Lightning Rods (7 page)

“Well, let me ask you this, Joe. Do you think for one second that other people in that organization don’t face humiliation? Do you think people don’t fail? Do you think people aren’t made to feel inadequate? You
know
that’s not so.”

He looked at the thousand-dollar suit on its hanger.

“The only difference is, people in an organization tend to take
out
their humiliation on someone lower than themselves. One person is made to feel bad, and before you know it that feeling has been passed on, poisoning the atmosphere of the organization. Look at that study of baboons in captivity. The office is a
form
of captivity. The difference is, a baboon isn’t trying to achieve anything. Whereas people in the business world have a job to do. But when people go around taking out their frustrations on their subordinates, it impacts negatively on the way they do their job. It undermines their self-esteem, for a start. Maybe it makes them defensive, unwilling to take risks. Or maybe it makes them reckless, taking
unnecessary
risks. Maybe somebody never accepts their suggestions, so they just decide to present them with a fait accompli. Whereas if people had a way of siphoning off all that hostility they could go back to the office and get on with the job. But that’s exactly what a lightning rod offers the opportunity to do.

“So the lesson we can learn is, providing a safe outlet for sexual urges is just the tip of the iceberg. We’re offering people the chance to
insulate
their negative emotions, instead of directing their aggression and hostility at their colleagues. That’s a valuable service. Don’t you ever forget that.”

What he realized was that it was the fact that he was
able
to be humiliated that gave him such an insight into the reaction of the ordinary guy to a typical work environment. There are people who don’t let things get to them—but those people are the exceptions. It’s by understanding, and addressing, the problems of the average guy that you can make a real contribution to society.

The second place he went, the guy he talked to was wearing jeans and a sweater with holes in the elbows and no shoes.

Joe covered the points he had to cover and the guy started to laugh.

He said: “Well, I gotta hand it to you, that’s a very original idea.”

He started laughing again.

He said: “And the hell of it is, you could be on to something. I’d be interested to see how you do.”

He went outside. It was a soft, bright day, and the wind was pulling leaves off the willows. A dog trotted by, lifted his leg, and trotted on.

There was a statue in the center of the square of General Lafayette. His green bronze three-cornered hat and the green bronze shoulders of his coat were white with pigeon shit.

On the sidewalk beside a fire hydrant were a couple of dried dog turds.

He thought: You know, if people went around doing that it would be really disgusting. If some guy just squatted down by the fire hydrant and left a couple of turds it would be really gross. And can you imagine what it would be like if everyone did that?

He walked down the steps to the sidewalk. The wind was ruffling the fine grass of the lawn like the fur of a glossy green animal.

He thought: Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.

Now previously, in the days when he was selling, or trying to sell, vacuum cleaners, he would have thought this kind of self-doubt was a sign of weakness. He would have thought the problem with him was that he kept having doubts, and that the way to solve the problem was to just pretend they didn’t exist and hope they would go away. He would have thought that he would have been a better salesman if he didn’t have doubts. He would have thought being the type of guy to have doubts was exactly what made him relatively unsuccessful as a salesman.

The fact is, every great salesman has doubts. In fact, a great salesman has more doubts than anyone else. Because what those doubts are, is the questions
other
people are going to be asking
you
. A great salesman is able to anticipate a wider range of questions than other people. And instead of just hoping they’ll go away, a great salesman
uses
those doubts as a chance to tackle those questions head on. Which is why a great salesman is never taken by surprise.

This time, anyway, instead of just ignoring his doubts, he asked himself: “OK, if it isn’t a good idea,
why
isn’t it a good idea?”

And by actually looking at the question he was able to come up with an answer.

Of
course
it would be disgusting if people went around depositing turds in the street. That’s what we have toilets for. Nobody wants to look at something like that, so you put it out of sight so they don’t have to.

But that was
exactly
what a lightning rod was supposed to do. Instead of a young girl jeopardizing herself by standing on the street in a dangerous neighborhood, putting herself at risk and in all likelihood being exploited by a pimp, you give her the opportunity to work in the safety of an office environment. Instead of acquiring a criminal record she is able to work at filing or some other clerical task and improve her skills. Her pay reflects the fact that she is providing an outlet for men who would otherwise be putting
themselves
at risk. But the whole thing is conducted in the privacy of a toilet cubicle. As far as her fellow workers are concerned, she is no different from anyone else. As far as
his
fellow workers are concerned, he is just going to the john. The whole
point
of the arrangement is to avoid giving anyone cause for offense.

So he went on to work his way through the other companies on his list.

Once he had a foot in the door he explained, “It’s not for me to make moral judgments. I’m a businessman. I deal with people as they are, not as they ought to be.”

“Speaking as a businessman,” he went on, “I know that it is often the most valuable individuals in a company who present the greatest vulnerability to sexual harassment related issues. We know that a high level of testosterone is inseparable from the drive that produces results. Speaking of people as they are rather than as they should be I know that a high-testosterone-level individual has a high likelihood of being sexually aggressive; if the individual is working twenty-hour days as a driven results-orientated individual often does, that sexual aggression will find an outlet in the office.”

“Well.”

“You invest in training. A man is bringing in $100 million of business. You leave him open to the danger of momentarily forgetting himself with a little $25,000-a-year secretary?”

“Well . . .”

“A properly run organization protects its employees.”

