by Helen Dewitt
“Well,” said Joe. “Well, I’ll see what I can do.”
CAREER DEVELOPMENT
Years later, when Lucille was making a million a year as a litigation lawyer, she was sometimes asked to identify the thing that had made the single biggest contribution to her career. A lot of women saw Lucille as a role model, because she had started out the way lots of women start out: She had learned to touch type, she had learned a couple of word processing packages and a spreadsheet, and she had worked in an administrative support capacity for eight years, admittedly at increasingly senior levels, before swanning into Harvard Law School with LSATs in the high 170s and swanning out again into the cutthroat, male-dominated field of litigation. What was her secret?
Lucille didn’t say “That’s my secret” because if you say something like that it’s just an open invitation to all and sundry to pry into your affairs. Besides, there’s no point in unnecessarily alienating people.
What she said was that the thing that was the biggest help was the fact that she had taught herself shorthand in tenth grade, even though everybody told her there was no point because most jobs didn’t require it any more. She had practiced shorthand all through high school, and she had kept it up at work even when it wasn’t needed, and when she went to Harvard Law School she was able to get more out of classes because she wasn’t having to scribble at breakneck speed to get everything down. Then every night she made a point of typing up her shorthand notes and making a print-out, as well as saving the notes on disk, with the result that she consolidated the material covered in the lecture. Then when she had to take exams she had already reviewed the material once, and she had typed notes for all her lectures, and she was able to incorporate new material and cross-references into the material she had on disk. So that shorthand everyone told her was a waste of time enabled her to make the best possible use of her time at Harvard Law School, and that was the thing that had made the single biggest contribution to her career.
This is the kind of thing people want to hear from a role model. They want to hear that the role model got where she is today doing something they themselves might well have done, something that maybe isn’t a million miles from something they’re just naturally doing already. Something everybody undervalues that will one day turn out to surprise them.
They don’t want to hear that the thing that made the single biggest contribution was whipping someone on the bare butt twice a week for two years, in a specially equipped disabled stall in the Ladies.
The way Lucille saw it was, most people are not going to get the opportunity to follow up that little tip even if they have the inclination. And nobody is going to come to any actual harm learning shorthand. Nobody is going to find themselves out of their depth following a set of study techniques. They may not end up a hot shot litigation lawyer, but they’ll improve their grade-point average—that’s a heck of a lot more than you can say for most free advice.
The fact is, though, that there’s a heck of a lot more to life than a grade-point average.
Lucille had always been able to keep a cool head in a crisis. She had always had an attention to detail. Those two assets helped her to achieve top scores when she came to take the LSAT. The thing is, though, that the LSAT does not test for the killer instinct. Like it or not, we have an adversarial legal system, and there are areas of that system where someone without the killer instinct is going to get pushed to the wall.
What Lucille realized later, when she got on the litigation track, was this. Attention to detail is important, especially in a big case. But it’s something that can be delegated. The reason good secretaries and personal assistants have attention to detail is that detail can be delegated—it can be delegated to the kind of person who’s good at that kind of job. The killer instinct is something else again. You can delegate anything else, but the killer instinct is not something that can be exercised by proxy.
Well, lots of people realize that sooner or later—but for most people the realization comes too late. Or sometimes people get a glimpse of the truth, but they misunderstand it; they think that having the killer instinct makes you a bad person. But the thing is, it’s not a personal thing. You don’t have to personally hate the opposition. In fact, if your emotions are involved in that way, you’ll probably be less effective than you otherwise would be. Lucille knew this, because by the time she recognized the importance of the killer instinct she had that instinct on call—and that was entirely as a result of her little biweekly extracurricular assignment.
What Lucille realized was that everyone has a little pool of aggression inside them. If you’ve been given the assignment of whipping someone twice a week, and you want to do a good job, you’ve got to draw on that pool of aggression. You’ve got nothing against the guy, heck, you don’t even know the guy. But if you want to do a good job you’ve got to be able to bring that whip down like you mean business; you’ve got to be able to bring a whip down and draw blood, and instead of stopping and saying “Oh, I’m sorry, did I hurt you?” or “Oh, excuse me, was that too hard?” you’ve got to bring it down again just as hard as you did the first time. Or harder.
Well, if you’re in court, or you’re at the negotiating table, you’ve got to be able to draw on that same pool of aggression. You’ve got to be able to mean business. Most women think they mean business if they manage to cause someone a slight stinging sensation—and even then they probably smile and apologize just in case anybody’s feelings got hurt. Until you know what it’s like to draw blood and hit harder the second time you don’t know what it means to mean business. And the thing is, people can tell.
So in the end it was all for the best. But to begin with it was by no means obvious that the experience would be the valuable, career-enhancing opportunity it turned out to be.
Lucille had always thought she was pretty unflappable; her adjustment to life as a lighting rod had only confirmed this. Even so, she had to admit that the experience of applying a whip to a bare butt was quite an eye-opener. It’s not something that secretarial work really prepares you for; you just have to call on your inner resources and hope for the best.
