Dilbert leaves the cubicle. (Lifestyle).You know things have changed when a previously successful executive recruiter like Thomas Stern resorts to moonlighting as a comic strip comic strip, combination of cartoon with a story line, laid out in a series of pictorial panels across a page and concerning a continuous character or set of characters, whose thoughts and dialogues are indicated by means of "balloons" containing written speech. artist. His muse? A robotic but likeable like·a·ble adj. Variant of likable. Adj. 1. likeable - (of characters in literature or drama) evoking empathic or sympathetic feelings; "the sympathetic characters in the play" likable, appealing, sympathetic chief executive who...must...control...everything. Stern calls the strip CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. Dad. "CEOs have to get used to people making fun of them," opines Opines are low molecular weight compounds found in plant crown gall tumors produced by the parasitic bacterium Agrobacterium. Opine biosynthesis is catalyzed by specific enzymes encoded by genes contained in a small segment of DNA (known as the T-DNA, for 'transfer DNA') Stern, 47. "CEO jokes are getting to be almost as common as lawyer jokes." Stern invented the strip, below, 18 months ago after business slowed at his search firm in Woodland Hills, Calif. Interest in the strip lagged until Enron tanked and CEO bashing emerged as the national zeitgeist. Since then, he's sold 75 installments to a newspaper in the Midwest. "There's a lot of resentment out there," Stern observes, "and nothing fuels humor more than hostility--the Marx Brothers proved that." Stern's inspiration is his Type A executive father, who ran several television and cable companies through the '70s. Father and son had a tumultuous relationship that only improved after Stern began appealing to his father's sense of play. Now Junior greets Senior with raillery: "How are you, you bastard!" "Everybody walks on eggshells around CEOs," Stern explains. "So to be treated like a regular guy is a bit of a relief." A former comedian and comedy writer, Stern believes CEOs need to recollect rec·ol·lect v. rec·ol·lect·ed, rec·ol·lect·ing, rec·ol·lects v.tr. To recall to mind. See Synonyms at remember. v.intr. To remember something; have a recollection. their humanity to regain respect. "They're going to need humor as a survival mechanism," he claims. "If CEO Dad can do for CEOs what my sense of humor Noun 1. sense of humor - the trait of appreciating (and being able to express) the humorous; "she didn't appreciate my humor"; "you can't survive in the army without a sense of humor" sense of humour, humor, humour has done for my relations with my father, it will give them a lighter touch." |
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