Here’s an interesting question: Is there an optimal age that a company should want the majority of its employees to be? In other words, do people of a certain age make better employees, in general?

Here’s why I ask:

Recently, I wrote a blog item about two young, male, obnoxious flight attendants. I pinned their boorish behavior on the fact that they were men, and said that maybe men shouldn’t take those positions, because they’re not hard-wired to succeed.

Others chimed in and said maybe it wasn’t a gender thing, but rather a regional thing. For example, maybe flight attendants in the Northeastern part of the U.S. were jerkier than people in the south.

Others had other opinions, and then Allan Jenkins, who writes the blog Desirable Roasted Coffee, said this:

“My experience says it's age, not gender, that makes the difference.
Older people -- 40s 50s -- have either been in the business long enough to decide it is a career, or are just more service-minded, or both."

I think Allan might be on to something. Those same obnoxious flight attendants, 20 years down the road, will probably have mellowed and learned how to treat people—regardless of their gender.

And that got me to thinking: Is there a perfect age when employees are at their peak? When they are old enough to have gained experience and learned humility . . . but aren’t burnt out yet?

I'm not talking about just airline attendants. I'm talking about employees in general.

Is there that perfect window of time when people finally realize that they don’t know everything . . . but are still curious enough to want to find out more?

An age when they aren’t so naïve about the business world . . . but also aren’t yet crippled with cynicism?

Let’s break down the different kinds of employees, in an effort to come to some conclusions:

GROUP #1: The Brats. These are the 20-somethings, fresh out of college, who still think the world owes them a living. They were raised by “helicopter parents” who constantly hovered around them, making sure they knew how wonderful and perfect and special they were.

These people suck as employees. These people suck as people, as far as I can tell. Not all of them, certainly. But if we’re going to do this exercise at all, we have to deal in gross stereotypes.

Because these people have been told, over and over again, how wonderful they are and how they deserve the very best the world has to offer, they can be hard to manage. They are also optimistic that, if they don’t like it at one particular company, they can simply move on to another company that better appreciates their wonderfulness.

One of their positive traits is that they have a lot of energy. However, because they are young, they don't always use that energy at work. They use it getting drunk and trying to find people they can have sex with, and then having sex with those people. Work is often just something you do in between having sex, when you're that age.

GROUP TWO: The Married with Childrens. These people are between the ages of say, 28 and 40. This isn’t a bad age as far as employees are concerned, because the company has many of these people by the short hairs.

They’ve got kids, they’ve got car payments, they’ve got mortgages . . . they are willing to put up with more shit at work, because they’ve got more shit to take care of at home.

But . . . this still isn’t the PERFECT age for an employee, because these people still have value in the marketplace, and as such can still switch companies if need be. They are in their peak earning years. They have gained enough experience to be valuable, so they still have options in the job market.

In other words, you could spend seven years putting up with their Brat Bullshit when they’re in their 20s, only to lose them to another company when they’ve finally learned how to act like decent human beings.

GROUP THREE: The Middle Aged. This group is between, say, 40 and 55. These are probably your best workers. They have the experience necessary to know what they don’t know, and the ability to use what they do know.

They know how to navigate office politics. They know how to get things done.

But . . . they’re a little older, and a little more tired, so they are less likely to jump ship—especially the older ones, who also aren’t that marketable anymore. It may be just a hunch, but I've got a feeling that this is where a lot of the best work gets done.

GROUP FOUR: The Elder Statespeople. These are the folks who are still working because they didn’t save enough for retirement. They can’t get other jobs, because they’re too old, and their salaries are too high.

But they don’t want to work anymore. And who can blame them? They are set in their ways, and not real open to new ideas. They can be counted on to toe the company line, do the minimum, and keep their heads down until they can get the hell out.

But they hate change, and since all companies are changing dramatically these days, these employees can be a real problem.

GROUP FIVE: The Fossils. This is a very small group. These are the people who are into their seventies or even eighties, but who just don’t want to stop working. They either work for themselves, or have a job where age doesn’t matter.

You have to be careful with these people . . .because statistics show that people get meaner as they get older. All people. No exceptions. Every single older person is more stubborn and less nice than he or she used to be. It's a scientific fact.

You never know what these old cranks might do. These people tend to wander around aimlessly, yelling at people, starting fights, telling anyone who will listen that they are a Maverick, and putting religious right wing-nut lunatics from Alaska one step away from running the most powerful nation in the world.

