Enron: How Do People Get Like That?

Back in the Eighties I was living in Houston, Texas and working in the art department of Houston Natural Gas which had recently merged with Internorth Corporation of Omaha, Nebraska. It was a difficult merger because nobody knew who was going where and what was going on. For awhile the company was called HNG/Internorth but it was soon apparent that they needed a new identity. We had a new, dynamic CEO and he hired a big NY ad firm to develop a new identity — much to the annoyance of those of us in the art department.

After spending an awful lot of money the NY firm came up with a corporate identity and, at a stockholders meeting at the Galleria, our CEO proudly unveiled the new company name — Enteron. There was a pause and then a series of giggles swept through the room. The word 'enteron’ is the medical name for the intestines, and people thought it was a joke. Our CEO was not happy.

The next day some mischief-makers posted a sign in the company lunch room in which the name Enteron was spelled out in curly, intestine-like letters above the slogan “The Company with Guts”. Everybody laughed but our new CEO, Ken Lay, did not. The “te” was dropped and the company became known as Enron.

I left Houston a couple years later and moved to New England but over the years, whenever I talked to former co-workers, I heard new stories — people weren’t happy, people were getting laid-off, the company was doing good but it wasn’t the old HNG that we all loved and loved to complain about. Finally, I didn’t know anyone who still worked there. Eventually, I was very glad of that.

I had been avoiding seeing the movie Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room but with Mr. Lay’s trial starting this week I decided it was time. I only met him a couple times while I worked there but somehow I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe that he would have been party to what went on. The truth was, I didn’t really want to believe any of it. Even though I was long gone and even though I didn’t know anyone still there, it hurt. I worked there once. I had met this man and he even remembered my name when I saw him again. That was an important lesson I learned from Mr. Lay and have always cultivated — remember people’s names no matter what.

It was hard watching the movie. The settings were so familiar. When they showed footage of the old HNG building it could have been my office they were filming in. I loved working in downtown Houston and being a part of the energy business in Texas in the Eighties — before the Oil Bust, and the Enron Boom, and the Enron Disaster. I watched the movie twice. I couldn’t quite absorb everything in the first sitting and, when it was over, I kept thinking, “How could people do such things? How could they lie and cheat and manipulate like that? How did they get like that?"

In the movie Enron energy traders are heard on tape laughing over how many millions they are making for Enron by causing misery to the people of California by engineering rolling blackouts to boost energy prices. The filmmakers compare their behavior to the findings of the Milgram Obedience to Authority Experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram at Yale University in 1961-62. Milgram found that 65% of the subjects he studied would inflict what they believed was excruciating pain on the subject of their experiments when ordered to do so by an authority figure. It is a shocking experiment which would never be allowed in today’s politically correct world but one needs look no farther than the energy traders at Enron to see how valid it still is.

How do people get like that? How do people get to the point where they can knowingly and without being forced, or be in danger of being punished themselves, inflict damage and harm on fellow humans? It is hard to imagine and yet it is a thing many of us can see glimmers of familiarity in. I often repeat Victor Frankel’s observation that evil happens when good men do nothing. People who would be described by their neighbors as wonderful citizens can turn vile and hateful when they believe they will not be identified. People who would present themselves as pillars of the business community will orchestrate devastating damage if they believe they are serving a cause. It is clear from watching what happened at Enron that the line between good men and evil men is a very, very, very thin line.

This week Mr. Lay goes on trial. I am afraid this is going to be a terrible time for American business. I don’t want to believe someone whose hand I have shaken can be responsible for what happened at Enron. But even saying that I know that there is a blackness in nearly all of us and what can cause us to cross that line is a thing I hope I never encounter.

Thanks for reading.

Footnote: WOW! I just discovered that this blog page is linked to on the Houston Chronicle's Special Report on Enron page. We had over four hundred visitors from that page alone. Thanks, Houston Chronicle! (Whatever happened to Leon Hale?)