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