Just Books and People: The Man Who Took the Corporate Out of Communication

I’ve long wanted to explain to you the charms of Dan Danbom’s book, I Met Another Dead Man Today. I struggled, until I realized this book is not the quietly charmingly unassumingly shambling book-seller’s diary that it appears to be. Rather, it’s the stage-whispered rant of an angry ex-corporate communicator who had part of his life stolen from him by idiots, but who snatched it back and is at once grateful, and still a little pissed off.

I’ve known Danbom for about 30 years. When I first knew him, he did communications for an old-fashioned utility, the Public Service Company of Colorado. Among other things, he wrote a humor column for the employee magazine, which I think I remember correctly was the PSCo Times.

I knew even then that the humor column wasn’t a sufficiently gaping outlet for Danbom to express his hatred for corporate bullshit. For instance, Danbom described his work as a corporate speechwriter as following an executive’s order: “Write down my ideas as if I had them.” That didn’t appear in his column, which was a wry and lite commentary on the ironies and aggravations of corporate life.

You know what the opposite of tap-dancing through corporate life is? Running a used bookstore that doesn’t really have to be profitable, in a manner that doesn’t have to be strategic, or even pretend to be strategic.

Danbom writes in his book (whose title refers to his frequent errands to inspect, for the purpose of acquiring, collections of books of men, or women, who have died):

If a prestigious marketing program at a university ever invites me to lecture and a student asks, “Sir? What do you do in your book store to get customers to come in?” I would answer, “I start eating lunch or urgently need to go to the bathroom.” These options have shown over the course of many years to make that front door open with customers who have lots of questions demanding my uninterrupted attention.

It’s been almost 20 years since Danbom chucked the corporate hurly burly for bookstore quiet, but it didn’t take two decades for him to decide he’d prefer to deal with random customers—some of them homeless, some of them crazy, some of them pretentious, and only some of them readers—than organized, disciplined, hard-charging corporate executives.

In the bookstore, a Denver co-op called The Printed Page, Danbom learned things like:

• If you wear a sweatshirt with “Colorado” on it, you’re not from Colorado.

• If you ask me if I’ve read all the books in the store, you are not a book person, and most likely will not buy a book.

• If you ask me if we have a copy of How to Kill a Mockingbird, I am going to direct you to the hunting section, just because.

How happy would you be if you never had to say synergy again? Never had to write anything “aspirational”? Never had to bullshit your way through a conversation about measuring the effectiveness of a corporate speech?

I’ll tell you exactly how happy you would be. You’d be so happy, you’d write a whole book about how vastly you prefer dealing with customers like the guy who came into The Printed Page wanting to “trade worthless books for worthy ones.”

He started asking about our stock. “Do you have any books on Mormons?” Why yes, here are some. “Do you have any books on 18th century American history?” Right here. “How about CS Lewis?” Yes. “Anything on early astronomy?” Yes.

He talked the entire time he was browsing, which is okay. He asked my opinion of Papal indulgences, Denver’s growth, public education, and whether I believed in lawn aeration. On and on and on for two hours.

Not surprisingly, he left without buying anything. He asked me to hold a book for him to pick up later in the day. I think he was testing us. I imagined him doing the same in Home Depot. “Got any Makita drills? How about refrigerators? Any carpet squares? Thank you. See you later.”

He never came back for the book. I was kind of thankful.

Thankful, is exactly what my old friend Dan Danbom is. And no “kind of” about it.