Lightning Rods

by Helen Dewitt

  Every salesman knows that it’s a numbers game. Joe suddenly realized that he was looking at exactly the kind of customer he had spent all those fruitless months in search of. If one person in twenty in Eureka, Mo. had had this kind of attitude, he would never have stopped selling encyclopedias in the first place. His whole life would have been different.

  A salesman has to face facts; that’s one of the saddest things about the job. Because what you realize is just how many things are the way they are because people could not make a living out of appealing to people’s better nature. He himself had taken pride in selling the Britannica when he had first started out; the vacuum cleaners had been his second choice, and the lightning rods had been his third choice. We live in the kind of world where people end up with their third or fourth or fifth choice because there just isn’t the money in their first choice. Every once in a while you get this glimpse of what the world would be like, not if everyone was perfect, but if just a few more people were just a little bit better than they are. You get this glimpse of a world where people could get by, maybe not with their first choice, but with a close second.

  Elroy came out from behind the sofa, whining softly. He came over to stand by Joe, and dropped the tennis ball temptingly on the floor.

  Joe nudged it with his foot. Elroy snatched it up, growling and wagging his tail.

  Joe thrust his hands in his pockets again. Snap out of it, Joe, he told himself. We don’t choose to be the way we are. There’s something in a dog that has evolved to get excited about a ball. For whatever reason, whatever it is that makes people get excited about the Encyclopaedia Britannica has evolved in relatively few people. The average man has evolved to be interested in sex more than the average woman. You’re making a living out of a world you didn’t make, out of people who evolved the way they happened to evolve. All you can ever do is try to increase the net sum of human happiness to the best of your ability.

  I know, he said, but—

  But nothing, he said. Sure it would be nice if there were more people like Lucille, but she’s a very special lady.

  He remembered the spiel he had come up with in the early days about looking for the woman in a thousand. That was Lucille all right.

  He was feeling kind of down, if the truth be told.

  Lucille looked up. “Is anything the matter?” she asked.

  “No, not really,” he said. He sat down on the unit, facing her across the open Micropaedia. “It’s a funny old world,” he said.

  Elroy dropped his ball hopefully on the floor. Joe didn’t have the heart to get into the game. Lucille picked it up with a gingerly thumb and forefinger and tossed it away from her; Elroy scampered after it in hot pursuit.

  Everyone gets discouraged from time to time. It’s what you do with it that counts. Joe sat looking rather glumly at the upside-down page, thinking about family values.

  Sometimes your own mind can actually be more of a mystery to you than the most enigmatic of strangers.

  He was just sitting there, thinking You have to deal with people the way they are. Not how they ought to be. That’s what being a successful businessman is all about.

  All of a sudden he thought: But the reason they’re not how they ought to be is there are so many obstacles in the way. Most people want to do what’s right. It’s just hard. The more people sincerely want to do what’s right, the more important it is to help them. They have to accept the way they are, and learn to deal with it, if they’re ever going to stand a chance of improving.

  And suddenly he had an incredibly brilliant idea.

  GENIUS STRIKES AGAIN

  Joe had thought of an idea so audacious only a genius or a lunatic could have come with it.

  The idea was, what if it had been a mistake to concentrate initially on a secular environment?

  Events were to prove that he was no lunatic.

  He’d made a mistake. A big mistake.

  But it took genius to recognize that mistake.

  To be fair, sales is all about targeting.

  It’s a numbers game.

  Target, target, target, target.

  Some people are always going to say no.

  Now a good salesman can turn that no into a yes. Granted. The question is how long you have to spend turning a no around. A good salesman picks people who are likely to say yes without wasting his time.

  Well, in his innocence, he had imagined that a highly Christian environment would not be amenable to the type of product he had to offer.

  He said later that he could look back and weep.

  One thing you learn in sales is never take anything for granted.

  He was a long way from reaching saturation in the type of organization he started out on, but one thing you learn in sales is to look ahead.

  Time doesn’t stand still.

  Four years ago he had had the field all to himself; now suddenly out of a clear blue sky he had El Cheaparooney to contend with. It was time to move on to pastures new.

  Well, if there was one segment of the market where El Cheapo didn’t have a hope in hell of finding takers, it was in that part of the country where people care about family values.

  So he approached a couple of companies that he had left off his initial list.

  What he did was he made most of the points he usually made, but he left out the material about the baboon.

  Instead he made the point that a girl who has been brought up in a Christian home should not be subjected to inappropriate behavior and led into temptation at the office. A business has an obligation to protect the purity of its female staff. At the same time we are dealing with fallible human beings. A man may try to do right but fail. A business has an obligation to protect the men on its staff who while trying to follow Christ’s path suffer the weakness of the flesh. Which is better: to leave a man to consort with prostitutes, endangering his health and that of his family, endangering his reputation—knowing that if he is discovered the disgrace will ensure that the downward path is swift and sudden! Or to provide an outlet, a hygienic outlet for those carnal frailties?