“Sure, but . . .”

“I have strong views on sexual harassment. I believe that those in a place of work who do not welcome sexual advances should not be subjected to them. I also believe that a man who is producing results in today’s competitive market place has a right to be protected from potential undesirable side effects of the physical constitution which enables him to make a valued contribution to the company.”

At this stage he might be asked, “Are you suggesting we hire prostitutes?!” Or “Surely you are not suggesting…!”

“Certainly not,” he would protest, “prostitution is degrading to all concerned, an atmosphere of mutual respect is indispensable in the modern office.”

“I don’t understand,” he would be told.

The concept was so revolutionary at the time that prostitution was the only thing people could think of. That was how original he was. He had to explain the whole thing from the word Go.

He would explain the concept of the lightning rod in the face of skepticism.

He would explain the importance of confidentiality.

He would say: “The last thing we want to do is ghettoize a certain class of women. What we are doing is introducing highly qualified professionals to the workplace. These are women who on their credentials could walk straight into an opening of a more conventional nature, women with goals to pursue who are willing to make a real contribution to the company.”

He would say: “The average man things of sex every five seconds.”

“The average employee,” Joe would add, “spends two minutes in the course of a year reading the sexual harassment policy. If that. This is not, in my opinion, the level of protection which is appropriate to a high-testosterone performance-orientated individual.”

He would sometimes add that access to the lightning rods could be restricted to high performers, acting as an incentive to less driven individuals.

He would sometimes cite, if the occasion seemed to warrant it, a study on the orangutang or the baboon. Primates in captivity, he would explain, form hierarchical societies in which place is established by humiliation and aggressive sexual behavior. Humans are primates. The office is a form of captivity. Every precaution must be taken to avoid stigmatizing persons providing this valuable service. Those using them must never see their faces. They must be indistinguishable from their colleagues.

He generally just made up whatever research he wanted on the baboon, since actual studies of the baboon might not support the point he wanted to make.

Similarly with statistics, a good salesman has a
feel
for the statistics that will carry weight in a particular context, and will tend to go with his feeling rather than with what scientists have come up with in some totally unrelated context.

One man said he was not exactly disputing the points made but he did not think he could reward his top earners with titless sex.

Another said: “What if the man wanted to be naked from the waist down and whipped?”

“Why would anyone want that?” asked Joe.

Thinking
What a weirdo.

The guy said: “Well, some guys like that.”

Joe thought: What if it turned out most high-performing individuals liked to be whipped on the bare butt?
That
would be something to see.

One guy said he would give it a try.

ANONYMITY GUARANTEED

Now it was Joe’s belief that in the long run a company that wanted to include lightning rods in its team for the twenty-first century had only one option: to outsource
all
personnel recruitment. Otherwise how are you going to guarantee anonymity? If you just outsource the lightning rods
somebody
in the company is going to know which employees are handled by personnel and which are handled by an outside firm, and if that person happens to know why the outside firm was taken on that person is going to be able to identify the members of staff who are providing an extra service for the company.

The thing was, though, that there was no way in the world that he was going to persuade a company to hand over its entire personnel operations to an outsider. The actual service he was providing was radical enough without challenging received opinion on personnel.

The important thing is not necessarily to persuade someone straight off the bat to do something in some totally different way; the important thing is that you need to be aware of what your ultimate aim is.

What Joe did, anyway, was he left the whole question of personnel strictly out of bounds. He simply explained that, given the importance of anonymity, his company would have to handle all
temporary
personnel requirements. Some of the temps provided would be lightning rods; some would not. At the end of a six-month period they would review the success of the program.

The client obviously put up a fight. He said that this was a lot more far-reaching than he had originally anticipated.

Joe said, “Look, Steve. I’m not even going to try to persuade you. I’m just going to ask
you
to think about this for a minute. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. These women are not prostitutes. Now just think about what that means. These are qualified professionals who could walk into any job you care to name and get top dollar. I don’t need to tell you that they’re being asked to accept an
element
of risk. All they’ve got is my word for it that their anonymity will be respected; that the choice they’ve made goes no further than my office. I’m not about to do anything to jeopardize that for a short-term gain. I don’t want it on my conscience if some gal who’s made a big contribution to a company in good faith ends up being stigmatized because of short-sighted personnel arrangements. Nossir. It’s of the utmost importance that any administrative arrangements made to process this personnel should appear to be no different from the arrangements made to process single-function members of staff.”

“I see what you’re saying,” said Steve. “But as I’m sure you’ll appreciate this is quite an upheaval for something that is just a trial flight.”

“I certainly do appreciate that, Steve,” said Joe. “But if you think about it, in the longer term this represents an opportunity for substantial savings. I don’t need to tell
you
what it costs to hire as permanent staff someone who has initially worked for you as a temp. That’s not the way I do business. If at the end of the six-month period you decide not to pursue the provision of lightning rods at that time, that’s fine. If you decide to hire one or more of the ladies we’ve introduced to the organization, that’s fine too. No strings. No introduction fee. The only thing you won’t be getting is the lightning rod provision. All I ask is that as long as you
do
make use of the service, you pay a flat fee for a fixed number of lightning rods which is not associated with any one individual or individuals in any way. My agency will distribute remuneration in accordance with the services being provided; you don’t need to know which particular individuals are providing them.”