Thomas Wheeler, Chief Executive Officer of the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company tells a good story on himself. He says that while he and his wife were out driving he noticed they were low on gas. So he pulled off at the first exit and came to this dumpy little gas station with one pump.
There was only one man working the place, so he asked the man to fill it up while he checked the oil. He added a quart of oil, closed the hood, and he saw his wife talking and smiling at the gas station attendant. When they saw him looking at them, the station attendant walked away and pretended as if nothing had happened.
Wheeler paid the man and he and his wife pulled out of that seedy little station. As they drove down the road, he asked his wife if she knew the attendant. Well, she admitted she did know him. In fact, she had known him very well. For it seems that they not only had gone to high school together, but they dated seriously for about a year.
Well, Wheeler couldn’t help bragging a little and said, “Boy were you lucky I came along. Because if you’d married him you’d be the wife of a gas station attendant instead of the wife of a CEO.”
His wife replied, “My dear, if I had married him, he’d be the CEO and you’d be the gas station attendant.”
—Ed Boggess, via The Fellowship Room