The Second Richest Man in the World

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So, yesterday at work I learned that Warren Buffett had been planning to come to Sacramento State.

Yes, planning is the key word in that sentence. Who is Warren Buffett, you say? Only the second most wealthy person on this planet (!), after Bill Gates. He’s a brilliant investor and huge philanthropist, and has been in the news this week for his company Berkshire Hathaway’s recent press release that he will be giving away 85% of his wealth.

Anyways, he’s coming to town for the opening of one of his new RC Willey stores, and wanted to have a hosted talk with 500+ students at Sac State. This would have been the biggest thing to happen to our school for the next two decades. But, everyone’s favorite CSU president, Alex Gonzalez, fumbled big time with this one (Gonzalez is such a miscreant that he even has his own hate website, run by a peer of mine–James Banyai–check it out, it’s got a lot of good research on there). Basically, the guy thinks he is a bigger dog than the President of the United States, and has like 15 levels of security to get through before you can talk to him. So, when the world’s second most wealthy man calls, wanting to speak to HIM and come to our school, complete incompetence ensues at the first level of gatekeepers. Because the assistant’s assistant’s assistant didn’t know who Buffett was, his calls were all ignored. The President’s Office neglected to call Warren Buffett back!! It’s too bad his visit didn’t work out too, because this really would have garnered some attention for our quaint little campus and brought recognition to President Gonzalez’s overly-optimistic “Destination 2010″ plan (ooh, shiny website!).

The Sacramento Bee got wind of the story and called us in the College of Business, exclaiming, “How stupid is your school?! You better call them back!” Now, Dean Sanjay Varshney of the College of Business is quite a businessman and a diplomat, so he called Buffett’s people on behalf of the University and aroused some serious interest again from them. But, they were already in talks with UC Davis at that point, and things turned into a turf war that Buffett didn’t want to get in the middle of. But, with the lengths the College of Business had gone to make things happen for him, I can tell Buffett’s people would have preferred to come here. It just shows yet another example of the complete ineptitude of the University-level administration.

Two important rules:

1. When the second wealthiest person on Earth calls your office repeatedly, you drop everything and return the call. For God’s sake, that’s just common sense!

2. Your staff should at least recognize a name like Warren Buffett and be intelligent enough to look him up! If I were in charge, someone would be losing a job right now.

At least my supervisor tells me we might still get 15 complimentary tickets to Buffett’s self-hosted event out in Rocklin, and I might get a chance to meet him. I’ll do my darndest to turn a good article out of this one yet! (It would make great fodder for the cover of our Business Futures publication.) Here’s to the brilliant (and I hear very down-to-earth) Mr. Warren E. Buffett.

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