Lightning Rods - By Helen DeWitt Page 0,12
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.”
The Numbers Game
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Joe was the first to admit that he made a lot of mistakes when he started out. He worried about all the wrong things. The way he looked at it at first was, take it slow, build up gradually. So the first thing he decided to try, if you can believe it, was a kind of office-orientated version of Spin the Bottle.
But one thing he got right was that it was important to look good. In the trailer he had only seen himself in the bathroom mirror that he used to shave in. Seeing himself in the office mirror had come as a shock. In fact it had made him wonder whether he had actually been sane when he bought that suit in the first place. Why would anybody buy a shit-colored suit? Why would that have seemed even momentarily a good idea? All right, it was on sale at the time. Originally a $99.99 suit, it had been reduced to $49.99 with choice of tie. But wouldn’t you think you would at least wonder why they hadn’t been able to sell it at $99.99? Wouldn’t you think you would look at it and think Oh, I’ll bet the reason they couldn’t sell it at $99.99 was that nobody wanted to buy a suit that went with their turds. But no, he’d just gone in and said, “Hey! $49.99! And it fits! And it’s 100% polyester so it won’t get wrinkled!” Jesus.
Anyway, now that he had come to his senses he realized that for what he was trying to achieve it was impossible to look too good.
He bought a thousand-dollar suit on the installment plan. It was a dark, silky charcoal, so dark it was almost black in certain lights. He bought a deep red silk tie. He bought ten white shirts and a pair of heavy silver cufflinks. He bought ten pairs of black silk socks. He bought a pair of three-hundred-dollar English shoes. He bought ten pairs of Jockey underpants and ten Jockey T-shirts because it’s important to be clean. He bought a box of crisp white handkerchiefs. It’s important not just to look like a rich man, but to feel the way a rich man feels in his clothes.
Then he had some stationery printed up. He wrote to a lot of businesses in the area explaining that he was doing research in personal interaction in occupational psychology, and asking whether members of staff would be prepared to participate in a simple study.
Seventy-five companies didn’t bother to reply. Fifteen wrote to say they weren’t interested. Ten said they would need to know more about it. He went in to Number 91 and he explained:
“As you know personal inter- and intra-gender interaction is a minefield in the modern office. Studies in Germany have shown that the tensions generated by an environment where the sexual is taboo have been eased by what I call a lightning rod.”
“A what?” said the personnel officer.
“An arbitrary device permitting yet limiting interpersonal interactions. A common example is the mistletoe. Persons walking beneath it may be kissed. Persons who avoid it are exempt. Studies in Germany have shown that a similar device, installed in the office environment, removed much of the ill feeling which had previously been generated by, on the one hand, unwelcome advances and, on the other hand, unanticipated rejection.”
He explained that the study would examine the effects of such a device in an American business environment.
Nine out of ten were not interested. One agreed to the study.
Now the way he had set it up—and this was a long way from the hole in the wall—was this. Participants would be placed in a computer-generated random-selection procedure. In phase one, the selection would take place once a day at 5. In phase two, there would also be a lunchtime selection. In phase three, there would be hourly selection. Two names would be chosen, one male and one female. These two persons would then be required to kiss in full view of the office, say under the main clock. In other words, Spin the Bottle.
Everyone in the office agreed to play.
Interesting.
SPIN