Davos Man

Yeti eats Davos Man

Snowmaggedon tripped up opening of annual elite networking fest.

By RYAN HEATH

It took more than Donald Trump to defeat Davos Man. It took three meters of snow.

Who would have thought it: Snow in Davos! It’s only Europe’s highest town.

The global elite shuddered with dread when the U.S. president announced his impending Davos Avalanche. It didn’t take a political genius to foresee their swift journey from the C-suite to being extras in the next Trump circus.

But worse was to come. Yeti crashed the party.

Like a Trump metaphor from the skies, the Davos snow-in proved that just-in-time supply chains don’t just hurt Rust Belt towns, they hurt CEOs and ministers too.

By not leaving themselves enough time for anything other than a seamless private journey, the global elite missed their own party in Davos Monday.

Life without helicopters sucks, doesn’t it?

Marissa Mayer, the former Yahoo and Google highflyer, cut a lonely figure in the Davos Congress Center Monday afternoon, surrounded by, well, no one.

A Swiss television journalist approached POLITICO begging for tips on where to find a CEO, any CEO, to interview. No dice.

WEF supremo Klaus Schwab was reduced to meeting the leaders of NGOs in his Very Very Important Person meeting room. One can imagine him begging Mayer to stay longer as he whittled down the hours to the official launch of the forum.

Hilde Schwab seemed dazed by the empty space around her as she arrived to prepare for the annual Celebrities Hilde Schwab Would Like to Meet Awards (on paper, they’re called the Crystal Awards).

The answer: Forum opening and awards were pushed back, ensuring winners Cate Blanchett, Elton John and Shah Rukh Khan avoided the ignominy of an empty house.

Badge castes

Outside, snowmaggedon chaos reigned.

An alternative universe in which the underclass of Davos — people with the lowest-level WEF brown “hotel badges,” or no badges at all — took control.

They were sent ahead by their masters to build everything from an Arctic Base Camp to immersive cyberattack experiences and here they were — if they were lucky enough not be stuck in a snow-jammed gondola or funicular — the Kings and Queens of Davos for a day.

That complicated the most intricate of WEF rituals: The Davos Stare.

Normally one wanders around smiling knowingly at everyone, while desperately glancing slightly downwards at name badges to decipher if the person is from the same or higher caste.

(Quick cheatsheet: White is the really the only color in the Davos rainbow of badges that matters, denoting a knighted “participant” or company honcho whose firm shelled out five to six figures for the privilege of wearing one.)

There was no higher caste Monday.

It was a whole new fractured world, and the 99 percent liked it.

Some bag carriers suffered severe Stockholm Syndrome. Instead of enjoying the spare hour created by the boss’ delay, they hammered away at their smartphones sure that their map apps were misleading them, that their boss was mere minutes away.

One hour delay turned into several hours for many, losing battery and patience on clogged mountain roads and lifeless helipads.

The snow was so heavy and constant many couldn’t find the WEF registration center: a building as big as a football field. All the signs and the building itself — someone clever chose white as the building color — were buried in snow.

Elite mercy

Trucks drivers possessing two-meter diameter snow chains tried valiantly to clear the roads. Yet some roads existed on two levels: the side that had snow cleared and the other icy higher mess.

Davos was supposed to be hard for protesters to reach, but it seemed elite had finally outwitted themselves.

Peter Lochbiler of Booking.com said that even Davos Man couldn’t be blamed for letting defeatism get the better of him Monday. Lochbiler spent six hours traveling 158 kilometers from Zurich.

“I said to my driver: Why don’t we just abandon the car here, after the second hour?” cried another leader of a global organization.

Others who made it to Davos found themselves dumped in the wrong location by their frustrated drivers, who were receiving a fixed sum to deliver them from Zurich airport. Local Uber drivers in Davos don’t even start their engines for less than €25 this week.

Some decided to make the best of it.

PRs shovelled snow like it was the new Crossfit. Your author pushed people in cars without snow chains out of their ruts, joined by diplomats and company founders, like it was a trust exercise at a corporate retreat.

And in rediscovering the simple pleasure of lifting and opening and lugging things for oneself, Davos Man and Davos Woman learned another new important skill. They passed an entire day without talking about Donald Trump.