Lessons for Corporate America – If you want a real success story, read about a stripper. Because the best word to describe strippers is inspirational. Actually, it’s probably naked, but it should be inspirational.

I am standing at the airport with some colleagues waiting for a much delayed flight to attend a company Kool-Aid drinkathon.  One of the people is less of a colleague and more of an asshole.  I have quietly dubbed him Big Papa in the least affectionate way possible.  And by quietly, I mean that everyone in the office knows this (except for him) and now calls refers to him as such.  And no, he is not the Big Papa that is dating the wig-wearing crazy white chick on The Real Housewives of Atlanta.  Not that I have ever watched that crap.  Because I haven’t. 

Okay, I have.  But I didn’t enjoy it.   

Okay, I enjoyed it.  But I am not buying NeNe’s book.

Anybore, the airport. We were having one of those conversations you have with people that you really don’t have anything to say to whilst anxiously waiting for the comedians at Southwest to stop telling bad jokes and call your freaking boarding group for line-up. 

Someone says, “So, what is everyone reading?”

Colleague #1: Oh. My. God. I am almost done with The Tipping Point.  (Reaches into bag and holds it up as if it she realized that she got the Golden Ticket and now her Grandpa will miraculously be able to walk and take her to Wonka land).  It is Life. Changing.  Mind.  Altering. Utterly.  Amazing.

Just as I am about to ask if we are talking about a book or a bag of mushrooms… 

Colleague #2: (pulls book out of bag with the pride of a child that just pooped on the potty) That is CRAZY! I am reading Gladwell’s Outliers – I read The Tipping Point and I. Loved. It.  That book totally helped me look at things in a new way.  I will so lend this to you after I am done. Which will be soon, because I can’t put it down.

Big Papa: Both amazing books. Blah, blah, blah, paradigm shift.  Blah, blah, blah, critical mass.  Blah, blah, blah, YAWN.

Colleague #3:  I haven’t read Gladwell yet – it is on my list.  I am reading Good to Great.  It’s fascinating to see how companies went from, like, good to great. You know? Like, they started off okay and then they started doing different things and making improvements and stuff and those improvements helped them get from…well…good to great.

At this point, my smile is as twisted and stretched like Brittany Spears’ sanity.   Please just call the boarding group and end this.  I have two free drink vouchers that are burning a hole in my liver and if I don’t cash them in soon my veil of interest is going to fade like MJ’s skin. 

Duck. Duck. Duck. Duck. GOOSE.

Big Papa: So, what are you reading? (Points his chin towards me, as if the chin is the new index finger, to inform me that is in fact my turn to play What business-trendy book are you reading for the sole purpose of possibly being able to reference it to strike up a common-ground conversation with the president of the company in hopes of him making the realization that you are the Susan Boyle of his business – a raw and beautiful undiscovered talent disguised as a troll?)

 Now I could have lied.  Maybe I should have.  I could have named any one of the hundreds of big-duh, I-wouldn’t-need-to-read-this-book-if-common-sense-was-actually-a-common-part-of-my-life books that people are constantly referencing.  Because they think that reading about someone else’s success or failure somehow makes them a leader instead of a mere reader.  But I am nothing if not honest. 

Me: Diablo Cody’s Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of An Unlikely Stripper. 

Long pause accentuated by nods, smirks and the sound of eyebrows forcibly making the forehead skin to crinkle.

Colleague #2:  Hmmm….you’re reading a book about a stripper?

Me:  It’s not about just any stripper.  It’s Diablo Cody – you know, the one that wrote Juno?  (Blank stares).  Juno?  The movie about the pregnant teenager that was all the rage two years ago because it was awesome.  And also because the screen-writer, Diablo Cody, was once a stripper. 

Big Papa: So that’s really what you’re reading?  That’s pretty funny.  I didn’t expect that at all.  I understand, though.  At least once a year, I like to read a purely mindless book too. 

Me:  I don’t know that this is so much of a “mindless read”.  When I picked it up, I thought it was the kind of gritty American success story that Lifetime movies are made of.  Talented girl, strips to pay the bills but writes to free her soul.  But, it’s actually about a girl works at ad agency in Minnesota and is bored, so she starts stripping because she thinks it’s sexy and dirty in a good way.  So, while the stripping doesn’t make her as much of a great American success story as I thought it would, it does make her a rockstar.  And really, if you think about it, she was an admin at an ad agency and now she owns an Oscar, has created a show that is produced by Spielberg, and has made teenage pregnancy, multiple personality disorder and stripping infinitely cooler.  One can only imagine the impact she has had on the sales of orange flavored Tic-Tacs.  She went from painfully mediocre to incredibly awesome, which I think just may be a teensy bit better than going from good to great. It’s actually pretty damn inspiring. 

And without a word, just a small and uncertain laugh from my dear colleagues, Southwest got their shit together, boarded the flight and I made friends with the best free beer a girl could ask for and finished my book, dreaming of strippers and Oscars and boys named Paulie. 

So, I leave next week for my next business trip, which promises to be filled with the same awkward pre-drink airport conversation, which means I am due for a trip to the bookstore.  Because I changed my mind.  I am going to get NeNe’s book.