Norm, you go get a grip, girl!!!
Your inability to refrain from laughter at inopportune moments is causing me serious concern about your suitability for the Investor Relations post at FBN.
Norm, if you continue to lose your composure when faced with the pea-shooter wit of your FBN associates, how on earth do you hope to keep a straight face when shareholders call you, demanding to know why the stock went down?
Remember, there will come a day when we at FBN will have to endure the dreaded "conference call", where the FBN top brass recount in excruciating detail the full horror of the "ramp-up" and "developmental" expenses that caused such stupendous losses in the quarter just ended.
We will then endure a series of pointless, rambling questions from ill-informed stock weasels, er, analysts. If you can't be a team player, and bottle up the chortles while we listen to these pompous twenty-somethings, you have no future at FBN.
Here's an example of the kind of torture you will be subjected to:
Sultry Conference Hostess:
"Your next question comes from Russell Motormouth, of Whiny Securities."
RM: "Yeah, first off, a really great quarter, guys, congratulations, yeah, awesome, you, ah, really blew the doors off this one, yeah, great job, um, I guess I really have a two-part question, I wonder if you could help me understand in more detail, I know you talked about this already, TED, but I'm so thick I need to hear you say the same thing over and over again in different ways, like, the DSO's relative to the currency reserve looked way off the trendline, I was wondering if you could break that out by market segment and geographic area to, ah, give us clearer picture of the way you see this coming together going forward, and then I'm trying to really get a handle on who your competition is, since I don't know anything about your business, and I'll probably be assigned to cover the mining industry next week, so I'd like if you could paint a picture of the core growth drivers you see as a strategy or synergy thing going forward, and maybe give us a sense of, well, why the financial results you just described were so far removed form the estimates I sent to my clients..."
I know it's not easy, Norm, but try keeping a straight face, in front of a mirror maybe, while you have someone read this to you over and over again. (Earnings season is in full swing, so there are plenty of real conf. calls you can practice on too.)
Once you have overcome this challenge, we need to prepare you for the "Investment Conference", where we will all socialize with hundreds of "Russells" at deluxe resort hotels. Keeping a straight face in these circumstances is perhaps the ultimate achievement in corporate America, but let's take it one step at a time. Let's set up a goal, shall we, Norm? I'd like you to be able to listen to an entire analyst conference call, without snorting milk through your nose, by the end of next week. Is that a fair goal, Norm? I think it's a fair goal.
We're all counting on you.
Kevin Watson
VP - Humane Resources
FBN - Forcing Square Pegs Into Round Holes |
