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He said, "I look for butterflies
that sleep among the wheat 1 make them into mutton-pies,
And sell them in the street. I sell them unto men," he said,
"Who sail on stormy seas;
And that's the way I get my bread-
A trifle, if you please."
One day your Gemini boss will be a walking clock whose camera eye records each second you take past your coffee break. On another, he won't even notice if you come back three hours late from lunch. You can try flipping a coin to predict his changes. It's about as safe as anything else. I realize that it would be a big help to know which day he's going to take what attitude.
But the Gemini executive doesn't know himself which side of the bed he's going to get out on each morning, and since he doesn't know, you can see that I can't tell you. The safest way is not to expect him to be today what he was yesterday, and cross your fingers about tomorrow.
This man can be a brilliant, though restless, executive:
He's more at home in the president's chair than the other mutable signs of Virgo, Pisces or Sagittarius would be, but he's not equipped to command or lead others for his entire lifetime. A Gemini who thinks he's constituted to run a large company with calm assurance is just kidding himself (always considering the exceptions to the rule, like a Sun sign Gemini with a Leo ascendant and a Libra Moon, for example). In the first place, it's hard for him to sit still behind a desk for more than an hour at a time. President Kennedy, one of the rare Geminis equipped to take on the burdens of leadership, solved that problem neatly. He simply released his nervous energy by making his rocking chair fly.
Your Mercury-ruled boss must move around. Gemini is an air sign, and did you ever see air stand still? It may seem to sometimes on a hot, humid day (and so will a Gemini if you catch him in a rare moment), but that's only an illusion in both cases. The typical Gemini boss will wear a hole in the carpet pacing up and down if he's caged up in an office too long. He's happier as a management consultant, an efficiency expert or a vice president in charge of trouble-shooting than when he's forced into the confining mold of a nine-to-five position, no matter how fancy the title. He deals with ideas, principles and abstractions. The humdrum and material responsibilties of the average executive eventually depress his soaring spirit. Therefore, when a Gemini parachutes himself into an executive spot, he'll be quick to exercise his acute discrimination and delegate authority to others around him. These carefully chosen specialists will really run the business, freeing his own rest-less mind for progressive schemes and original plans that will double the company's profit and lower its overhead. He's impatient with dull, mundane details.
If your company just hired a Gemini as your superior you can expect some changes to be made in short order. The slowest form of communication around the place will probably be cablegrams, and he may require a few more buttons on his telephone than his predecessor. Your new Gemini boss won't be on the job a week before he's inquisitively poked around into every area of the operation. As soon as he learns what's being done and how it's being done, he'll want to know why. The answer, "We've always done it this way," will cause his bright eyes to turn to ice cubes that could freeze you at thirty paces. Gemini is not even slightly interested in or impressed with tradition. When he's told something is an old custom, that's reason enough for him to change it. The typical Mercury boss will •have the furniture moved around frequently, drive his secretary into a fit of the fidgets once a week with a new idea for a filing system that will work more efficiently, and change the work schedules back and forth until he finds one that clicks with him.
There's one thing you can count on, and one of the few things you can count on consistently with a Gemini. He :, will never be monotonous. He'll seldom be dogmatic either. ( His opinions are flexible. You can't mislead him or confuse . the issue, because his quicksilver mind will instantly reduce the frills, penetrate the smoke screens and expose all sides of the question with crystal clarity. That means he also , exposes office intrigues with little difficulty. Sometimes, you'll swear he has eyes in the back of his head-and an y extra pair of ears there, too. Speaking of his anatomy and such, it's even hard to credit him with just one pair of ' feet, since there will be plenty of occasions when he appears I to be two places at once.
Never fear that your Gemini employer will hate you or be your enemy. Few people interest him long enough for that kind of intensity. You won't be in his thoughts for more than an hour or so at a time. That's not long enough to work up any violent feelings, for or against. Besides, he has a pretty fair understanding about how the other person feels.
It may puzzle you to discover that, although your Gemini employer is an individualist in every way, he may not treat you as an individualist. It seems inconsistent, but then this is a dual sign, with more than one surprise. I don't mean that he won't respect your individual opinions.. He will. It's just that he doesn't always see you personally as an individual. The Geminian mind is so abstract that he often sees only basic designs in both objects and people. All kinds of people are fascinating to him, but he tends to categorize them according to their abilities, ideas and potential.
Yet this odd viewpoint doesn't make him unattractive as a human being. Quite the contrary. Even though his approach is far more rational than emotional, he likes people so much, they just can't help liking him back. Without the constant challenge of human contact, he would dry up and float away. Mercury demands that he be gre-garious and live vicariously or be miserable. You'll rarely see him by himself. He may classify people by types and remain detached emotionally, but he needs them around.
Your Gemini boss will probably have considerable powers of persuasion. He can wheedle you into or talk you out of most anything, simply by dousing you with a bucket of that irresistible charm and wit of his. But it's a compensating talent he was given by the planets at birth, that hides a basic coldness of nature. Gemini lives in vague, airy palaces in the sky the average person can't reach. His true character, despite his surface warmness, is cool, aloof and lonely, in the final analysis, searching for something inside itself more than from others, no matter how frequently he seeks their company. Yet, he's not unsympathetic. His manner can be gentle and compassionate, but at the same time, he offers his sympathy and understanding the same way he offers love and friendship-from a distance.
He'll have an excellent sense of humor, and you can win him over with a joke more quickly than with tears. He's not overly sentimental, but hell always see the ridiculous side of things. A sense of humor is a prerequisite to true intelligence, so it's not surprising to find it in the Mercury people, though sometimes it may be tinged with sharp sarcasm. There will always be a slight whirl of confusion around a Gemini-run office-and constant activity. -But he won't be the one who is confused. Gemini sorts it all out and clears the muddy waters of all the gunk. His quick eye and his trigger fast brain work in perfect synchronization. The eye will probably have a twinkle in it. He'll be the company's best salesman, make speeches and entertain a lot. And he'll probably travel so much, he may keep a suitcase ready to fly at a moment's notice. If he flirts with the pretty new secretary, better tell her he's not the least bit serious, just sharpening his charm a little.
Enjoy this boss while you can, because Geminis get suddenly bored after they've made financial or business successes, and they rush off to the next challenge long before retirement time. Before he goes, leam what you can about his strategy. It's really fantastic. He's an expert at double talk. He'll run around an argument in circles, mix you up, turn you around, then win you over to his side before you realize what's happened. Yet, as clever as he is in competitive situations, he's still an incurable dreamer, and a smashingly good storyteller. Pay no attention to what nationality he says he is. Whether he was born in Israel, Australia or Afghanistan, every single Gemini in the world is Irish at heart. How else could he possess such a wonderful gift of blarney? Notice all those green ties he wears. What did I tell you-pure County Cork.