The Most Arrogant Thing I Ever Did

Here's an article I wrote on the metro one day in the spring of 2003 but never published anywhere about a stint in international business...

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The most arrogant thing I ever did, happened sometime at the end of the year 1999. At the time I was working as an agent for a Dutch wind turbine manufacturer, a strange job for a filmmaker, but I was lost, between professions and looking for a new but temporary challenge.

Spain was (and still is) the fastest growing country in the world for wind energy, and this sector had moved itself from a world of ideologists in sandals to bankers and top managers in tailor-made suits. It was the perfect time to get on that train and make good money on the way, as an intermediary.

I was working with a board member of the Dutch company, a Brit called Kevin, a senior businessman and at the same time my second father and business mentor. If I have any integrity or honour in the way I cuurently conduct my business, it is because of what I learned from him. Besides, Kevin was a remarkable man who always got on with everyone and had the curious credit to his name that he organized Live-Aid together with Bob Geldoff at the end of the 80's. I have always loved the man and even today we are in touch regularly.

Anyway, that day at the end of 1999. We were working on a very big deal with a Spanish company. It involved the sale of some 300 wind turbines, a deal worth about 150 million Euros. My commission on this deal would have been over a million. Of course, for all sorts of reasons about which Kevin and I could write an interesting book, the deal never went through.

However, that day, we had made considerable progress around the conference table at the offices of the Spanish company in Madrid. The Dutch managing director had flown in that morning, along with the technical director, and we'd been looking at spreadsheets all morning, discussing percentages and the like. But, lunch time had arrived and in Spain (unlike in Holland), that is a signal to stop and engage in a tradition just as important to any business deal as the spreadsheets: socializing while having lunch together. Getting to know each other. Delightful.

We were seven people and the Spanish party had just paid the bill for the elaborate and very satisfying lunch (to start with, we had some of the best Spanish cured ham I ever had, and probably another two main dishes, of course followed by desert and coffee and everything exquisite to the bones).

When walking outside, all suited up like kings, we were chattering away waiting for the cars to be driven up in front of us, suddenly, a beggar approached us. And this is when it happened.

The man, obviously a homeless person for his poor attire and hygiene, asked one of the Dutch people for money (in Spanish, which they didn't understand of course). Within a second, I had grabbed into my right pocket and fished out a 100 peseta coin, which I pushed into the man's hand, turning around him so that his only option would be to walk on. Besides, very few people give a whole 100 pesetas and he was probably happy with his catch. He also knew it was time to shuffle along. Nevertheless, I felt horrible.

Who wants a good party among business people who are DOING A DEAL see spoiled by reality? A few noses were raised, the car arrived and back we went to the conference table and the spreadsheets.

I have often felt that being involved in this top-level of business, discussing millions as if they are slices of bread, creates a very false personal reality for its participants. I have experienced this myself on more than one occasion. The perceived power which comes with 'the deal' is tremendously attractive, and to be among like-minded people can alter one's identity into thinking that the world turns around your little group. Most other people around you become irrelevant, workers who are lucky to be at the executive end of your brilliance. And if the world outside only knew what important things we were discussing around the conference table... I often felt that I was doing the most important thing I could be doing at that moment, driven by the euphoria of the deal in the powerful company of suits, ties and business class flights.

But all you need to break that thin piece of glass on which your false perceptions rest is a homeless person asking for money. I have often wondered why I gave him money, where I hardly ever do (I do give to buskers and other musicians, because I want them to keep playing). And maybe my colleagues at the time thought I was very kind to the man, and I scored some points with them. But deep in my heart I am ashamed to acknowledge that I gave the man the money to get rid of him. I didn't want to come down from the high we were all in, and face the harsh reality of the growing gap between rich and poor. And what was 100 pesetas compared to the commission I was about to score? Zilch!

That gap by the way is only ever recognized by the poor, never by the rich. Have you ever heard a wealthy person say: "Oh yes, in my country there is a tremendous gap between rich and poor?" I don't think so.

I left the wind business a year later, after having done a much smaller deal (my goal was one sales contract, to see it through to the end) and making a respectable commission for which I have been in court fighting some of the very same people who were at that luncheon, to actually get it paid, for nearly two years now. Business for business, it's boring.

Never again. I'll stick to filmmaking.

Post Script - ironically, the Dutch company went bust on the back of the smaller deal, and I received just enough commission to buy a second-hand car. I have never shed a tear over that.