I caught a ten-foot wave this morning, what else matters?
This is the problem.
Here’s Ed Hillary two days after climbing Everest and he’s standing at the bus stop in Namche Bazaar waiting for number 60 to Kathmandu and some busy little collector is hassling him for the fare. This fellow’s jingling his change bag and potting away in Ed’s face for the money. Jabber jabber jabber. Doesn’t he know .. can’t he see it in my eyes {this is Ed thinking} .. I am no longer of this earth, because –
‘ I’VE JUST CLIMBED MOUNT EVEREST… !! ‘
This is what Ed’s thinking, and righteously so. So where’s the respect? .. plus the free ride out of town, those Kathman nightclubs wait for no man.
Surfers suffer from the same lack of recognition. We may be a modest group of supremely talented and daring opportunists but there are times when people should know who they are dealing with. Especially those colleagues in the office, the ones whose sporting interests revolve around score-cards and betting tickets, female mud wrestling. Lingerie football. Soccer. Golf!
As an aside, it has been clinically proved* that the higher the floor you have climbed in The Corporation the more meaningless has become your sporting life, ergo the less you have in common with the fellow sitting opposite you this morning. You being the Chief Financial Officer. The fellow opposite (that’s us) has spent the dawn hours this morning chasing down eleven of the biggest waves at Newport Peak. It was so big that Nick Carroll had a look at Warriewood first.
Today, June 14, 2012. Wait for the magazines.
The CFO is examining the prepared cashflow estimates that should forecast the company’s recent acquisition of a once major chain of surf-wear stores. Pages of spreadsheets and all your work. This stuff you do in your sleep, just like the original accountants did. Which probably explains a lot because you came over with the buy-out.
The CFO is a sallow little fellow with an untidy stomach. There is an odour about him that is hard to define, possibly cloves and horsham weed yet he holds immense power, immense, and here he crouches over your estimates, picking away at them – finding things – and he’s writing himself little notes for later. Every one of them a query, a brutish little series of questions that will probably mean a late finish today to get it all done again and there goes the afternoon session. Plus he breathes through his nose, and his glasses are smeared.
The CFO looks up at last, there you are, and he asks why the receivables appear to have blown out to 720 days in the first half of the year when the payables are being settled in 60 days. Pause.
Inventory he enquires, from 1 mill to 5.75 mil in the first six months and no growth in sales for the same period. Pause. The bank overdraft .. from zero to 3.5 mill in six months and have we negotiated this generous facility yet, he asks.
Pause.
and you know what, you couldn’t give a fuck, and you know why?
‘ BECAUSE YOU CAUGHT A TEN-FOOT WAVE THIS MORNING…!!’
* the ponds institute
petebowes.com 
Take the severance package if you can get it. (It’s fair to lie and cheat if you have to) No severance package? You know what you have to do.