Lightning Rods (8 page)

“Huh,” said Steve.

“I think I need to think about it,” said Steve, after a pause.

Any salesman knows that the
last
thing you want is for the target to think about it.

“Tell you what,” said Joe. “Let’s go and have a look at the disabled toilets.”

They went down the hall to the Men’s Room. There was a big cubicle at the end of the room for disabled users. The Ladies Room was next door. They didn’t go into the Ladies Room but Steve explained that it too included a large cubicle for disabled users.

The Ladies Room was obviously not labeled “Ladies,” but Steve, as head of the company, got irritated whenever he passed female toilets labeled “Women,” so he had put his foot down. There was just a little icon on the door. Since the Ladies Room just had an icon on the door this meant the Men’s Room had to have an icon on the door too, and then the disabled stall had an icon of a wheelchair.

Steve and Joe went into the cubicle to look around.

“You know,” said Steve, “we provide better facilities for a type of employee who would be in a minority if we even happened to
have
one, which we don’t, than for the hundreds of able-bodied employees we actually happen to have.”

“Exactly,” said Joe. “There’s absolutely no reason why this space should not be put to use to promote the well-being of employees actually on the staff. Now speaking for myself I have every sympathy for individuals who have the misfortune to be crippled or malformed in some way which interferes with the normal function of going to the toilet, I think they have a tough row to hoe and I give them a lot of credit for that. A
lot
of credit. I mean, I personally wouldn’t like to have to manoeuver myself out of a wheelchair every time I wanted to use the john, and I think it’s up to those of us who are more fortunate not to put any unnecessary obstacles in their way. At the same time, when all’s said and done, I think it’s possible to go too far the other way.”

“Next thing you know they’ll be wanting me to put in a jacuzzi,” said Steve. “It’s not that I’m unsympathetic, but this kind of PC crap really gets my goat. Next thing you know they’ll be taking me to court for not installing a sauna.”

“You said it,” said Joe. His eyes scanned the room. “Now the way I see it,” he said, “is this could be modified to suit our purposes at a very reasonable cost. You said it backs onto the disabled cubicle in the Ladies; couldn’t be better. We knock a hole in the wall connecting the two compartments, and install an inconspicuous transporter for the gal. We also install a simple dispenser for condoms and lubricant, disguised as a unit for dispensing extra toilet rolls, and a simple disposal unit.”

“I think I need to think about it,” said Steve.

“You bet,” said Joe. He put his hands in his pockets. “You know, I really gotta hand it to you,” he said, surveying the cubicle. “You really provide a first-class facility. You may not know this, but not all disabled toilets provide a sink at the right level.”

“You don’t say,” said Steve.

“Of course, having a sink in the cubicle could be quite convenient from a hygienic point of view for individuals using the cubicle for purposes for which it was not originally designed,” said Joe. “We would hope that individuals would take care to clean up after themselves so as not to inconvenience or offend legitimate disabled users of the toilet.”

Steve laughed. “You son of a bitch,” he said. “Hell,
I
don’t know.”

He opened the door of the cubicle to pace up and down along the urinals.

“You may have a point,” he said. The fact that he had already agreed was neither here nor there, often it’s only after agreeing to buy something that a customer begins to realize how much he would like not to buy it.

“You should see some of the hot shots we get these days,” he said. “Straight out of college and they’re on a hundred grand a year. In my day you didn’t see that kind of money till you were thirty. In my day you thought you had something to prove. Well, you’d think the positive side of it would be you’d get staff who knew how to deal with liberated women. I know
I’m
too old to learn, but at that age they should have been growing up around women expecting to be treated as equals. Instead we get behavior that—well, all I can say is, we wouldn’t have expected to get away with it
thirty
years ago, and that was before they started taking people to court for opening a door or some damn thing.”

A good salesman knows when to let the customer do the talking. Joe waited sympathetically at the door to the disabled cubicle.

“I tell you frankly I’ve seen things that made my hair stand on end. The whole thing is a minefield. I’ve explained to a couple of the more egregious offenders that there are no certainties, the fact that a young woman is wearing high heels does not mean she can be guaranteed not to sue you. I don’t mind telling you that some of these men are a lawsuit waiting to happen. This idea of yours may not be in the best of taste, but from where I’m standing it looks like more of a solution to a genuine problem of nightmare proportions than anything
else
I’ve seen. To be honest, it’s something a man of my generation has trouble with, but the younger men are a different breed. We can’t do business without them, or we’ll lose our competitive edge; but I have to say I’m getting sick and tired of wondering when some girl is going to get awarded $1 million in damages because the firm didn’t protect her from their shenanigans. How the hell am I or anyone else supposed to protect her, for the love of Mike? Well, if they want protection I’ll give ’em protection. Send me a contract and we’ll get the builders in.”

MORE HIGHLY QUALIFIED PROFESSIONALS

J
oe had said he had well-qualified individuals who were ready to walk through the door, which in retrospect had been overstating the case somewhat. It was one of those things a salesman just
has
to say. You get a sense for what someone wants to hear, and sometimes there’s something that you just
know
is going to clinch the deal. You say what you have to say, and then afterwards you clear it with head office. If you yourself
are
head office it makes it easier in some ways, because you’re obviously not going to give yourself a lot of shit, but on the other hand in some ways it gives you a whole new perspective on what head office has to put up with. Because the buck stops here. Whatever it was you said you could do, you personally are going to have to do it.

