Years Of Networking, Glad-Handing Sabotaged By Coworker's Good Idea

SEATTLE—After devoting nearly a decade of his life to brown-nosing and back-scratching every person who might have the authority to promote him, 38-year-old Westlake Electronic Supplies employee Benjamin Golliver saw his professional ambitions shattered Monday by a coworker’s single good idea. “I feigned interest in people’s children, I took squash lessons, I went on a three-day kayak trip to Puget Sound, and for what?” Golliver asked. “So goddamn Bill Belgiorno could swoop in with his sound, resourceful plan to reduce corporate travel costs and snatch the assistant manager of operations position right out from under me? What a sick, backwards world we live in.” Golliver said he plans to respond to the incident by spending the next five years furiously sucking up to assistant manager of operations William T. Belgiorno.