Lightning Rods (23 page)

Joe poured himself a stiff Bourbon and turned his mind to the question of PVC.

Essentially, the problem boiled down to the fact that PVC lacked spontaneity. But supposing the gal was wearing a pair of tight PVC pants, and she was doing some exercises, trying to do a split or something, and the pants split. All of a sudden she hears someone outside—no, wait. The
mailman
rings the
doorbell
. And she can’t go to the door because her pants just split and she isn’t wearing any underwear! So she goes to the window, and it’s really stiff so she can only get it up a few inches, and she sticks her head through, and she has to lean way out so she can see the mailman, because she has to tell him to leave a parcel by the door. Then she gets into a long argument with the mailman because the mailman says she has to sign for it, and while she’s arguing the
lodger
comes up from behind and sees the hole in the crotch and takes advantage of the situation. Or
wait
, maybe the gal is staying with her sister and her sister’s husband. She borrowed her sister’s PVC pants to do exercises in, but they’re too tight, not that she’s fat or anything she just has more curves than her sister so she has to lie on her back and
squeeze
into those PVC pants, and she couldn’t wear any
underwear
because the
pants
are so tight, and then she stands up and bends over and the pants split right up the crotch. So then she hears the doorbell and she thinks Oh shit, it’s the mailman, and she goes to the window and leans right out and then the
husband
comes in and he sees the PVC pants with the split up the crotch only he thinks it’s his
wife
—

Already Joe could see that PVC had a lot more potential than he had originally given it credit for.

He went back to the bedroom and loosened his clothes and experimented with various fantasies involving PVC and his final conclusion was that they were at least as effective as the game show. There was a real buzz about it. Why had he ever thought PVC lacked spontaneity? Treated properly, PVC could be just as unpremeditated and spontaneous as any other type of clothing. This was actually something you could feel good about incorporating into the product, something that would add value.

He sat up and swung his feet to the floor. He shook his head, thinking of Lucille with rueful admiration. He wouldn’t be fooling anybody if he pretended he had actually
liked
shelling out a grand to get out of a jam, but if this PVC was the stroke of genius he was beginning to think it was, the idea was the bargain of the century at a measly 1K.

Plus, it would mean his worries about the Equal Employment Opportunities Act were a thing of the past.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES

Joe introduced the PVC enhancement to all his operations. He gave Renée a placement as a bifunctional crème-de-la-crème PA. He put LIGHTNING RODS IS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES EMPLOYER on all his ads. And in his innocence he thought all his problems were over.

In fact, his problems were just beginning.

TIME MANAGEMENT

Renée prepared for the new job the way she prepared for everything—thoroughly.

The way Renée looked at it was this. You were selling use of your body for short periods of time in exchange for the chance to make the best possible use of your mind. Well, why not take it one step further? Why not set aside the actual time allocated for non-secretarial functions and put it to use? Learn a language? Study accounting?
Do
something with the time, so that at the end of a year, say, you’d look back and what you’d see was that you’d worked on a language a couple of times a day. On top of being paid for the time, you’d have a new asset that no one could take away from you.

She spent quite a lot of time thinking about which particular project would give her a real sense of achievement. What she finally decided was that this was the ideal opportunity to read Proust’s masterpiece,
A la recherche du temps perdu
, in French. The amount of time lightning rods were typically expected to be on duty would be just right for working through a French text. On the one hand she wouldn’t be reading a lot at any one time, so she wouldn’t get discouraged. On the other hand, it was quite a long book, so by the time she finished she’d probably have enough money for Harvard Law School. She could look at the volumes on her shelf and see how far she had to go.

So she went to the university bookstore and bought the complete set, and she started at page one, paragraph one on her first day on the job.

Sure enough, the idea worked perfectly. The fact that she had to struggle with the French meant she didn’t have a lot of attention to spare for anything else that might be going on. She’d go through as much text as she could, underlining words she didn’t know with a pencil. At night she’d look up the words and read through the passage again. The next day she’d read on. Within a month she was having to look up fewer words. Within six months she was reading the French almost as well as she read English—and that was
entirely
the result of doing it on a daily basis.

So unlike most lightning rods she was able to look at something she’d actually accomplished with the time. It was no different from reading a book while you have a massage, or a jacuzzi, except that she’d done it on a daily basis for six months. Instead of cluttering up her mind with bad feelings, she had actually
improved
her mind. And by the time she reached the end of
A la recherche du temps perdu
she’d have earned $100,000 just out of time spent reading Proust.

Pas mal
.

Years later, when Renée was making constitutional history as a Supreme Court Justice, she was sometimes asked to identify the thing that had made the single biggest contribution to her career.

A lot of women saw Renée as a role model, and a lot of African-Americans saw Renée as a role model, here was someone who had worked in subordinate positions for years, admittedly at increasingly senior levels, before swanning into Harvard Law School with LSATs in the high 170s and swanning out again to glide with apparently effortless ease right on up to the Supreme Court. What was her secret?

Renée didn’t say “That’s my secret” because in her opinion coyness was in bad taste.

What she said was that there was no one single thing, but she made a point of doing things right first time. Effective time management was also important.

She did not say that there’s nothing like being on the receiving end of a proactive sexual harassment management program for letting you in on a big secret.

