Lightning Rods

SO LONG ELECTROLUX

The first thing he did was he returned the Electrolux and its accessories.

“Well if it isn’t the hot shot!” The head of the sales reps was in a meeting. His secretary had been interrupted in the middle of a book by Danielle Steel and was none too pleased at having to break off and check the vacuum cleaner back in.

“Not such a hot shot after all, I guess,” he said.

The girl was looking at him mockingly.

“I guess I just don’t have what it takes.”

He said this with a quiet conviction that is rare in salesmen.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” the girl said. She was still looking at him mockingly, but there was a kind of undercurrent of sympathy.

“Now the guy who was there before me was a real operator,” said Joe.

“Believe me, I know,” said the girl.

“If you ever want some testimonials for the product, you should talk to some of the people there. They’ve all got these stories about how it saved their life after Hurricane Edna.”

“Yeah, we keep getting letters from them. That’s why I’m saying, don’t be too hard on yourself. Billy Graham couldn’t have sold a vacuum cleaner in Eureka. Billy Graham could have gone door to door telling people he had vacuum cleaners that were personally endorsed by Jesus K. Christ, and he would not have sold one single one. Ed has a kind of mischievious sense of humor is all. If he’d have given you the chance to show what you could do in some other district it might have been a different story.”

“Well, it may turn out to be a blessing in disguise,” said Joe. He was looking at the girl. His eyes kept being drawn to her breasts and then he would smoothly keep moving his gaze on as if it had just happened to travel past her breasts en route to checking out the pencil sharpener. He’d spent a lot of time on his own, after all. This kind of thing must happen all the time when the sales reps came in after a long time on the road. “Do you have much trouble with sexual harassment in your job?” he asked.

“What?” said the girl.

“With the sales reps, maybe? They spend all that time on the road and I just wondered if you ever had any problems.”

“Well, it’s not a job for shrinking violets if that’s what you mean,” said the girl. “But the way I see it is, and this is no disrespect to you, it takes a certain type of personality to succeed in sales. And it takes a certain type of personality to be able to deal with that type of personality. If you look at the skills, there’s a lot of people could do my job. But what it really boils down to is being able to deal with people. You have to be able to give as good as you get. There’s things about the job that would bother a lot of people. But that’s taken account of in the package they offer. The way I see it is, I’m quite a strong person. If I can get a salary that takes that into account, why would I want to settle for a job that doesn’t need those strengths?”

One of the things that’s perennially fascinating about the world is the way people sell things to themselves. If people feel the need to sell something to themselves, that tells its own tale.

“That’s very interesting,” said Joe. “But doesn’t it ever get to you? What I mean is, just suppose for the sake of argument that a guy like me, a guy you know is never going to make it to the top, comes up to you at the Xerox machine and does something inappropriate. Drops some M&M’s in the pocket of your blouse and tries to get them out. What would your reaction be?”

“Well, if you’ve ever had a secret ambition to sing with the sopranos I suggest you try it and see.”

“But say a top sales rep, say the top sales rep did something like that. You might have feelings about it that you would not feel free to express in the way you would to a guy who was not in that kind of position.”

“I see what you’re saying,” she said. “But the way I look at it is, every job has its drawbacks. You can make yourself miserable dwelling on them and thinking if you go elsewhere you’re going to find the perfect job. The fact is there is no perfect job. The perfect job does not exist. People are people. Any job you go to, you’re always going to find people. And the way I look at it is, let’s say somebody steps out of line. You’ve got to keep a sense of proportion about these things. I don’t care what he’s making, I don’t care how many Goddamn vacuum cleaners he shifts, he can’t force me to do anything I don’t want to. As long as we’re here during office hours I don’t have to do anything not specifically covered by my job description. And as soon as I leave the building my time is my own.”

“Well, there’s a lot in what you say,” said Joe.

But what he was thinking was this. A guy could be the top earner in a company and have a house and a car to reflect that, but when it came to something our instincts have programmed us to want more than almost anything else you can name he was basically no better off than Joe Schmoe.

If he wanted an outlet for his sexual urges he would have to invest the time talking to someone about her interests, with no guarantee that anything would come of it, or he would have to go home and jerk off to a magazine or video, or he would have to pay someone, with all the risks that entailed. But how much time does the top earner in a company realistically have to talk to someone about her interests? If he hires someone, on the other hand, a guy in that kind of position has a lot to lose. He has a reputation that can be damaged. What real choices does he have? If he’s at the office he can’t even put M&M’s down somebody’s blouse. Let alone get any kind of real sexual satisfaction. And a guy like that is going to be spending a lot of time on the job. He works his butt off and at the end of the day he can go home to a magazine. Just like Joe Schmoe sitting on his butt all day in a trailer.

If you’re Joe Schmoe in the trailer you tend to think if you got off your butt and got your act together you could have real girls just like the ones in the magazines. You wouldn’t have to do anything. They’d be yours for the asking. Well if it was actually like that you wouldn’t get guys trying to get off on behaving suggestively in the office.

Well, if you have a situation where the top earner in a company still can’t get what he wants, and where he can jeopardize his career trying to get what he wants, jeopardizing the profits of the company in the process, you know there’s got to be money in it.

“Well, I’ve enjoyed talking to you,” said Joe.

“What are your plans?” said the girl.

Joe was standing in front of her desk. Behind her desk the wall was a floor-to-ceiling mirror, with potted rubber plants along the base. In the mirror, between the rubber plants, he could see a guy wearing a tired brown polyester suit. It wasn’t rumpled or wrinkled because that’s the whole point of polyester. But it wasn’t crisp, either, because polyester does not have it in it to be crisp. The guy was standing there among the plants with this suit wilting on his shoulders. If a guy like that came up to you and tried to sell a vacuum cleaner you might feel sorry for him and offer him a piece of pumpkin pie, but you would not buy a vacuum cleaner. If a guy like that came up to you and made an innovative suggestion for rewarding the top earners in your company you would reject it out of hand. He was just the kind of guy you’d expect to come up with the kind of dirty idea that was totally inappropriate to your company.

“I’m going to buy a new suit.”