(The story you are about to read is true, as far as I've been able to determine. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.)
Alfred B. Martensite is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Strumdum Industries, Inc.. He has been in this position for five years or so. Strumdum Industries got their start in a Milwaukee garage in 1977, when an electronics experimenter developed a design for a low powered FM transmitter that went on to fill a niche need for government and military customers. The original founder did not fall into the paradigm that Strumdum was a transmitter company, but instead that Strumdum was a communications company. Although the founder is no longer with them, he hired Mr. Martensite in the early days, and Alfred B. Martensite provided oversight for the development of relays and routers as part of the Internet infrastructure.
Alfred B. Martensite is a rare breed of CEO. He is technically brilliant, a shrewd businessman with a strong sense of ethics, and has an empathy with his employees that far surpasses that of other CEOs. Morale is high, his employees are allowed a work/life balance that enables them to spend time with their families, and benefits are excellent. He runs the company this way since he wants to see Strumdum Industries expand. He wants to grow the business. He thinks long-term; he's more interested in where Strumdum will be in five years rather than where Strumdum will be in the next quarter. He's donated a lot of money to his alma mater. He visits his alma mater to meet with the Chairman of the Electrical Engineering department once or twice a year.
On these visits, Mr. Martensite is accompanied by two other Strumdum executives. Their names are Dr. Norman Fishbinder, who is the Vice President of Research & Development, and Dr. Chin McGarrett, who is the Vice President of Engineering and Chief Engineer. They visit the University of Dallas, which has not only produced Alfred B. Martensite, but also graduates engineers that Strumdum is very much interested in. Strumdum is headquartered in Roosevelt Park, Texas, about forty-five minutes from the University of Big D, as the locals refer to it, and Strumdum believes in hiring local talent.
Their most recent visit, shortly after the election, was quite telling in addition to being productive. The meeting between the executives and the Department Chair went very well, as they usually do. The Department Chair took them on a tour. The tour included the engineering laboratories of the University, which the executives have seen on previous visits, but the executives want to meet the graduate students and press the flesh, because these executives know that their competition will also be interested upon acquiring the talents of these students upon their graduation. Quite a few of the students are from China, India, Malaysia, and Korea. Yes, there are some Americans in there, as well as some Germans. Last I heard, there's also an Egyptian and a New Zealander there too.
After the tour, there's always a discussion in a conference room with the Department Chairman and most of the available professors. Strumdum is quite interested in the curricula that the University of Dallas offers their students, as that Stumdum has some niche specialties and they want to make sure that there are future engineers in the pipeline. Lunch is served in that conference room, which Mr. Martensite has arranged to be catered, because Mr. Martensite is very interested in his business relationship with the Department Chair, and the Department Chair of course, is interested as well, as that Strumdum's been known to frequently award consulting contracts to professors as well as scholarships to those students they deem promising.
The meeting ends, and it's time for the Strumdum executives to return to Roosevelt Park. It's nearing two in the afternoon, and they want to be ahead of the rush hour traffic known to plague the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. It's a beautiful day in Texas as they leave the building, to walk to where they are parked.
On their way out, they notice a spectacle. As I've said in one of the preceding paragraphs, this was shortly after the election. The spectacle that draws their attention are a group of students protesting the election of Donald Trump. He's not their President. They don't like him. They want him stopped. They want him stopped, but their demands do not stop there.
Dr. McGarrett notices that the students all appear to be white affluent Americans. Dr. Fishbinder notices that too, and so does Mr. Martensite. They stop to read the signs.
The students want free birth control. Those who are female and those who want to be female want free tampons. They want free tuition. They want to be excused from the final exams as that they're very traumatized about how the election went. They want their safe spaces, and many of them possess coloring books and Playdoh. Some are into the aromatherapy thing. Othes are not. But there's one thing in common with all of them: all of them are angry, and all of them don't want to attend class anymore.
As these executives look at this, they are pondering. What's up with these snowflakes? they ask themselves. They look at this for five, maybe ten minutes, after which they start their return to their offices in Roosevelt Park as that there's work to be done at Strumdum.
On the drive back, they ask themselves. What's happening to our country? What's wrong with their parents? Hey, did you notice that the lab we saw had a much higher proportion of foreign students than we saw last year?
Later on this year, actually next month to be specific, Strumdum will be sending out their recruiters to college campuses around the country. The University of Dallas will of course, be one of those campuses. The snowflakes will be there in their safe spaces, and many of those foreign students will show up at the on-campus interviews wearing suits and discussing in detail their senior projects since they want to work for Strumdum.
Who do you think Strumdum Industries will want to hire?
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