by W. E. Gutman
Mergers, consolidations, “downsizing,” the ever-popular govern-ment “reductions in force” and hiring freezes are the trendiest pretexts for denying an over-qualified person a job. This artifice also allows an enterprise to accelerate production, cut down on overhead and protect that mighty profit margin. Over-qualification is a status narrowly averted by faking under-qualification and/or dyeing one’s hair a shade darker. Left untreated, over-qualification leads to un-employability. An unemployable person is entitled to great reverence, but no paycheck.
As we perused the want ads, I taught Eli to decipher the buzzwords. Job descriptions are cleverly crafted paragons of equivocation draped in minimalist prose. Unlike Haiku, whose exquisite simplicity condenses an idea to its irreducible essence in a few words, want ads lack both the lyricism and the poetry of truth.
I offered a few telling examples -- suitably decoded:
Ideal candidate: Mythical creature invented by employers.
Highly organized: Boss is inept.
Bright and eager: Naive and stupid.
Creative: Willing to bend to crass conformity and forego recognition for your talents, which in no way can be allowed to eclipse those of your superiors.
Dynamic: Human dynamo; unimaginative automaton.
Aggressive: Ball-buster; martinet-in-training; middle-management recruit.
Self-starter: Swim or sink.
Team player: Self-effacing milksop ready to sacrifice personal growth for the good of an enterprise that doesn't give a shit whether you live or die.
Cheerful and hardworking: Witless beast of burden.
Flexible: Willing to be tied in knots.
Strong interpersonal skills: Shifty, manipulative brownnoser.
Must work well under pressure: Must have the constitution of a mule, the temperament of a saint.
Detail-oriented: Must not see the forest from the trees.
Personable: Meek and unassuming.
Entry level position: No-exit career.
Exciting work: Excruciatingly dull.
Bright future: Somber present.
Excellent opportunity: Risky gamble.
Comprehensive salary: Colossal exaggeration.
Generous benefits: Bottom-of-the-barrel healthcare benefits, standard legal holidays and the tedium of an obligatory annual loyalty oath disguised as a summer picnic or Christmas party.
Good opportunity for growth: If you're under 21, you can expect to grow another inch or two.
Outstanding opportunity: Stepping stone to nowhere.
Will train: Will domesticate.
Leading company: Lackluster performance.
Multinational corporation: parochial policies.
Pleasant working conditions: Cramped quarters.
Modern facility: Claustrophobic windowless cinder block bunker.
Conveniently located: Decrepit downtown dungeon.
Eli got the message. Determined to avoid the humiliation and pitfalls of job hunting, he stopped looking for work. He stayed home and insisted that his parents provide him with room and board by arguing that he didn’t ask to be born in the first place.
*
It was at UNICEF, where I worked for nearly two years as a consultant, that I mastered newspeak, the language of deceit and obfuscation. I’d been hired to revamp the organization’s worldwide media network and supervise a group of stringers who reported regularly on various community development projects in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Indian subcontinent. Their dispatches, filed for later consumption by donors, were, for the most part, dull technical reports written in the “feel-good” propagandistic style that UNICEF had adopted. Hidden in terse jargon about irrigation, water purification, multiple recipes for mango soup, tsetse fly eradication campaigns, mother’s milk and infant diarrhea, were keywords of hope and success designed to mollycoddle the donors, most of whom never venture far enough from the safety and comfort of their stylish existence to be splattered by the stinking foulness of truth. Photos accompanying the reports invariably focused on smiling children against backgrounds of squalor that the art department deftly airbrushed before publication. Whereas I knew from experience that vast numbers of Third World children live in extreme poverty and face a barren world of abridged opportunities, UNICEF doggedly candy-coated reality for the benefit of its sponsors who, I’d been warned, have no stomach for nauseating reality.
“Every word you write, every gesture you make in public as a UNICEF representative must be consciously honed to extract (sic) donor-dollars. You must accentuate the positive, soften the negative. ‘Problems’ are welcome challenges; obstacles are valuable opportunities that UNICEF assesses, strategizes and solves with the generous support of its benefactors. Your responsibility is to help keep the money coming. Sob stories prejudice our fund-raising efforts.”
