The corporation had the soul of a Russian novelist: there was always the trust that if they just got the name right everything else would follow. The long grey line of CEOs must've longed for something meaty like "Alexandrovna Yegorushka", something around which you could write a narrative.

Because narrative was really the unstated corporate mission. Everybody needed a "story". CEOs needed something to tell the Board, the President needed something to tell the CEO, VPs needed something to tell the President, directors needed something to tell the VPs, managers needed something to tell directors and I needed something to tell my manager. I needed to tell of all the wonderful things I'd done, which was mostly to try
to keep my Alexandrovna from hurting herself since over the past twelve years she'd experienced five name changes, seven reorganizations, one teenaged rebellion, two mid-life crisises, and four mission statements. One memorable drunken outing in lower Manhattan resulted in her buying another company just before the stock market crashed. The company symbol, a bear, was proudly resurrected twice before being rejected, at least for now, as being "too aggressive".

This had caused me considerable effort since I was in charge of the removal and reinsertion of the bear from all computer-generated letters. I had a story to tell here, since I'd caught on to my mistress's capricousness and automated the removal and reinstallment of the bear saving thousands of dollars but also triggering a lengthy and expensive examination into what other processes that were subject to change could be automated. This resulted in my introduction to something called the Business Meeting (hereafter referred to as the BM, not necessarily to be confused with 'bowel movement').