She turned up on the first day not really knowing what to expect. Sure enough, there was a Ladies Room out by the elevators, just as Joe had said there would be. She went in, and it turned out there was just the one stall, adapted for disabled users, and the outer door bolted from the inside. Maybe that was why noise was not expected to be a problem. And sure enough there was a small whip in a cupboard labeled Fire Equipment. There was a button to press to show she was ready to proceed—it had taken her about five months of lobbying Joe to get that one lousy button made standard in all installations. So Lucille pressed the button, and a panel slid open in the wall, and the transporter came through, and sure enough here was the bare butt of the client waiting to be whipped. For reasons best known to himself he had kept his shoes and socks on, so he was wearing well-polished black loafers and black silk socks.
You know, thought Lucille, I don’t care what you say. This is weird.
Well, she thought, look at it this way. Men are strange at the best of times. Some are just stranger than others. And look, it’s his fifteen grand. All I have to do is whip the guy a couple of times a week, for a year, and it’ll be my fifteen grand.
And she raised her arm and brought it down, and she brought the lash of the whip down with it, and it was pathetic.
Lucille gritted her teeth. She was here to do a job.
Come on, she thought. Let’s give the guy his money’s worth.
She raised her arm and brought it down. There was still no noticeable result, so she thought she must be doing something wrong. She raised her arm and brought it down harder. Then she noticed that there were pale weals on the butt where she had hit it the first couple of times. Then they turned red.
After a while she got the hang of it.
He might not be able to sit down for the rest of the day, but he sure as heck got his money’s
worth.
THE OTHER 999
Lucille had been coping with the new responsibility for about three months, on top of her regular secretarial and lightning rod duties, when one day she went to the Ladies to freshen her lipstick. She was just blotting her mouth dry when she heard someone sobbing in the height-friendly cubicle.
Lucille hesitated. People used the HFC for all kinds of things—if you ran to work, for instance, it was a good place to change clothes, or if you were going out for the evening you could just change in the HFC. So there was no reason to assume that this was a lightning rod. But what if it was? The problem with any new service is there are a lot of blips and wrinkles that no one could have anticipated, and besides Lucille sometimes wondered if Joe was as rigorous in his selection procedure as he should have been. It was all very well Joe talking about the woman in a thousand, Lucille sometimes thought Joe just hired anyone who walked in off the street who could type, as long as she didn’t have any cellulite and said Yes. The reason she thought it was that after just nine months on the job she knew of at least six other lightning rods in the building, and frankly, if Joe had been doing his job, she shouldn’t have known one.
Before she could make up her mind the door of the cubicle swung slowly open, and a girl from Supplies walked out. Her face was streaked with tears.
“Diane,” said Lucille. “What’s the matter?”
“I’ve done something terrible,” said Diane, dissolving into tears once more. “And now I’ve done it I can’t ever undo it. I can’t ever be someone who never did it.” Tears dripped steadily onto her blouse. “I want to get married, but how can I do a thing like that to Don?”
“A thing like what?” said Lucille.
“Like letting . . . ”
Diane wiped her face with the back of her hand.
“Here, have a tissue,” said Lucille.
Diane dried her face with the tissue.
“I was at my wits’ end,” said Diane. “I didn’t know what to do. All I needed was three credits to complete my physiotherapy qualification and then my mother lost her job and if I didn’t help her she was going to lose her house and I just, it just seemed like everyone was depending on me, and when this opportunity came along at the time it looked like the answer to a prayer.”
“Well, I don’t know what it is you’ve done, or think you’ve done,” said Lucille. “And it’s obviously none of my business. But in my opinion you should just let bygones be bygones. Whatever it is, don’t let it spoil your life. If you’ve met someone you want to spend your life with, just think of that as a fresh start and put whatever it is behind you.”
“Yes, but you don’t understand,” said Diane. “It’s not that easy.” She spat out a description of the lightning rod facility in a way that was only too obviously not the attitude of the woman in a thousand who saw it as no different from holding hands.
Lucille could see she was expected to be shocked and horrified and surprised. Some people might have acted shocked and horrified and surprised just to throw off suspicion; that wasn’t her way. Lucille never bothered to pretend anything she didn’t feel; it was too much trouble. If you’re going to go around trying to provide people with the reaction you think they want you’re going to drive yourself insane. Why bother.
“I see,” said Lucille. “Well, obviously if it hasn’t worked out for you it might be time to quit. It isn’t for everyone. I know quite a few women who’ve tried it, and some of them found it harder to deal with than they expected.”
Maybe that would calm her down. If people went around having hysterics it was going to do the business no good at all.
Diane was staring at her openmouthed. “You know other people who do this?” she said.
“Obviously if you’re thinking of getting married you may want to give it up,” said Lucille.