  Joe had been arguing of late, to clients in the secular community, that untold man-hours were being lost to the scourge of cyberporn, thereby making the physical release offered by Lightning Rods an indispensable safeguard to productivity. The argument proved surprisingly adaptable to the Christian setting.

  “Remember,” he would say, “he that commits adultery in his heart has committed adultery as much as if he had done the deed. But a man who is afflicted by impure thoughts is drawn back again and again to the source of the poison. Is it not better that a man should commit a single impure act, in a couple of minutes, than that he should stain his thoughts with impurity for hours at a time? Is it not better, if he cannot resist temptation, to fornicate once in the flesh than a hundred times in the heart?”

  With these words did he persuade both of the companies he approached. He was then able to tell new prospects that he knew of at least two companies with a strong commitment to Christian values which had implemented the scheme.

  “Look at Mary Magdalene,” he would say. “Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone.”

  AND AGAIN

  Now it was in the course of his dealings with the Christian community that an idea came to him that was breathtaking in its simplicity.

  It goes without saying that the vast majority of firms with Christian values were always going to be hostile to a scheme which accepted man’s fallen nature and tried to do something about it. You’ve got to expect that when you’re dealing with a fundamentally conservative group of people. He obviously had to feel his way very carefully, going by hints that people threw out, the odd name dropped in seemingly casual conversation. By and large he managed to steer clear of firms where there was nothing doing, and to zero in on the ones where he stood some chance of success. But as every salesman knows, you can’t win ’em all.

  He had an appointment one day with a man who accordin
g to the scuttlebutt was a likely prospect.

  For some reason the man did not respond as expected. He just kept staring at Joe.

  “Is this true?” he said at last.

  “Scout’s honor,” said Joe.

  “I never heard of such a thing,” said the man.

  “Well, obviously it’s quite a new concept,” said Joe. “It runs the risk of being misunderstood. Confidentiality is one of the things we guarantee our clients. That’s why, to all outward appearances, my agency is just like any other employment agency.”

  “And people use you? You’ve been in business a long time?”

  “Four years,” said Joe. “Long enough for copycats to spring up all over town. If I could just make this one point, it’s especially important for a Christian firm to not settle for cheap imitations. Sure you can get cheaper, but money isn’t everything. I don’t need to tell you that the ideal of Christian forgiveness and charity can sometimes seem to be more honored in the breach than the observance, as it says in the Lord’s Prayer, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us, but if somebody gets known to have sinned the attitudes of his fellow sinners can sometimes be the biggest obstacle to getting back on the upward path.”

  Jim avoided his eyes. Up to this moment Jim had probably been hoping that Joe hadn’t heard about him; now he was probably guessing that he probably had.

  “Now the copycats, to offer the prices that they offer, can only make a profit by using the very cheapest materials. Mexicans, Nicaraguans, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but you see what I’m saying. And believe you me, that’s what we’re talking. Whereas Lightning Rods has always made it a policy to use only the highest quality of staff. Which means you’re not going to have a lot of people wandering around the place who are going to attract attention. They’ll look just like the people you’ve already got on your staff.”

  “But in that case,” said Jim. “You mean…you mean there’s no way to tell?”

  “That’s exactly what I do mean,” said Joe.

  “This is dreadful,” said Jim. “I knew things were bad, but I didn’t know they were that bad. What is the country coming to?”

  Joe was already listening philosophically, waiting for the interview to end. If you’re a salesman you can tell when a lead isn’t going anywhere.

  “I have a twenty-year-old daughter, just moved up to New York,” said Jim. “I didn’t like the idea a whole lot to begin with. Now for all I know she’s working in this sort of environment—”

  “Well, if she is, she’ll probably be finding she’s treated with a lot more respect than she would be in offices that haven’t made an installation,” said Joe. “Which is just the point I was trying to make just now.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, I’d be willing be pay over the odds just to have a guarantee that a scheme of this kind wasn’t in place,” said Jim.

  And that was when Joe had his brilliant idea. “Well, Jim,” he said, “if I should happen to hear of such a company I’ll be sure and let you know.”

  Joe went back to his motel. The slight disappointment about losing the sale was more than compensated for by his excitement over his new idea, which had the simplicity of genius.

  The new idea was this. Suppose you offered a firm the chance to outsource its whole human resources department to an independent contractor—a contractor which guaranteed its staff provision to be 100% lightning rod free. America is a country which accommodates a wide range of perspectives—there were bound to be people out there who would prefer to work in a guaranteed lightning rod free environment, whether because they had been brought up by religious fundamentalists or whatever. Well, where there are people with a fanatical preference you know there’s got to be money in it.

  Five years ago there would have been no market in catering to that preference, because the actual concept of the lightning rod protected workplace did not exist. He had created an opening for a product, he had turned into a marketable product something people had previously just taken for granted, just by bringing into existence the opposite of that product! Well, if an opening for a product has arisen, entirely thanks to you, it’s only fair that you should be the first to profit from it.