It's safe to say that your Fossils are not your best employees.

If I had to choose, based on this very scientific analysis that I just made up, I’d say give me the Middle Aged Group every time.

What do you think?

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I don’t like talking to people at airport bars.

Normally, I’m a pretty social guy . . . but airport bars are my down time. I’m usually traveling from one speaking engagement to another, and the airport time is sacred. I don’t want to be social. I don’t want to talk. I don’t even want to THINK.

That’s why I never even bring “hard” books on business trips. I buy all my travel books at the airport, where they sell books about secret societies who have proof that Jesus had an affair with a Japanese Geisha girl and is actually Ghengis Khan’s great great grandfather.

Those are the kinds of books you can read while you have a martini or two. And I relish that time, because it’s my own. Unless, of course, some airport wind bag sits down and wants to yak at me. Then, as Spicoli said to Mr. Hand in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, it’s no longer “my” time, it’s “our” time.

Now, over the years, to make sure this doesn’t happen all that often, I’ve gotten pretty good at what I call “Avoidance Strategies.”

The trick, as the consultants like to tell you, is to be proactive. You have to identify the potential bags of wind before they start talking to you, and head them off at the pass. If you wait until they make their opening gambit, they have won and you have lost.

I have all sorts of strategies for fending people off, some of which I’ve shared in this space before. If the guy looks like a macho meathead, I’ll loudly order a white wine spritzer and pull out my tattered copy of Vogue that I carry for just such an emergency, so he’ll think maybe I’m gay and not talk to me. (And yes, I drink the spritzer, and yes, I like it.)

If the guy looks in any way foreign, I’ll pull out my red white and blue baseball hat with the big logo that says: “These Colors Don’t Run, Pal.”

If it’s a woman . . . well, women don’t strike up conversations with guys like me, so that’s never a problem. In fact, if I ever see two women sitting at the airport bar with a space between them, that’s heaven to me.

It’s like some sort of soundproof chamber, because I know I’m safe on both fronts. I’ve actually had instances where the two women kept talking to each other, over and around me, but never said a word to me. Heaven! Most guys fantasize about getting into a threesome with two other women in bed. I dream about it happening in an airport.

Anyway, I’ve got all sorts of tricks, but sometimes I’m caught unawares. Like the other day, I was sitting at the bar in O’Hare, totally engrossed in the latest Mitch Rapp book, where Mitch is yet again defying the pansies in the U.S. Government and gleefully torturing some suspected terrorist . . . when I heard the dreaded words:

“How you doing?”

And the man sat down next to me.

I got that bad tremor, that shiver, that horrible sucking feeling that I was about to lose 30 minutes of my life. I set the book down to see if there was anything I could do. If he looked like a young Republican, for example, maybe it wasn’t too late to dig my “Save America: Impeach Bush” button out of my briefcase.

I looked at him, and he looked at me and smiled and nodded, and I braced myself for the inevitable. I started to say “Not bad” . . . But then he kept talking—even though I hadn’t said anything yet.

“Yeah, me too,” he said. “I’m at O’Hare, delayed of course. What’s new, right? I might start flying into Midway.”

I realized immediately that I was having a “Bluetooth Moment.” That’s where you think someone is talking to you, because you can’t see the little flashing ear dildo, but in reality they are on the phone.

And I was pissed. I hate Bluetooth Moments.

I know what you're thinking: I should have been relieved, right? After all, this man wasn’t going to try and talk to me, right? He was far too important and busy to talk to ME, right?

I mean, the man was so important and busy that HE HAD A LITTLE WALKIE TALKIE SCREWED INTO HIS EAR SO HE COULD TALK ON THE PHONE ALL THE TIME, AND AT A MOMENT’S NOTICE!!!

But I wasn’t relieved, because the man had caused me six seconds of anguish before I realized what was going on. The whole thing irritated me: His little flashing dildo (even though I couldn’t see it, just knowing it was there was irritating, sort of like Dick Cheney); his dissing of my home airport; his little “Bluetooth Nod,” which is what the Bluetoothers do because they think it’s the polite way of letting you know they’re on the phone with someone, even though they’re not holding any kind of phone.

Everything about the guy bothered me. But what happened next was beautiful.

I finished my drink, had one more, read my book, and listened to this idiot’s conversations (he was one of those Bluetooth Newbies; these are people who still don’t fully trust the Bluetooth, so they talk REALLY LOUD so their voice can reach up to their dildo.)