No matter how mundane and routine the job in hand, most people don’t know what they’re doing half the time. If they’re setting up something new that’s never been tried before, you can make that 98.2 % of the time. It’s only when you’re in on something from the beginning, when staying in the air for 12 seconds counts as heavier-than-air powered flight, that you understand just how much is left to do. Something leaves the drawing board and the spectators cheer when it crashes into the sand, because at least 12 seconds elapsed before the crash. Naturally enough, the inventors think they’ve really achieved something if they can move on to just keeping it in the air without crashing. Naturally enough, if they break that 12-second barrier, all
kinds
of faults get overlooked in the excitement.

What Renée realized was that exactly the same thing applied to the country as a whole. It was set up from scratch by people who managed to overlook minor details like slavery and a whole sex. Naturally enough, with that level of glaring oversight to fix, it was easy for people to overlook the faults that remained. Because the thing is, we grow up with the laws we’ve got, and we assume they’re right because they’re what we’re used to. What we don’t realize is that some of those laws were written by people like Joe, and the rest were written by people trying to clean up after people like Joe. That’s why they leave a
lot
to be desired.

What Renée realized was that the more important something is, the less likely people are to fix mistakes. They’re going to assume that if it’s that important, somebody must have known what they were doing. Or they’re going to assume that anything seriously wrong would have been fixed after all this time. They’re not going to realize that the people who set it up didn’t know what they were doing 98.2% of the time. They’re not going to realize that the people who fixed it were just trying to bring it into line with an acceptable, 50% level of cluelessness. So if something leaves a lot to be desired, it’s up to you to do something about it. Because if you don’t, you know one thing for sure: nobody
else
is going to.

That simple piece of knowledge gave Renée the determination that carried her all the way to the Supreme Court.
Pas mal.

And in addition to letting her in on the big secret, Lightning Rods also gave her the opportunity to put that newfound knowledge into practice.

Joe would have been the first to admit that Renée was a real asset to the firm. In fact, he had to mentally retract all the harsh things he had thought about the Equal Employment Opportunities Act. Because the fact was, his first impulse had been to take the easy way out and tell the applicant to go elsewhere. It was only because he had been legally obligated to come up with a solution that he had gone to the trouble and expense of introducing PVC.

As it turned out, the PVC
alone
was a real improvement on the product. It solved the perennial problem of inappropriate urination. It enhanced the enjoyment of most participants in the program. Also, he had hired a truly exceptional applicant. And if it hadn’t been for the Equal Employment Opportunities Act all that talent would have been squandered.

The only thing was, Renée seemed to be even more demanding than Lucille. Not a day passed without Renée calling up to make comments and recommendations. Usually when a lightning rod made a suggestion Joe would promise to make a note of it and give the matter careful consideration. He tried this once with Renée.

“And when can I expect to see some action taken?”

“Uh, I can’t really say before I’ve had a chance to think about it in greater depth,” said Joe.

“When do you expect to have a chance to think about it? Tonight? Tomorrow?”

“Uh . . . ”

“I’ll give you a call tomorrow afternoon. I don’t see any reason why this shouldn’t be resolved by next week.”

Joe had never realized that a crème-de-la-crème PA had so much in common with a bulldozer.

He had then tried his other tried-and-true response, which was to explain that the suggestion could not be implemented on the software in its present form, but that he would do everything in his power to integrate it into the software the next time he updated the program.

“And when will that be?”

“Uh . . . I’m not sure. I’ve got a lot of commitments, so I’m not exactly sure
when
I’ll be able to get around to this. But I’ll certainly do it just as soon as I’ve got a moment to spare, I can assure you of—”

“Do you mean to say that you do the programming
yourself
?”

The fact was that Joe was too embarrassed to hand it over to a computer expert, who would be bound to look at what had been done so far and sneer.

“I prefer it that way,” said Joe. “I developed the product, and it works best if enhancements are introduced by someone who knows it inside out.”

“Well, there’s something to be said for that, of course, but this is pretty urgent. Can’t you just do it this weekend?”

“I don’t think this is something that can be done in a weekend,” Joe said firmly. “It’s pretty complicated stuff.”

“Really? It looks pretty straightforward to me. What language are you using?”

“Just English for the time being,” said Joe. “We don’t really have enough Hispanic clients at this stage to justify bringing it out in Spanish. Though obviously, should the need arise, Lightning Rods will be ready and willing to meet that challenge.”

There was a short silence.

“I mean what programming language are you using,” said Renée.

“
Oh
. Oh,
right
,” said Joe. He mentioned the name of the program.

“Then it shouldn’t be a problem. I’m familiar with the basics, anyway. I’ll come in this weekend and deal with it. I’ll expect to be paid overtime, obviously.”

“Uh . . . ”

“Fifty dollars an hour. Anything else I need to know? Good, then that’s that taken care of.”

After that Joe just gave up and allowed himself to be bulldozed over on a daily basis until the system met Renée’s exacting requirements. It cost him about $5,000 in overtime for all the programming. But when the dust settled he realized it had actually been worth it. It was like getting the Princess and the Pea to design a mattress. Once Renée had smoothed out all the little wrinkles in the system that bothered her, the final result was something that made the whole spectrum of lightning rods happier. Phone calls to the office dropped right down. Joe even began wondering whether he really needed that counsellor.