Chairman of the board!

[sammyg2]

I was at our corporate offices in San Antonio all week hob-nobbing with the bigs, yesterday they took me up the the 12th floor where the executives live. Not very many regular folk ever get up there.

I sat in the head chair in the board room, the chair that's reserved for the chairman.
Kinda silly but still kinda neat. I popped off a few BS orders to see how it felt. This room was worth a couple million easy, the chairs were probably $25k a pop. The table was huge and probably cost a couple hundred K. We're talking lavish.

I also spent a half hour or so on the trading floor with the VP of sales and marketing. Totally not what I expected. Very structured, not crazy or wild at all. Just a few hundred very smart people making deals that could save or lose $100k in seconds, and they do that all day.
They have all kinds of stress relievers, ping pong table, nurf darts, nurf frisbees, nurf golf sets, just in case they start to lose it.

BTW the big screens on the trading floor that weren't displaying some sort of stock figures or prices or spread sheets were all tuned to FOX NEWS!

I asked the VP about that, he said Fox is a bit slanted but it the most accurate and timely cable news service out there.

BTW all the VPs I talked to said the proposed cap and trade bill that congress is trying to sneak by will be a disaster of epic proportions on our economy. Not good.

[craigster59]

What time did the Hookers show up?

[fingpilot]

United Service _ _ ?

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by fingpilot

United Service _ _ ?

LOL lets just say it's a publicly traded company with $20 billion in annual revenue.

I was told by one of senior VPs over dinner that the actual cost of this extravagant complex is actually lower than the 4 small buildings in San Antonio they used to work out of.
I told him that it kind of bothers me that they have almost 1000 corporate employees in such a nice building but we peons in the refineries are cutting people left and right and pinching pennies to survive, he actually apologized for that offered an explanation that sounded almost like excuses. Like he really needs to explain anything to a nobody like me. Prolly a career limiting move on my part but I'm already higher up in this company than I really wanted to be. Oh well.

I was there for a leadership seminar with leaders from all the refineries and corporate and after it was all over I was asked if I might be interested in participating as a facilitator at next year's seminar.
I said maybe. I've got allot of experience presenting to groups (gift of gab, good line of BS), it's fun but it's allot of work.

Oh, side note: Bill Klesse, the CEO, chaiman of the board, and president of Valero was in the SA airport this morning. I didn't bother him, he prolly doan remember me but one of our managers I was with who used to work with Klesse talked to him.

Klesse usually flies private jets but this was a personal trip so he was slumming with the commoners. Kinda cool that he has his own corporate jet complete with pilot at his beckon call but on personal trips he doesn't use it. Gotta respect that.
http://people.forbes.com/profile/william-r-klesse/83609