And so on. Thad will keep this up for maybe ten minutes, after which you should tip him $5 and tell him, “I’ll have the chicken, and my prospective client here will have whichever menu selection is the most expensive.” Stress to the prospective client that this will cost him nothing, as you are paying for it. In fact, it would be a good idea to reassure him on this point several more times during the meal, with such phrases as, “It’s on me” and “I’m paying for your food.”

After you’ve ordered from Thad, the wine steward will come around and give you the wine list. The correct wine to select, of course, depends on the kind of entree you order, as shown in this handy chart:

Entree

Correct Wine

Meat

The appropriate wine here would cost at least $45 a bottle

Fish

With fish you want a bottle of wine costing a minimum of $45

Poultry

You should spend $45 or more for this bottle of wine.

If you have trouble remembering all this information, don’t worry. Your wine steward will be more than happy to help you make your wine selection:

YOU: How is this wine that costs $12 a bottle?

WINE STEWARD: We use that primarily as a disinfectant.

YOU: I see. Then we’ll have something much more expensive.

WINE STEWARD: Excellent choice.

When the steward brings you the wine, he’ll show you the label; you should examine it closely for spelling and punctuation errors (see The Basic Rules of Business Grammar). He will then pour a little into your glass. Taste it, and if necessary, have him add a couple of packets of Sweet ‘n’ Low.

At the end of the meal, be sure to make a lighthearted remark about the size of the check, such as: “My God! This check is so large that unless I sign a big contract with a prospective client soon, I’ll never be able to afford the operation that will restore the precious gift of sight to my three-year-old daughter, Little Meg, ha ha!” This is your humorous signal to the prospective client that it’s time to “talk turkey.”

“Ed,” you should say (if his name is Ed), “this meal has been a tremendously tax-deductible pleasure for me personally, but let’s get down to brass tacks. Looking at this thing objectively, I think it would be a big mistake for you not to sign this contract, especially if you want a ride home.” Now give him some time to think it over. Maybe even sprint for the door a couple of times, as if you’re running off without him. Better yet, offer to stay there until night falls and buy him dinner. He’ll come around.

The first question, of course, is: whose home? I think we can rule out your home, since, let’s be honest here, nobody in your home has ever made a really sincere effort to clean the toilets, and it’s far too late to start now. A much better bet would be the client’s home. Call him up and explore this possibility with him:

YOU: Ed, Denise and I are wondering if you and Trudy would be free to have dinner with us at your home Friday night.

CLIENT: What?

YOU: How are your toilets?

CLIENT: What?

YOU: Cleaner than ours, I bet!

CLIENT: You want to have dinner at our home?

YOU: Sounds good to me! Eight o’clock Friday it is!

You should arrive a bit early, say fiveish, to rummage around and make sure there’s plenty of pre-dinner liquor on hand. When Ed and Trudy come out of their bedroom, your first responsibility is to make them feel at ease. I suggest you get a copy of the Complete Book of Games and Stunts published by Bonanza Books and authored by Darwin A. Hindman, Ph.D., professor of physical education at the University of Missouri. This is an actual book, available at garage sales everywhere. I especially recommend the “Funnel Trick” described in chapter 4 (“Snares”), wherein you have the victim lean his head back and place a penny on his forehead, then you tell him that the object of the trick is to tilt his head forward so the penny drops into a funnel stuck into his belt. However—get this—while he’s got his head tilted back, you pour a pitcher of water into the funnel and get his pants soaking wet! Ha ha! Be sure to follow this with a lighthearted remark (“You look like a cretin, Ed!”) and offer everybody a swig from the liquor bottle.

Now that everybody is loosened up, drop a hint (“God I’m hungry! Any food around here?”) that it’s time to move to the dinner table. Your goal at dinner, of course, is to somehow cause the prospective client to get a wad of food caught in his throat and start choking, so you can leap up and dislodge the food by means of the “Heimlich maneuver,” thus causing the client to be indebted to you for the rest of his life. This means you have to startle him just as the food is going down his throat. The most reliable way to do this is to have a pistol hidden under the table, and fire it off just as he starts to swallow. You should of course use blanks, as bullets would be irresponsible.

Stand behind the victim and put your arms around him. Make a fist with one hand and grab it with the other, then yank your hands sharply into the victim’s abdomen, thus causing the wad of food to be expelled.

Have two opposing players, each holding a victim, stand about six feet apart. Each player tries to expel his victim’s food wad into the other victim’s mouth.

Send a flower arrangement that does not have little pink or blue rattles in it. Wear black clothes to the funeral. If you don’t have black clothes, wear the darkest clothes you have. Tiptoe up to the next of kin during the service and explain this fact to them. “These are the darkest clothes I have,” you should say, taking care to whisper. Next you should tell them how awful you feel. “God!” you should say. “I feel terrible! Just horrible!”

Next you should go up and examine the deceased, then go back and inform the next of kin how good he looks. “Ed looks great!” you should say. “You can hardly even tell he’s dead!” Unless Ed is in an urn.

Take a moment to consider the way the world’s truly successful people dress. They dress like mental patients. Your prime example is Prince Charles. Here is one of the world’s top princes, if not the top prince, yet he is constantly showing up in public wearing ludicrous Sergeant Pepper-style outfits featuring hats with enormous feathers. Or you’ll see a picture of him visiting some remote fungal nation and cheerfully wearing ritual native vegetation around his neck. There are plenty of other examples of highly successful people who dress absurdly: Mick Jagger, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Ronald McDonald, to name just three. And of course you can’t find a really successful world religious leader who doesn’t wear a comical outfit.

So what does this tell you about how you should dress if you want to succeed in American business? Nothing. Because the way we dress in American business is not based on the way the world’s truly successful people dress. It is based on the way John T. Molloy says we should dress. Molloy is the author of the best-selling books Dress for Success, The Woman’s Dress for Success Book, Live for Success, and Success in the Afterlife. He openly admits to practicing a science called “wardrobe engineering.” He has done extensive wardrobe research, wherein he tested the reactions of thousands of groups of people to the way different individuals were dressed. What he found, after years and years of study, was that the groups always liked it best when the individuals were naked. So he pretty much gave up the research and decided instead to author best-selling books containing incredibly detailed instructions on how to dress and what accessories to carry, instructions that were so slavishly followed by the business community that they briefly resulted in a worldwide shortage of Cross pens.