Sales

I for one like Budweiser, or at least I did before I lost my taste for alcohol. These days I drink a shot of cheap white wine in a full glass of water. I used to drink micro-brews but it gave me terrible gas (blue smoke paint peelers, as an acquaintance in Phoenix termed it).

There was a parable circulating back in the 90's, maybe in the 80's, that said if you wanted to succeed in business, you had to be like a duck: all calm and serenity above the water (where it shows), but paddling furiously beneath the surface. I thought it was a stupid idea. I still think it is a stupid idea, but now I am beginning to understand.

Communicating with people can be difficult and time consuming, especially if they are you superiors. If people think their status is higher than yours, then they don't have to listen to you, you have to listen to them. They may want to tell you a long story, or just deliver terse comments. If they are polite, they may listen to you for a short while, or they may ignore you completely. They are not going to sit patiently while you go on and on about something that bores them, and anything you say will be boring because you are not as important as they are.

So if you are trying to get your superiors to do something, like approve your project, it is going to be very time consuming and tedious on your part. You will have to listen to them drone on as long as they like, and pitch your project whenever you get a chance. If their status, real or imagined, is much higher than yours, you will get maybe a minute to speak for every hour you spend with them. So if may take weeks to get your idea across, and then it will probably get rejected because of something their girlfriend/boyfriend said over the weekend.