised he was not alone. Seated in the pew behind him was a scrofulous vagrant of questionable hygiene in search of divine intercession for a far more mundane cause: the price of a hot meal.

M did his best to ignore the man but was eventually driven to fury by his insistent whining. Unable to handle the competition for heavenly blessings or deal with his competitor's litany of woe any longer he pulled out his wallet, snatched the first banknote that came to hand and crumpling it into a ball, hurled it at the beggar saying, "Buzz off and have your meal." The terrified tramp scrabbled around on the floor for the banknote, found it and hot-footed it from the church whereupon M knelt down, clasped his hands together with renewed fervour and said, "Ok God, now can I have your undivided attention?"

Modern tycoons occasionally behave like wayward rock stars: petulant, ill-mannered kid-ults with an attitude problem. But are they to blame or is it us? Is our kick-down-kiss-up attitude, our collective gasp of awe, our tendency to gush, "OMG, he's worth x billion" coupled with our fundamental inability to separate the man from the moolah that fuels this warped sense of entitlement? Lennon, John not Vladimir, once memorably observed, "Man, when you're surrounded by an army of bootlickers, yes-men and guys who are paid to be nice to you, is there anyone you can really trust?"  Vladimir Lenin may have felt the same but probably enjoyed Soviet pomp and ceremony far too much to come up with any snappy one-liners. 

It is remarkable how many otherwise sensible people consider it mandatory to preface their breathless reportage of encounters with the rich and famous with, "And you know he didn't act like a big-shot at all. He never mentioned his Gulfstream or Swiss chalet or private golf course even once during our conversation." Yeah right, and the Cauvery water issue will be settled with a kabbadi match between RCB & CSK…

An old friend of mine had planned a reunion with a classmate who now heads a global conglomerate. In honour of his famous houseguest, he went to great lengths to sanitise his house prior to her arrival. Not, as you may have imagined from dust and termites, but from the offending presence of the rival cola. Despite his due diligence, he was laid low by an empty bottle (left behind by a careless nephew) bearing the competitor's logo which shot forward with an audible clink when he braked hard at a traffic light. Apparently this caused a distinct chill in the relationship and instead of nostalgic anecdotes about Ramu the gardener and bun-anda at the college canteen, the cola wars began. For want of a nail, or in this case, a bottle bearing the wrong logo, a kingdom was lost. I consoled my buddy by telling him what Steve Jobs asked John Sculley, the former head of Pepsi, at his job interview, "John, decide, do you want to change the world or do you want to go on selling coloured water all your life?" 

Status anxiety is a peculiar phenomenon which affects both the nervous Nellies and the movers and shakers to whom they kow-tow; the constant stream of adulation on the part of the former results in the latter lacking a sense of proportion. A friend who had been unsuccessfully trying to get an appointment with a former colleague who is currently the CEO of a major bank was understandably bitter about getting the corporate run-around and being fobbed off by secretaries with "boss is in a meeting" excuses. He finally ran into his old (elusive) pal at a party and unburdened himself, "Yaar, don't get used to having your ass kissed. One of these days when you get the boot, it will hurt much more.