  Of course, some people would probably argue that there were plenty of reputable employment agencies already in existence that never had gotten involved in the provision of lightning rods and never would. Anyone who wanted to steer clear of proactive sexual harassment prevention could just go to Manpower or Kelly or whatever and know they had absolutely nothing to worry about.

  That just showed how little they knew. Sure, you can go to Manpower and get the type of product they’ve been providing all along. But what you’re not going to get is the type of safeguard that someone who’s been in the lightning rod business from the ground up is automatically going to build into a product.

  Because look. If you’re going to offer a cast-iron guarantee that no physical outlet will be provided for drive-orientated individuals, and believe you me there are just as many of those among the Christian community as anywhere else, a responsible employer has to ensure that those employees are protected in some other way.

  Well, say a young woman for whatever reason doesn’t like the idea of working in a firm where there are lightning rods on the premises. She doesn’t object to provision being made for one kind of physical function, she doesn’t get up in arms about the fact that there are toilets in the building, but for whatever reason she doesn’t care for other types of physical function being provided for. Fine.

  In that case there’s absolutely no reason why she wouldn’t be willing to make some concessions to a firm that was prepared to offer the kind of environment she wants to work in. As a safeguard to the firm that has made an offer of that kind, at no small risk to itself, she should be prepared to sign a waiver certifying that no sexual harassment charges will be filed against individuals or the firm if some form of behavior takes place which would not have taken place if a physical outlet had been provided.

  To put it another way, a firm that has an anti-lightning rod policy owes it to itself to hire the type of employee who is prepared to offer it that kind of safeguard in exchange for the more conservative type of working environment provided.

  Which is where an employment agency with an affiliate in the lightning rod side of the business has such an edge. If you’ve spent as much time as Joe had talking to people recoiling in horror and revulsion at the very idea of a lightning rod, you couldn’t help but know there was a definite market for a product that guaranteed staff would never even have the possibility of rubbing shoulders with one. No two ways about it, it had been stressful at the time—it’s discouraging to lose a sale at the best of times, let alone get the kind of looks people give you if you have transgressed one of their socio-sexual taboos. But it meant he now knew just how strong the feelings were that the original product aroused; he knew just how many people out there would think no sacrifice too great to avoid using it.

  Well, if people feel that strongly about something, you know there’s got to be money in it. Manpower and Kelly and the more conventional agencies didn’t even know there was something to feel strongly about.

  What it meant was that he had an edge. There was going to be a window of opportunity, just when lightning rods started to be publicly known and public feeling would run high, when a firm that had thought through the implications of the LRF office would be well positioned to pick up the ball and run with it.

  Joe walked up and down his motel room. “Joe,” he said, “I really think you’re on to something.”

  He walked up and down grinning and thinking Boy oh boy oh boy.

  The beauty of it was, of course, that it would consolidate his position as a defender of family values. People would see that all he was trying to do was make the world a better place. Because whatever people may tell you, money isn’t the only thing in life. And the beauty of it was, no matter how you looked at it,
he was going to make one heck of a lot of money.

  He decided to call Domino’s to order in a pizza.

  If you want to be a rich man, you need to be able to do two apparently contradictory things. On the one hand, you need to be able to operate at the level of people with a lot of money without losing your cool. Good restaurants, fine wines, fast cars—you need to be able to look like you take that for granted. But on the other hand, you can’t afford to get cut off from your roots. Because at the end of the day it’s ordinary people, with all their strengths and limitations, that wealth is based on. If you lose sight of that, you won’t have your money for long.

  “You know what,” he said pacing up and down, waiting for the pizza to arrive. “I actually think this unexpected competition is a good thing. Because if this guy hadn’t come along I would probably have just gone along getting stuck in a rut, instead of opening up new markets. The way I look at it is, the guy has actually made me a present of two totally new markets that a guy like that is in no position to exploit.”

  He walked over to the window and opened the curtain.

  The motel had been built fairly recently by an exit off I-95. From where he stood, he could have been looking out on anywhere in the country. He could see a McDonalds, and a 7-Eleven, and a Waffle House, and a TCBY.

  Every single one of those represented an idea that someone had had to have, an idea whose value had probably been far from obvious at the time. When did they actually start having 7-Elevens, anyway? At one time having a store that was open from 7 in the morning to 11 o’clock at night had been a real innovation, something no one had thought of before. People had probably said “Why would anyone pay those kind of prices at 11 p.m. when all they have to do is wait and go to the grocery store the next day? Or fine, maybe people might go if they’re desperate, but how’s a store supposed to survive on its takings between 7 and 9 a.m. and 6 and 11 at night?” Well, the answer is before you, buster.

  Or take a Waffle House. Probably when someone came up with the idea everybody had scoffed and said nobody is going to want to eat waffles after 11 a.m. at the absolute latest, who ever heard of eating waffles throughout the day?