Then, it was time to go. Now, you need to know that I would never, on purpose, knock into someone at an airport bar. Not even a Bluetoother. Airport drinks are too expensive to risk wasting one.

And I certainly didn’t knock into this man on purpose. But because I loathed every single thing about him, I also wasn’t very careful about gathering my belongings. And at one point, I went to swing my briefcase over my shoulder as I was getting up off the stool, and I accidentally (I swear) slammed it into the mans rib cage.

It was one of those things that I didn’t do on purpose, not really, but I wasn’t really upset that it happened, and I kind of knew it might happen if I wasn’t really careful, because we were sitting really close to each other, and I wasn’t really careful on purpose . . . well, you know how that goes.

Anyway . . . a beautiful thing happened. When the briefcase slammed into his LEFT side, the Bluetooth popped out of his RIGHT ear and fell to the floor. I immediately apologized and got out of there . . .but not before realizing that I had discovered something wonderful.

If you pop a Bluetoother in the LEFT side of the body, just under the armpit, right around the third or fourth rib from the bottom, you can actually pop the little dildo right out!

I’m going to perfect this tactic over the next several months. I’m calling it the Loose Tooth, as in: “Hey, I pulled a Loose Tooth on this obnoxious Bluetoother in O’Hare yesterday.”

Imagine the possibilities! What if you’ve got two ‘Toothers sitting next to each other, and you hit one in the side with such force that his dildo wangs out of his ear, and hits the other Toother in the face, causing him to jerk his head back and lose his dildo???

A double Loose Tooth! Dildos skittering across the floor every which way. Every which way but loose, as in Loose Tooth!

To be honest, this just happened a week ago, and I haven’t had time to check my research yet, so I’m not sure if it will work every time. It could have been a coincidence. Maybe the man was taking his Bluetooth out and I actually knocked it out of hand, not his ear. Or maybe he just had humongous ears, and was dealing with a Dildo Slippage Problem (DSP) before I ever hit him.

I don’t know. But I’m going to find out. And when I do, I’m going to spread the word, and I hope to see the Loose Toothers battling the Blue Toothers all over America's airports, with the little ear dildos filling the skies.

One of the reasons I haven’t blogged much lately is because I’ve been traveling a lot.

And whenever I’m on the road, I tend to have a lot of revelations. Or maybe they’re epiphanies. I get revelations and epiphanies all mixed up . . . especially when I’ve been drinking.

And one of the epiphanies/revelations doesn’t make me feel very good about myself. Here it is:

When it comes to certain jobs, I think I might be a sexist.

That’s a hard sentence for me to write . . . because I never think of myself that way. I never think that someone’s gender should or would have anything to do with whether or not they could do their job—regardless of whether that job is a CEO of a company, a fighter pilot, a hairdresser, a writer, or anything else.

But something happened to me recently that made me realize that I am a 100 percent, flaming, no-holds-barred sexist, when it comes to at least one certain job.

I don’t think guys are qualified to be airline flight attendants.

There. I said it. I never thought I would say it, never wanted to say it . . . and I’m not necessarily proud of saying it. But it had to be said.

I came to this conclusion on a recent flight to New Orleans. The two flight attendants on the trip were a couple of guys, named Matt and Diego. They were both under 30 years of age, and they were both awful.

Diego was sullen. He looked like one of my old roommates in college, who was always pissed off at something.

You could tell that Diego didn't want to be there. He wasn’t nice. He certainly wasn’t bubbly. He grunted at me when I came on the plane, in exactly the same way that my old college roommate would grunt at me in the morning, because he was hungover.

And Matt? Matt had spiky dark hair with blond tips and the wisp of a goatee. Matt wasn’t sullen, but he also wasn’t very good at what he was supposed to be doing, either. Matt sneered. He was snippy. He was probably an actor in real life, and resented the hell out of the fact that people didn’t realize that fact immediately.

He also wasn’t around much. Maybe he was in the back, listening to Clay Aiken CDs. Maybe that’s why Diego was so sullen. Or maybe it was because his parents named him Diego. Either way, he was a miserable son of a bitch to be around.

So on the one hand, we have Diego The Sullen Prick, who kept glaring at everyone and barking at people. And on the other hand, we have Matt The Invisible Wannabe Hairdresser.

And I didn’t want either one of them as my flight attendant.

I wanted a woman! I'm not saying that being a flight attendant is the only job a woman can have at an airline. I think they can also fly the plane, fix the engines, load the bags, and take the tickets.

