Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, January 12, 2004.

The banana is the perfect morning snack food. They're sweet, they're filling, and they give you a gentle boost of energy that wanes with equal subtlety, unlike the rocket takeoff and crash of, say, caffeine and Pop-Tarts. The problem with bananas, though, is that they eventually ripen. There are two types of people in this world: those who prefer bananas green-to-yellow and those who prefer bananas yellow-to-brown. I call the former group "right," and the latter group "horribly, horribly wrong."

At my first job after graduating college, I worked in a department with a man named Wayne who, among other things, was the wrong kind of banana eater. He would shake his head in disbelief as I would struggle to snap the thick, sinewy peel from a barely yellow banana and then munch the alum-like fruit that drew moisture till my saliva glands ached. And I would dry-heave as Wayne would lightly pull the greasy, black, paper-like peel away from one of his bananas and let the pungent fruit complete its last step of decay inside his mouth.

Soon, however, our mutual revulsion turned to mutual benefit. I would confidently buy a large bunch of bananas at the beginning of a week knowing that by late Wednesday, I could exchange with Wayne what I didn't consume for a batch fresh off the boat from Costa Rica.

There were other benefits with working with Wayne. He was quite a bit older than me, in his mid-50's. He had worked at various rungs of corporate ladders and had returned to the lower ones where I was starting because he preferred it. Wayne said that, at first, this was because he didn't want to become a jerk. To him, executives were invariably jerks, and he wondered what was it about being promoted that turned folks that way. Later, he didn't worry so much about that because it occurred to him that maybe you have to be a jerk in the first place to become an executive.

Now when I say "jerk," I mean things like egotistical, aggressive, focused. That's not all bad. We shouldn't be surprised that people who want to be leaders can often be brash and opinionated. Indeed, an editorial cartoonist like me should count his blessings that these types tend to gravitate (or anti-gravitate) to the top. Turns out, they are often the most interesting people. (Of course, having now become 'President' of my own consulting business, I am an executive, so I have a whole new perspective....)

Anyway, Wayne's theories should be tested out pretty well over the next year or so here in Grand Rapids. John Logie, the GR mayor for the past 12 years just turned over the reigns to George Heartwell. Heartwell is generally regarded as a nice guy, approachable, amicable. Logie, not so much. So it will be interesting to see if Heartwell turns all curmudgeon on us.

And if he does, that's okay with me. I've learned that it can be good to work with greasy, black banana eaters....