On perks, titles, and the day the ceramic cup goes to someone else
By Paulo Coelho
There’s a story Simon Sinek tells in Leaders Eat Last that I just can’t shake.
A former Under Secretary of Defense gets invited to speak at a big conference.
Halfway through his speech, he pauses, takes a sip of coffee from the Styrofoam cup he carried on stage, looks down at it, and smiles. Then he goes completely off script.
“You know, I spoke at this exact conference last year. But last year, I was still the Under Secretary. They flew me in business class. Someone was waiting for me at the airport. I was driven to my hotel, already checked in.
The next morning, someone was in the lobby to bring me to this very venue. I was walked through the back entrance, into the green room, and handed coffee in a beautiful ceramic cup.
“This year? Economy. I took a taxi. I found my own way backstage. And when I asked for coffee, someone pointed me to the machine in the corner, where I poured myself this styrofoam cup.”
And then he dropped the line that should be framed in every corner office:
“The ceramic cup was never meant for me. It was meant for the position I held. I deserve a styrofoam cup.”
The Perks Are Rented, Not Owned
Let’s be honest with ourselves for a minute. The business-class seat, the reserved parking bay, the “Sir” and “Ma’am,” the calls that get returned within the hour, the doors that swing open before you even touch them. None of it is yours.
It’s all on loan. Issued to the position, not the person. The day you vacate that seat, the whole package gets handed to whoever replaces you, ceramic cup and all. They won’t even wash it first.
We know this in our heads. But somewhere along the way, our hearts forget.
We start believing the deference is about us. That people laugh at our jokes because we’re hilarious, and not because we sign their leave forms. And that belief is a slow poison, because it welds our identity to something we never actually owned.
Psychologists even have a word for it: enmeshment. It’s what happens when the line between who you are and what you do disappears completely.
Harvard Business Review has written about how tying yourself too tightly to your career sets you up for a proper identity crisis the moment you burn out, get retrenched, or retire.
And research on executives who lose their roles shows that people whose identity was built on title and authority struggle far more than those whose identity was built on contribution and purpose. Rebuilding a sense of self after that kind of loss can take up to two years of hard inner work.
Two years. To recover from losing something that was never yours in the first place. Sit with that one.
For Those of Us Climbing
Now, don’t get me wrong. Enjoy the perks. Properly. Drink from the ceramic cup while it’s in your hand. Pretending the nice hotel isn’t nice is just false
modesty, and nobody’s buying it.
Just don’t confuse the treatment for love, or the access for friendship. Keep a quiet little inventory of what’s actually yours: your skills, your character, your relationships, how you treat people, the work itself. Those travel with you wherever you go. The parking bay stays behind.
Here’s a simple test. If the title vanished tomorrow, what would be left standing? If that question makes you shift in your seat, that’s not a career problem. That’s homework.
For Those of Us Managing
And this is where it gets spicy for leaders, because the ceramic cup test cuts both ways.
Watch how your organisation treats people without titles. The intern. The contractor. The retired colleague who pops in to say hello.
The executive who was just “restructured.” That right there is your actual culture. Not the values poster in reception. Not the fancy vision statement.
The styrofoam cup moments are where an organisation tells the truth about itself, whether it wants to or not.
Think about it. The former Under Secretary was the same man both years.
Same experience, same insight, same speech. Only the title changed, and with it, the entire quality of his welcome.
If your respect for someone evaporates the moment their signature loses its power, then it was never respect. It was a transaction wearing respect’s jacket.
Leaders who truly get this treat the cleaner and the chairman with the same basic dignity. Not just because it’s noble, though it is.
But because they understand the cups get reassigned. Everyone in the building is one reshuffle away from styrofoam. Yes, including you. Especially you.
The Freedom in the Styrofoam
And here’s the part nobody tells you: accepting that you only ever deserved a styrofoam cup isn’t humiliating. It’s liberating.
When your worth isn’t rented from your title, nobody can repossess it. No restructure can retrench it. No successor can inherit it. You’re free to do the work because the work matters, to treat people well because that’s simply who you are, and to walk out of any building, front door or back, as exactly the same person who walked in.
The ceramic cup will come, and the ceramic cup will go.
Just make sure the hand holding it stays steady either way.
Inspired by Simon Sinek’s “Leaders Eat Last.”