“But,” said Diane. “How can I do this to Don?”
“Does he think you’re a virgin?” asked Lucille.
“No but—”
“Well then there’s no reason for him to know, is there?”
Diane opened her mouth.
“Look,” Lucille said firmly. “You go to the bathroom every day of your life.”
“Yes but—”
“There’s no secret about it. It’s common knowledge. But you wouldn’t expect to share every little detail with your loved ones.”
“No but—”
”You’re not planning to tell him every time you change a tampon.”
“No but—”
“If you ask me,” said Lucille, “this is a lot less unfaithful than sleeping with someone you know, where Don would have reason to be jealous. Here, you’ve made the physical act about as close as it can get to just going to the bathroom.”
Diane was still crying quietly.
Lucille handed her another tissue, thinking Where does he get them?
The fact was, as Joe could have told her, that there simply weren’t enough qualified applicants to fill the positions.
MISS PERFECT
As any salesman knows, you think you’ve covered all the angles and all of a sudden when you least expect it out of left field comes a boomerang.
One day Joe was sitting in the office waiting for his 11 o’clock appointment, and at 10:58 this black gal came in.
“I’m afraid I have an 11 o’clock appointment,” he said politely.
“I’m a couple of minutes early. I’m Renée.” She held out her hand. He stood up and shook it thinking Shit.
He had advertised for a crème-de-la-crème PA. On the surface of it this might look like unnecessary extravagance: If you use somebody like that as a lightning rod, you’re talking a 100% increase on a $50,000 salary. Whereas if you used a couple of data inputters, say, you’d get twice the coverage for your dollar.
What he’d decided was that this was a shortsighted way of looking at it.
If you talk to people from an older generation, one of the things they comment on is the fact that it’s just not possible to get the same quality of secretary that you could get thirty or forty years ago. Time was you could get a bright gal out of college and she’d get a job as a secretary, sometimes she’d marry and settle down and raise a family, sometimes she’d make a career of it. Well, nobody wants to go back to the days when that was all she could do. If a woman is able to do the same job as a man, why shouldn’t she do it, and get paid accordingly? But the fact of the matter is, it’s had some consequences, and the business world hasn’t really faced up to those consequences.
A man who has worked his way to the top of a multi-million dollar operation needs first-class support. Like as not he’s dealing with an international concern; he needs to be able to delegate to somebody who isn’t looking to take over his job. Time was, he could have gotten that support. Today, the kind of person who would be qualified to give that level of support just isn’t interested. It’s partly the money, and partly the fact that the job isn’t going anywhere.
Well, you can’t do a heck of a lot about the prospects. Trouble is, you can’t do a heck of a lot about the money, either. Because there’s no way shareholders are going to stand still for a secretary making $100,000 a year. Plus, all the guys on the career track in the company are going to get pissed off. Any CEO worth his salt knows a top-drawer PA can make more of a contribution to the company than some jack-ass vice president, but just because you know something like that doesn’t mean you can say it, let alone put your money where your mouth is. One of the first things any manager has to learn is the importance of staff morale.
The result is that sooner or later the PA decides to jump ship. She knows she’s never going to make top dollar, so it’s Sayonara baby.
What he had speculated, anyway, was that if you offered somebody the chance to fulfill that role and make double the going rate, she would find switching over to middle management a lot less attractive.
The other thing was that there was an important principle at stake. It was important that lightni
ng rods should be drawn from every tier of an organization. Because if you start economizing, if you start saying you’re only going to use low-level personnel, sooner or later that’s going to stigmatize that whole branch of employment and you’re going to have a major problem on your hands.
So he had advertised for a personal assistant to a CEO of a major company, and he had made a few appointments, and the first appointment was for 11 in the morning. He had already had a look at the résumé and been impressed. And now in walked this gal.
She was dressed the way you’d expect someone who planned to work at that level to dress. She was wearing low-heeled Gucci shoes, and a beige cashmere dress, and a silk scarf, and a gold watch. He thought Jesus.
“If you’ll just fill out this form,” he said.
She took out a La Cross pen and filled out the form and handed it back to him.
“Thank you,” he said. “And now we’ll just get the skills out of the way. There’s a word processor in the next room. The program will take you through the tests.”
She stood up and walked into the glassed-off cubicle. He could hear a couple of light clicks as she accessed the menu and made her choices. And suddenly it was like a plague of invisible locusts filling the room with their clattering wings. It was like a radio tapdance revival. It was like the dregs of satellite TV, the kind of program that shows 500 simultaneous ping pong matches live, and only on Channel Who Gives a Fuck. It was like, more worryingly, someone typing 100 wpm. With no mistakes.
She took the typing test, and the word processing test, and the spreadsheet test, and the slideshow test. She took the numeric keypad test and the shorthand test. She took the spelling test, and the alphabetizing test, and the grammar test. Then she sent the tests to print, and they printed out on a printer behind Joe’s desk.