So had decreed Edgar Koh, my supervisor. Koh was a petty pen-pusher from Singapore who lavished praise on his compatriot, strongman Lee Kuan Yew, and affected his stiff, despotic stance. Koh seemed quite content to spend his life behind closed doors neatly shifting stacks of paper from one side of his desk to another, reading dull U.N. reports that cost thousands of dollars to produce and that no one read, and talking to his wife on the phone a dozen times a day or more. He knew that a formidable bureaucracy, erected on an elaborate scaffolding of arcane symbioses and mutually-profitable alliances shielded him from serious scrutiny. Though he sported a veddy propah British accent, his writing and editing skills, I discovered, were less than sterling. He delighted in rearranging everything I wrote, adding or deleting punctuation marks without regard to syntax and inserting fractured or irrelevant clauses. His tightly scripted corrections, made in red ink, were gratuitous and excessive but I said nothing. I understood he was justifying his existence and, in the process, bolstering his sense of self-worth. In rare moments of informality -- generally a few minutes before five in the afternoon -- he would call me into his office and recount the exploits of some noble if obscure Chinese ancestor. I countered with great solemnity that I too was a blueblood whose forefathers included King David and King Solomon. Koh greeted such disclosures with noticeable disdain.
His boss, Mehr Khan, the Pakistani Director of Communications, was tight-lipped and cranky, except among her entourage of Pakistani flunkies she’d hired and installed in various key positions to maintain a perpetual motion of paper pushing. She was disdainful of Europeans and harbored deep feelings of antipathy against Jews, a proclivity, I would quickly learn, shared by many cadres in this den of anti-Western agitation. Koh yielded to Khan in all executive decisions; Khan upheld all of Koh’s verdicts, however flawed. I was earning good money, an incentive that, for a while, tempered a growing sense of frustration and subdued the rage that was welling up in me. I would not contain myself for long.
Self-confidence is a suit of armor; self-importance is a paper hat.
*
I’d just returned from Grenada, the “Spice Island,” one of the jewels of the Caribbean where I’d spent two weeks, doing research and getting much-needed rest. The assignment: “children in especially difficult circumstances” -- another UNICEF weasel term for abject misery. The targets: neglect, physical and sexual abuse, malnutrition, primitive or nonexistent sanitation, marginal health care. The culprits: poverty, illiteracy, superstition, family violence, alcoholism, drug addiction, teen pregnancies, a rising tide of single mothers, runaway inflation, corruption and government apathy.
Such are the demons that haunt paradise, for Grenada is just that, a heavenly golden speck rising from a sparkling turquoise sea at the southern tip of an archipelago of incredible beauty, dominated by lush, mist-shrouded peaks, ringed by sandy beaches and bathed by gentle, cooling breezes. That is the Grenada most tourists know. Descending upon the island by the jet-load, they check into posh hotels armed with golf clubs, tennis rackets and scuba gear. Transfixed by the idyllic setting, lulled into semi-comatose bliss by radiant sunshine and daily transfusions of nutmeg-laced rum punc
hes, they jet back home sporting Hollywood tans and laden with trinkets they will trash a few days later. The song of the trade winds, the feverish mid-air dance of the hummingbirds drinking from the buttercups, the symphony of colors, the heady aroma of saffron and mace, orchid and passion flower -- all but silence the anguished cries, mask the tears, fan away the stench of poverty. Paradise, I’d discovered ten years earlier as I bummed around between Grenada and Barbados, is a nice place to visit but you wouldn’t want to live there if you’re an unwanted child. For if you are, chances are you suffer from some form of malnutrition, mostly a deficiency in micronutrients such as iron and vitamin A. Chances are that physical and sexual abuse will forever scar your body and soul. Chances are that child labor and parental scorn toward education will shut the doors to all but the most menial jobs. Chances are that low self-esteem and a craving for love and attention denied by abusive or indifferent kinfolk will lead to unwanted pregnancies among young girls, homosexual prostitution among young boys. With any luck, a life of servitude awaits you as a domestic or day laborer. If your luck runs out, or if jobs become scarce, you may wind up combing the silver beaches of your beautiful island in search of visitors willing to buy -- out of compassion, not necessity -- coconuts, black coral, shimmering seashells, perhaps a nickel bag or two of freshly harvested marijuana. And if despair and hopelessness finally rob you of the will to live, as police reports reveal with alarming frequency, for some children suicide may be the choice exit out of childhood. Marked, stigmatized, the rest will reach adulthood, strapped with an inheritance of poverty, neglect and abuse not of their own choosing, and which they are destined to pass on to succeeding generations.
