I think people here fundamentally misunderstood what GalaxyBrain was trying to explain. You don't climb up the corporate ladder by sucking up to your boss and applying everything you've read in some self-help book rehashing How to Win Friends and Influence People. How is this any different from following some grifter trying to peddle some get-rich-quick bullshit? People at the top of the corporate ladder are where they are because of nepotism. They didn't climb their way to the top but were placed there by their company owner parents. And if it's not because they have parents in high places, it's always some bullshit like how they and the company's founder go to the same church for over 10 years. It has nothing to do with merit, whether it's professional competence or social skills. They didn't Patrick Bateman their way to the top.

And speaking of Patrick Bateman, Bateman doesn't have good social skills at all. He's completely socially awkward. And he can't read people's faces. He didn't climb the corporate ladder with his terrible social skills and inability to read people's faces. He got to be vice president because his rich daddy owns the fucking company he's pretending to work in. That's literally it. The business card scene was literally the owner's shitty kid plus the shitty kids who have some personal relationship with the owners and members of the board jerking off over inconsequential shit. To buy into the idea of being able to climb a corporate ladder means buying into the idea of social mobility, even if done in an unsavory way. This is just capitalist realism. There is no social mobility.

It's a big club and you ain't in it.