It's not that women can only be flight attendants . . . it's that men, especially young men, can not be.

I didn't want sullen Diego or wispy Matt. I wanted a congenial Betty, or a sturdy Rhonda, or a wise old Laura. I wanted someone like Joanne, who had I had on my flight home from New Orleans. Joanne was wonderful . . . kind and funny and attentive and confident. And she called me hon. I fell in love with Joanne a little bit on that flight.

I wanted someone with mom instincts. I wanted someone that would a) give me my wine and not make me feel like a jerk for asking for it; and b) help me figure out where the emergency chute was if the plane happened to land in Lake Michigan.

And that’s the real root of my sexism, I think. It’s not about the service. If you expect good service on a flight these days, you’re going to be disappointed most of the time.

And besides, I’ve had great male waiters and bartenders and hotel clerks. When it comes to service, it’s certainly not a gender thing.

But when it comes to safety? That is when my sexism reared its ugly head. I had absolutely no faith whatsoever that Diego or Matt would do the right thing, should we have a crisis on the plane.

Why? Because they are guys. Specifically, they are young guys. Which means they are incredibly selfish and, well, guy-like.

I can’t help but thinking that if a plane starts to go down, your Bettys and Rhondas and Lauras and Joannes would be doing what moms do: reassuring their “children,” preparing to deal with the crisis, getting things in order, and then reassuring the children again.

That’s what moms do.

And Diego and Matt? They’d be in the bathroom, jerking off like monkeys one more time before they died. Because that’s what young guys do.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it was just having those two particular guys together that made them both seem so awful. I have to admit, it was the first time I’ve had an all-guy flight crew, so I don’t have a big body of research to go on here.

But then again, maybe there’s a reason airlines don’t put feature too many all-guy flight crews. Maybe there’s an unwritten rule that says you need at least one Rhonda or Laura on the flight . . . to cancel out your sullen Diegos and your prissy, wispy Matts.

I hope so, anyway. I never want to fly with an all-male flight crew again.

Wow . . . a lot of life water has gone under the bridge since last I blogged!

In fact, so much has happened that it’s kind of hard to start the blog up again. I mean, how could I possibly catch everyone up on everything that’s been happening in my world, the communications world, and the world at large?

It’s sort of like how I feel about reconnecting with my friends from my old neighborhood, on the south side of Chicago. I grew up with a good bunch of guys there, but I only keep in touch with two of them, out of about 10.

Every once in a while, I’m tempted to look up some of those guys, and see how the hell they’re doing. But the last time I talked to most of them, I was 19! Twenty-two years ago.

At that time, I had flunked out of the college for the first time (two more false starts would happen, before I finally got er done, at the ripe old age of 24) and was doing drugs and pushing a hot dog cart around Northern Illinois University’s campus.

Since then, I made it through college, got married, had a child, got divorced, started my own company, and got married again. I’ve traveled all over the world on business and pleasure, bought a boat, sold it and bought a better boat.

I've been lucky enough to stay in a villa in Italy, on a houseboat in the south of France, and a duplex condo with a rooftop deck in Barcelona. I've been to Warsaw and London and Brussels and Paris. Last week, I got to go to Rio on business!

How do I catch my old friends up on all those stories?

I’ve lost all of my hair, and had a vasectomy. I could talk for seven straight hours about my vasectomy, and the sadistic little bastard who enjoyed giving it to me.

I’ve gained 50 pounds, lost 30, and then gained back ten again. And that’s just in the past three years.

I have a wonderful son and a great wife and a good relationship with my ex-wife. In fact, in one of my proudest moments, my first wife, Tracey, second wife Cindy, son Zach, and I ALL went to Cubs spring training together, and had a great time.

How can I possibly explain to someone how much work went into making something like that happen?

So much has happened . . . how can I possibly catch someone up on all of it? Or even part of it? And I'm sure my buddies have their own great stories, and their own horror stories, just like me. Where would we begin?

It's all so intimidating!

So . . . I don't worry about it. I don’t call. I don’t google them to see where they’re at. The idea that we’ll sit down in a bar and they’ll say, “So, what have you been up to for the past 21 years?” scares the hell out of me.

The story of my divorce alone would take two good weeks to tell. My travels with Cindy would take a week. Explaining what my company does is a couple of hours, probably. Trying to explain to someone that I have the perfect son cannot be done, I think, without being obnoxious (and yet, it’s true, so I would have to try).