*
Mehr Khan perused my report. She was livid.
“What are you trying to do,” she fumed, “scare off our donors?”
“I told the truth.”
“That’s not the point. How many times were you told to filter the truth and focus on the positive?”
“Trust me, I did both.”
“You did not. You went out of your way to paint a canvas of filth and gore.”
“I painted what my senses recorded. I could have said a lot more.”
“You should have consulted with our local representative and let him fill you in.”
“Your agent in St. George’s is busy sailing his sloop in some blue lagoon between Carriacou and Petite Martinique. He expressed no interest in my assignment.”
“That’s a lie!”
“Call him. I have it on good authority that he attempted to muscle in on a local orphanage and turn into a cash cow for UNICEF. And that’s the truth.”
Mehr Khan stood up, cutting a formidable figure in her purple sari, her bare midriff jiggling like Jell-O, her lips trembling, her black eyes aflame.
“Take back everything you said, you hear,” she shrieked. “Now.”
I turned around and walked out.
Edgar Koh, Khan’s yes-man, had not yet read the piece. That did not prevent him from excoriating me publicly for going over his head and denouncing my work as a “paradigm” (another favorite in a rich lexicon of U.N. catchwords) of “defiance toward mandated rules of reporting.”
“If the truth intimidates your donors, so be it. I can’t stare horror in the face and remain unmoved.”
“You will do as you’re told.” Koh was red with rage.
I laughed. “We’re not in Pakistan or Singapore. I won’t be treated like a coolie.”
“Enough!” Koh slammed his fist on his desk.
I looked at Koh. His eyes were bulging. His face was flushed. The muscles on his neck were distended and throbbing. His lips were twisted in a menacing snarl. He reminded me of a toad. In a moment of excruciating clarity of purpose, egged on by months of exasperation, I exploded.
“You know what, take this job and shove it. And tell Mehr Khan to go fuck herself.” I turned around, picked up my jacket and headed down the long corridor toward the elevator.
Koh screamed. “Come back this instant, you hear! How dare you leave.”
“Try and stop me.”
I kept walking, took the elevator, landed in the lobby and calmly exited the building. I breathed deeply the oxygenated air of salvation. Elation, sustained by anger and pent-up resentment, carried me through the evening. I was riding the crest of a cathartic high. With morning came reality. I was out of a job – again.
A PRAYER FOR AN INFIDEL
“Bis du a yid?” -- are you a Jew? -- queried a bearded, bushy-browed giant clad in black as he unfurled his prayer shawl with the bravura of a bullfighter testing a new cape. Accustomed since childhood to treat such indiscretion on a need-to-know basis, especially at 38,000 feet above sea level on a Tel Aviv-bound El Al flight from New York -- and just as I was about to surrender to sleep -- I replied:
“Far wus fregsde?” -- why do you ask? -- mimicking my father who always answered impertinent questions in the interrogative.
“Kenst du daven?” -- do you know how to pray? -- he asked, now noticeably less impressed with my potential.
“Warum, ist der pilot krank?” -- why, is the pilot ill? -- I shot back (still in the interrogative), having by now exhausted all my Yiddish.
A scowl of contempt twisting his patriarchal expression, the bearded giant snapped his prayer shawl and cloaked himself in it as if to abjure this arrogant infidel, this fake Jew who would rather daydream or sleep than exalt deity. Turning to face the emergency exit where great devotions take place, he began bobbling into prayer.
