What About Bob?

The President of Citi, Bob W. came to KC last week. As usually happens when a big-wig is in town, all the collectors are told to dress up and we all hear about cleaning our desk area and keeping the shred bins emptied etc. What told me that this was different was when security moved to parking barriers that have been blocking the circle drive since 9/11. Mere mortals weren't allowed to drive there much less park - but the caravan of 5 (count 'em FIVE) white SUVs did park there ... in the no parking area no less!!
All managers got to/were required to attend a meeting to hear from Bob and meet some of his executive staff. The presentation was progressing as normal and really hadn't gone over anything new when Bob threw us all for a loop. He pointed out an error in the slide ... walked over to the screen and pointed out how the graph should look .. and here is the fun part ... actually called out his Chief of staff for getting it wrong and teased him for the mistake. Suddenly he had everyone's attention.
A little later in the meeting, Bob was rattling off a few numbers and when he got to CitiFinancial, he remarked that he wasn't sure exactly how many customers they had - but it must be at least 3.9 million. Everybody laughed. If you don't get the joke, then you probably missed all the news last couple weeks about Citi losing 3.9 million customer's data that was being sent to one of the credit bureau companies. The head of CitiFinancial Kevin K. was in the room and sheepishly laughed as he was roasted for losing things. I can't imagine what happened to the poor UPS guy that lost it ... and his boss .... and his boss ....
Bob was great! not only did he seem to have a handle on what our business was (granted - it's the biggest portion of Citi's income) but he also knew what it would take to make for a good meeting. "We" gave him CD of KC Jazz music, a Negro Leagues Baseball Jacket, and a replica of Truman's "The Buck Stops Here" sign for his desk. If I count correctly, there are at least 15 levels of corporate ladder between Bob and me (I can't even see further up than the next 6 rungs). It's nice to see that he has a sense of humor even if he does need 5 SUVs to go anywhere.