“You Must Be Joking” - A Childhood Lesson in Leadership | Chris Cooper

My dad took me around the steelworks and it was dark and it was noisy and there was molten metal flying around. And he showed me a train where he'd had to pull body parts from underneath the train because health and safety wasn't that great in those days. And I'd heard stories about what happened when you joined and the kind of rituals that went on. And afterwards, my dad took me with lots of other fathers and their sons into a room. And how old were you, Chris? I was 13 or 14, and a very tall man walked in. And I remember my dad straightening up, and he walked over to me and he said, hello, son, when you're older, are you going to come and work for us? And I— my response just came out to me was, you must be joking. And, um, my dad was fuming, um, because I— this person was actually the CEO of British Steel. And my dad had never met him before, and on the way home he was, he was quite upset with me. And then at the end of it, apparently what I said was, but Dad, you're not happy there, why would I want to work there?