*
David, the gift-shop clerk at my Jerusalem hotel, insisted that God is dead, immolated by man, his creator. He had stumbled upon this epiphany by means he deemed too complex to reveal. Mystified, I egged him on. He waved me away with the back of his hand, unconcerned by the curiosity he’d elicited, an all-knowing scowl twisting his handsome face. Perhaps he didn’t trust me. I’d spent all too little on the sacred objects, Jewish and Christian, he displayed side by side with casual neutrality. Or did my choice of a miniature book of Psalms (for my friend Ron, a Baptist minister) and the olive wood rosary (for Tante Esther, who believes in nothing but collects talismans representing every sect known to man) elevate David’s disdain for religious pluralism to near-nausea?
“I’m Sabra,” he proclaimed with a defiance characteristic of those who take pride in circumstances over which they have no control. “So was my father, grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather,” he added, drawing four lines in the air, one for each branch in his family tree.
I marveled at his self-assurance, envious of the vigor of his genealogy, I, the wandering Jew, I the son, grandson and great-grandson of nomads who traded one hostile European fiefdom for another, I, the stateless citizen of the world who lived in suitcases during the better part of my childhood, I, who learned how to deny being a Jew in half a dozen languages and narrowly missed burning at the stake for having had no say in my own heredity.
“Does being Sabra offer immunity from faith,” I asked without a trace of irony.
David smiled with condescension. “You don’t understand.”
I offered David an opportunity to elaborate. After all, I’d asked for nothing but the privilege of buying some of his wares. He now owed me one direct, unabbreviated, unambiguous reply.
“O. K. Please explain.”
But business was brisk and an American woman with magenta tresses peering over rhinestone-studded heart-shaped eyeglasses and donning a sweatshirt proclaiming, “I bathed in the Dead Sea and lived” entered the shop, saving David the trouble of splitting hair.
I paid for the trinkets. David dropped them both into a single paper bag. I found such promiscuity refreshing. And I retreated to the no-man’s land of the hotel lounge.
*
It was time for another cup of coffee but acrid tendrils of cigarette smoke wafted in my direction, stabbing at my throat and digging deep into my sinuses. I gagged, coughed, sputtered and reflexively sought out the source of
this befouling onslaught. Nostrils flaring, I turned my head every which way, craning my neck up and down like a periscope in enemy waters. Aware of my discomfiture, a kindly old man asked, “Nu, vat’s de madder?” Touched by his solicitude, grateful for the opportunity to fume at the offensive exhalations and counting on his sympathy, I broadcast my predicament.
“I’m allergic to smoke….”
Grandfatherly smile turned to grimace.
“Vell, maybe you should have your coffee sent up to your room. Smokers have rights, you know.”
Retrieving the reeking ordnance from under the table where he’d kept it hidden from view and bringing it up to his lips with deliberate slowness, the old man took a long, deep puff and proceeded to quote from obscure biblical sources, punctuating every maxim by shaking a saintly -- if nicotine-yellowed -- digit in my direction. Oration had turned to hectoring. He dug up precedents from a vast glossary of aphorisms and drew Talmudic parallels just for the occasion.
“It is written that….”
No cup of coffee, however tempting, was worth this lecture, so I threw the gauntlet.
“It is written that smokers prevent non-smokers from enjoying the right not to inhale their poisonous emanations,” I offered, this time in the declarative, and boldly venturing into the epigrammatic by fabricating my own common law.
There was hurt and disappointment in the sage’s limpid blue eyes. There was also rancor and a damning gleam characteristic of the rebuked sermonizer.
*
Rachel expressed an unflinching belief in the supremacy of the Jewish people, in their cosmic destiny among the peoples of planet Earth. Hers was not so much a theistic view of Judaism as an unflagging conviction that Jews are genetically preprogrammed for greatness. The zeal with which she articulated her views was nothing short of messianic. Her eyes gleamed with redemptory ecstasy. She barred the door of her Ben Yehuda Street souvenir emporium with her corpulence, denying me a hasty getaway and thrusting a shot glass of Kiddush wine into my protesting hand. She switched to English.