So I avoid the past.

And that’s what I’ve been doing out here, too. When you let something go for so long, it’s really hard to pick it up again.

I have a file on my desktop called “Possible Blog Items,” and I have 35 items in there. Really great stories, some funny travel moments, great communicators that I’ve met, communication programs that blew me away, some personal revelations . . . so much has happened since I last wrote that it’s a little overwhelming.

I never knew where to start, so I never started.

But know what? I miss this blog. And miss the people who read it, and comment on it. So if the choice is to just jump in again, or to lose the blog forever, I’m jumping in.

If you ever liked this blog, or ever read it, please check back often. I’ve got enough stuff that I think will be of interest to fuel this thing for a couple of months, even if I never leave the house.

I’m glad to be back. So much has changed . . . but so much has also stayed the same.

Tomorrow, I'll share one thing that has changed: I've come to the realization that, when it comes to certain jobs, I'm a sexist. I'll fill you in on that tomorrow.

I’m not sure, but I may have just pissed all over the next great employee communication idea. Listen to the story, and then you tell me if I’ve uncovered the next hot trend in employee communications . . . .

Last Saturday I took an eight-hour flight from London to Chicago, went straight from the airport to Naperville to watch my son play baseball, hung out with him for as long as I could keep my eyes open, took a train to Chicago, a bus to my apartment, and got home late Saturday night.

After about four hours sleep, I woke up and went to El Jardin’s for a much-deserved brunch with my wife Cindy.

I give you this schedule so that you can understand my mental state.

I was exhausted. And jet-lagged. And after two margaritas, I wasn’t even sure where I was . . . but I knew I was glad not to be in an airport or on a plane or in a hotel.

And in that fuzzy, buzzy state, I stumbled into the bathroom at El Jardin’s, and started using the urinal . . . when suddenly, I heard someone talking to me. Mid-stream, so to speak.

I looked around, but nobody else was in the bathroom. I was alone, hearing voices. I shook my head a bit, to clear it. The voice was still there. And it was coming from . . . down there. You know, sort of below the waist.

How can I say this politely, without offending anyone? I guess I can’t.

For less-than-one-second, in my altered, sleepless, jet-lagged, margaritaed state, I thought I was having an acid flashback . . . and that my penis was talking to me.

Which is a really, really scary thought. Because anything he has to say, I don’t want to hear. I kept waiting to hear things like:

“Touch me again and I swear I’ll piss the bed for a week straight.” (Remember, I had been on the road for a long, long time).

“Remember that girl in college, from the townie bar, when you were on mushrooms? What the hell were you thinking about, asshat? Don’t you ever give any consideration to what I have to go through when you make decisions like that?”

“Will you please stop telling anyone who will listen that I’m the size of a longshoreman’s forearm? It’s embarrassing . . . to say nothing of being a bald-faced lie.”

But the voices weren’t saying anything like that. In fact, the voice was talking about a television show. And when I shook the acid flashback out of my head and looked down into the urinal, I saw the real source of the voice.

There, in the urinal, instead of one of those deodorant cakes they sometimes stick in there, was a little round recorder thingy that, when hit with water (or, in this case, urine), started playing its message.

The message itself was an advertisement for some asshole macho TV show on some asshole macho TV station called “Spike TV,” which I can only assume is a TV station for asshole macho guys.

At first, I was pissed . . . no pun intended. Then, I started thinking. Could this be the next great employee communication tool?

I’ve long advocated posting news articles in bathrooms stalls and above urinals, where you have a captive audience. Isn’t this the next logical step? As our intranets and Web sites go more multi-media, shouldn’t our urinals follow suit?

Call it Urinals 2.0!

Can you imagine if, whenever your average employee unzips and gets down to business, he hears the CEO talking to him directly? Saying things like:

“As you liquidize your assets, I’d just like to remind you that here at Horizon Enterprises, YOU are OUR greatest asset. Now take care of business, and remember as you go about your work today to always pay heed to the 47 Guiding Principles of Horizon, as well as our Mission Statement, our Vision Statement, our Code of Ethics, and our Safety First Guidelines, all of which are posted on the wall in front of you. Remember, Horizon’s future is in your hands! Well . . . it’s not in your hands right now . . . uh, at this very moment . . . but, you know what I mean. Have a great day, and remember: All employees are required to wash their hands!”

Some would say most CEO communication belongs in the toilet anyway . . . why not put it there directly?