BEN VENUE LABS?

An outfit with the unlikely name of "Ben Venue" Labs (illiterate French CEO, or what?) was featured in a NYT article today, in which a company spokesperson decries the lack of "qualified" job seekers. They do, however have many fine employees. One of the persons they pointed to was a machine operator who had been employed by the company for 15 years. This guy operated some kind of Buck Rogers machine that, see, you plug in some numbers here and it makes you a fully operational aluminum gizmo. Apparently the company needs 15 more guys like this but they can't find any. Seems they went through 3600 applicants (you really can't make this stuff up, can you?) and found NOBODY they could hire 'cause nobody knew how to operate the machine in question. Now, Ned is no Master of the Universe, or a Captain of Industry, or even a Sergeant at Arms for that matter, but he figures if you have somebody who knows how to operate the machine, why not hire the best people you can find and GET THIS GUY TO SHOW THEM HOW TO OPERATE IT!
After this starburst of creative ideation, Ned feels perhaps he should abandon writing, gardening, and Cruzan Blackstrap Rum for business consulting at the highest corporate level.
Seriously, one of the mistakes Ned's contemporaries often make is to overestimate the intelligence of the average company honcho. Given the mess they have made of the economy over the past three years (aided by those geniuses in the Bush regime of course), CEOs and Boards of Directors like those of AIG, Lehman Brothers, Citigroup, GM, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, BP, etc seem to be dumber than a bag of spanners, except in one thing: they certainly know how to extort money from the government and feather their own nest, while laying off thousands of Americans and "outsourcing" their jobs to India.
Ned's poster person for the entire era? Carly Fiorina, who was reportedly so incompetent as CEO of HP that the Board kicked her out (with a $42 million golden parachute and her own jet). This person, not content with failure at the highest corporate level, is now RUNNING FOR SENATOR FROM CALIFORNIA. [Update: she lost big.]
As Ned said before, you just can't make this stuff up.