Anyway he had to come up with staff fast.

While it was not strictly untrue that he had well-qualified individuals who were ready to walk through the door, the individuals who were ready to walk through the door had answered ads for permanent jobs. Most were not prepared to leave their present jobs for a six-month position with the possibility of renewal. Luckily one of the best qualified applicants, a very bright gal, well turned out, good skills, unflappable, hadn’t turned a hair when he explained the nature of the job, said she would be willing to take a six-month assignment on one condition.

“If at the end of the six months they decide not to go ahead with the program,” said Lucille, “I want the option of staying on in the position for an additional six months at a salary 30% above the notional rate for the position, or, alternatively, a separation fee equivalent to 30% of the salary for six months
plus
one month’s salary, to compensate for the inconvenience to me of having to look for another job for the second time in a year.”

Joe had to hand it to her, she was one tough cookie. As long as none of the other gals got wise it was no skin off his nose.

“You got it,” he said.

“I’d like that in writing, obviously,” said Lucille.

“You got it,” said Joe.

One thing that you soon learn in business is that you should learn from your mistakes and stop kicking yourself. Making mistakes is
how
we learn. If you’re not making any mistakes, chances are you’re not taking enough risks, and sometimes just not taking risks is the biggest mistake you
can
make.

That was what Joe told himself when he discovered that his hard work in recruiting eighteen other women who thought they could be the woman in a thousand had all been for nothing, because all eighteen had answered ads for permanent jobs. In retrospect, that had been a mistake. Granted. But there’s no point kicking a dead horse.

So he picked himself up and started recruiting again, and within a week he had five gals prepared to try it out on a six-month contract, plus another five for camouflage. He wrote a new software program for the occasion. And he prepared himself for the last hurdle: a series of motivational talks with the individuals whom the package was designed to benefit.

Joe knew he would have to talk to the first beneficiaries of the program himself. He was going to have to talk to them one at a time, and he was going to have to choose his words carefully. One thing was for sure, if he explained it to a group it would never get off the ground. Everybody would be looking at everybody else to see how they were reacting, and it would be touch and go.

What he did was he arranged a day of brief appointments with the men in question. He explained about the dangers of inadvertently committing sexual harassment in the modern office. He explained that research had shown that the highest-performing individuals in a company were often the very ones who were put at risk. He commented that the thing about drive is you either have it or you don’t, and if you have it you can’t just turn it off at the flick of a switch. He explained that in view of these findings the company was placing a facility at the disposal of its highest-ranking performers, on an experimental basis.

Participants would be offered the opportunity anywhere from two to five times a week at randomly generated times of finding release for any pent-up physical needs. A notification would appear on a participant’s computer screen. It would be entirely up to the participants whether they took action or not. Administrators of the program would have no information as to uptake on the part of individuals. Participation or non-participation would be entirely confidential.

As Joe spoke on, the client would, typically, not say anything at first in case it turned out to be a joke. So Joe would flesh out the rationale of the program with material on the baboon in captivity, amplifying if necessary with other findings in primatology. He would point out that the ventro-ventral, or so-called “missionary,” position was virtually unheard of among other primates; that the ventro-dorsal position, or mounting from behind, was the preferred method of entry among virtually every primate known to man; and that we ignore nature at our peril.

While the client digested this unfamiliar material, Joe would continue to outline the logistics. A participant who had received notification, he explained, would be entitled to make use of the facility at his own convenience at any time before the end of the working day, at which time, unfortunately, the entitlement would no longer be valid. Should the participant choose to avail himself of the opportunity, he could either accept immediately or select the LATER option on the menu, in which case he would be allowed to either specify a later time, or simply wait until a convenient moment occurred and then click on the I’M READY NOW icon.

Any form of acceptance, Joe would explain, would activate a notification for a lightning rod; if the time was convenient she would report for duty, if it was inconvenient she would return the assignment to the pool for someone else to pick up. The identity of the lightning rods would remain confidential at all times.

Someone like Bill Gates could probably do this amount of programming standing on his head, but for Joe it represented a real challenge. He would have appreciated some sign that his clients were impressed by the sophistication of the product. For the most part, though, they seemed to focus on other things.

In fact he knew from the first moment he set eyes on them that the guys were a bunch of assholes. They all reacted in exactly the same stupid way.

“Let me get this straight,” they would say. “The company is offering this as part of its sexual harassment policy? Hoo boy!”

He had to remind himself that these people were keeping him in business. It was the fact that they
were
assholes that had left the CEO of a competitive company at his wits’ end how to deal with them. If they
hadn’t
have been Grade A assholes the CEO would probably not have taken a giant step for mankind in being the first American executive to introduce lightning rods to the workplace.

Besides, the thing to remember was that it was probably not their fault that they were assholes. They were not to blame for their upbringing. All you had to do was talk to them to realize that these were people with no class. It wasn’t their fault. They had just been brought up that way. The way to look at it was, if a guy, through no fault of his own, has not been brought up to treat women with respect, is it fair that his whole career should be put in jeopardy? Is it fair that on top of the disadvantage he has
anyway
in competing against guys who have been to Harvard and Yale, he should have the additional handicap of endangering his career every time he is in the vicinity of female personnel?