Check out this definition, from an old DSM, of a phase of the mental illness, manic-depression, known as hypomania:
Hypomania (literally “under mania” or "less than mania") is a mood state characterized by persistent disinhibition and pervasive elevated (euphoric) moods. with or without irritable mood, but generally less severe than full mania. Characteristic behaviors are extremely energetic, talkative, and confident commonly exhibited with a flight of creative ideas. While hypomanic behavior often generates productivity and excitement, it can become troublesome if the subject engages in risky or otherwise inadvisable behaviors.
Ding! Ding!! Ding!!!
At the end, Aubrey was investing in every mom and pop with a good idea in Oklahoma, restaurants, ice cream parlors---you name it. Aubrey even provided the seed money, over a dinner in San Francisco with people he had never met before, to stage the Frye Festival rip-off.
In the end, on a cool, sunny OKC morning, he intentionally T-boned a 30-foot concrete overpass doing 90 mph.
The point I’m making is that CHK, ab initio, was the product of severe mental illness. Aubrey and his hand-picked, like-minded stooges, aided and abetted by high dollar legal psychopaths, ran the con creatively for over 25 years, while stinking the place up to high heaven from a business perspective. CHK and the clowns running it made every mistake in the book, over and over, for a long time.
Weren’t we always destined to end up where we are?
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You can’t smoke ma------a because you need a clear head to work at CHK.
If you smoke ma------a, your judgment may be so impaired that you might start:
Borrowing money with suicidal interest rates and fees;
Thinking it’s appropriate to run up 9 figure legal fees papering up your bad judgment with ersatz White Shoe Law Firms out of Houston;
Believing it’s appropriate to spend money you don’t have on companies with one foot in the grave, thereby acquiring assets that either bankrupted or nearly bankrupted their prior owners;
Paying people who should be working at a car wash millions of dollars to come up with plans that end up bankrupting the company;
Putting people on the Board of Directors that have never worked in Oil & Gas.
That’s just a few of the reasons you need to steer clear of the Devil’s Lettuce.
I would call our EVPs, VPs or most of the managers in the following way:
Filthy.
In all honesty, this describes our leadership today more than Aubrey. Did Aubrey bet big on gas prices staying high, absolutely. Today’s jokers are betting gas going up or they can cut cost by some “new” idea that has been tried and failed many times before they graduated college. At least Aubrey was banking on prices he saw. You would be calling him a genius if the prices stayed high. You will never call our EVPs, VPs or most of the managers geniuses.
Confirmed: OP has a severe mental illness.