Dream Log: Clueless Corporate Chairman

I dreamed I was in NYC, and I agreed to take over a non-vinyl music store, even though I have never shown any aptitude for business. The store was bare white walls illuminated by bare light bulbs on the street-level floor of a big 1920's skyscraper, the previous tenants had moved everything out.

I already had a couple of employees in this space, and they came with me to another one whose interior resembled a 4-car parking garage in a suburban apartment building, except that there were no vehicles and no fuel smells.

More employees kept joining the company, and if any of them doubted my competence, they hid it well. I ran motivational drills to foster esprit de corps. In the meantime some of the employees did what they would do in a music store, actually buying and selling the CD's and keeping records and so forth, without my having to ask them to do it, which was good, because I didn't even know any of the words involved. If an employee came to me for help or advice I would usually either slap them on the back and tell them they were doing great, or tell them to ask another one of the employees. I began to get the feeling that this method was actually working well and that the company might turn out to be a success.

Adjacent to the part of the business space which resembled 4 parking spaces, there was an alcove with windows that let in a lot of sunlight. Some employees, on their own initiative but with my praise, were turning the alcove into a place that looked like a colonial American alcove. There came a problem when they were starting a process which turned some beer into something that smelled like the animal poop in a colonial American barn. Some of the employees were upset about the poop smells. I solved this problem by simply telling them to use other smells, like the smells of budding flowers. Then I poured a pint of the beer, made sure that it did not smell like poop, and took a sip.

It occurred to me that I was not certain that any of the employees was as old as half my age. (In addition to my other shortcomings as boss, I had not looked at any of their applications, where I could have learned their ages.) It seemed wrong to me to continue to abuse their naive, misplaced trust in me. I decided that the best thing to do would be to pick one of them to replace me. I was beginning to think about who should replace me when I woke up.