Bait and Switch (15 page)

not anger, I say, it's aggressiveness, and I apologize if I was too I make my way back down the freeway toward the hotel, aware direct but I'd do the same in any potential employment situa-of all the feelings appropriate to a pacifist on the occasion of his first tion: tell the interviewers exactly why they need me and what I kill. Yes, I am filled with self-loathing and disgust. Slime oozes from can do for them.

my hands onto the steering wheel; the white noise of the road is filled

"Well, you haven't told me anything I don't already know."

with muffled denunciations and curses brought down on my soul. But

"Good, people only really hear what they already know."

I did it, didn't I? I tried selling myself, and for an hourlong stretch I wasn't half bad. I have bloodied my sword.

five

Networking

with the Lord

I come home to the realization that my trip, which cost me more than $1,000, airfare included, netted me little more than a lip pencil, a tube of foundation, and a handful of business cards. In fact, I am almost four months into my search—a point at which I expected to be running from interview to interview. The daffodils are fighting their way up in my tiny front yard and my cash reserves have sunk by almost $4,000, but I am not noticeably any closer to employment than when I started back in December.

I have applied to at least fifty pharmaceutical and health-

related companies and, following Kimberly's advice, have even begun proactively approaching companies where no appropriate tionary ring:

jobs are posted. For example, I leap on a start-up called A recent article posted at zmag.org lists Brighthouse as one of the "ten worst Extend Fertility, which was brought to my attention by a fellow corporations in America." You may want to ignore the slur, which, in my journalist in a context unrelated to my job search. For a con-reading, was highly ideologically slanted against the kind of neurological siderable price, the company offers to freeze women's eggs for research you are involved in. Or you might want to evaluate your public relations strategy.

implantation at a convenient, but reproductively over-the-hill phase of life. My cover letter to this firm enthuses over its mis-But this fails to strike fear into their hearts; nor do any of the sion and my extensive experience with women's health issues. I Brighthouse functionaries whose names I track down on the web follow up with more e-mails and a phone call—only to be told bother to take my phone calls.

that ExtendFertility doesn't need a PR person just now. Again Aside from my cybersearching, the only thing to do is to keep playing the feminist card, I discover and apply to a company on networking—more intensively, though, and in repackaged form.

called Frank About Women, which is "dedicated to helping If I learned one big lesson from my encounters with Prescott and companies create enriching and enduring brand relationships Patrick, it is that I have to become softer, more feminine, and with women," but to no effect.

"approachable." So I head for Ann Taylor in the mall two miles On the darker side, I approach a "neuromarketing" firm from home, which I trust to know far more about the corporate called Brighthouse, which I find listed in an article called "The Ten look than I do, and zone in immediately on a tan—not black—

Worst Corporations in America"—its aim being to apply pants suit with an accessibly curved, rather than straight-lined, neurological research to advertising, bypassing the conscious lapel, which is on sale at half price, about S160. Our local mind to appeal directly to the brain's pleasure centers. Obvi-department store supplies S15 gold earrings, and although I know ously, whether the folks of Brighthouse know it or not, they there should be a gold necklace "to pull it all together," none comes need my help. The beginning of my cover letter has an extor-to my attention. The message should be more like what Prescott recommended: approach me, please, I'm perfectly harmless.

card in my pocket.

But where to network? The answer has already come to me in Now at home I come across the card when I am preparing to a curious way. At Patrick's boot camp, I was heading for the wash my slacks. The home page of the Godel web site features a bathroom on one of our breaks when I was intercepted by a brief tribute to our troops in Iraq, and in a few clicks I come to a short man whose head formed a perfect triangle from pointy calendar in which every day, weekends excepted, is filled with bald pate to lushly padded jowls. He was a successful graduate of regularly scheduled networking events for the Atlanta job Patrick's individual coaching program, who had moved from searcher. On most days you can find a 7:30 or 8:00 A.M. breakfast a corporate layoff to managing a fried chicken franchise. "If meeting at a Shoney's or some similar venue as well as a lunch you're looking for places to network," he said, "you'll want to go meeting and an evening get-together in an area church. Here it is, laid to Godel.com," and he wrote the URL on the back of his business out for me. There is no escape from another bout with Atlanta.

card.

BACK AT MY $59-a-night hotel, I decide to confirm my first net-For a moment I reeled, feeling like a character in an early working destination before setting off on another wild-goose Pynchon novel who has just been handed a major clue in a plot chase through the suburbs. No phone numbers for the various that will never be resolved, that will only grow in ever-networking groups are listed on the Godel web site, so I call the proliferating complexity. Every science nut is aware of Godel's Godel accounting firm, which is listed, and am soon talking to Theorem, which states that no mathematical system can ever Mr. Laimon Godel himself. He apologizes for the web site's be both consistent and complete. It's a kind of postmodernist deficiencies and boomingly invites me to "a real networking warning—just when you think you've got everything sewed up event"—a lunch meeting tomorrow—where I'll be mingling with into one beautiful theory, you'll rind you've left something the local business community and no doubt collect a handful of leads.

out—and has always filled me with a thick sense of defeat. I In fact, he says, "You can come as my guest." I take this as a real thanked my informant as warmly as I could and stuffed his networking triumph on my part, or at least evidence of a winning telephone manner.

Now the chairs, which are arranged at long tables facing in the The site of the Norcross Fellowship Lunch is a suburban direction of the buffet, are filling up, mostly with white men, Shoney's just off the highway, where the restaurant host ushers but there are a handful of women—none of them wearing even a me into a side room labeled "NFL." "Is this the National Foot-splash of black. I try a conversation with Mac, an older man who ball League?" I inquire gaily of a gray-haired fellow who is so far is sitting next to car-wash Larry, and is introduced to me as an the sole other occupant of the room. No response; he must have author. "What have you written?" I ask, and he hands me a thin, heard that one a few times before. So I try again, more soberly, pamphlet-sized volume titled
Mega Values: 10 Global Principles for
with my name and mission: relocating to Atlanta, seeking a job.

Business and Professional Success—WRITTEN IN STONE.
The ten This at least elicits his name, Larry, and the information that he principles, he explains, are the Ten Commandments, which he owns a car wash.

has translated into practical guidelines for businesspeople.

"Would you be needing a public relations person?" I inAs Mac turns away to greet new arrivals, I open the book and quire, trying to regain my come-hither tone. The narrow look discover that the first commandment—"You shall have no other he gives me raises the possibility that there's something off-gods before Me"—is rendered as "Show proper respect for color about "public relations," maybe the "relations" part. Or it authority," such as one's boss. This would seem to contradict the could be my outfit, which may be too dressy, given that Larry has original, since the secular authorities may not always be in tune come in good-old-boy casual. But I am saved by the arrival of with God, may in fact be serving the false god Mammon.

another, more outgoing, Larry, who suggests we move on to fill our With Mac engaged and the dour Larry occupied with his plates at the buffet. We all do, and I am struck by the first hamburger salad, I turn to the fellow sitting to my right, who Larry's choices: a mound of lettuce, covered with canned fruit looks noticeably more upper-middle-class than most of the crowd—an salad, topped by a desiccated gray hamburger patty and dripping IT specialist, it turns out, who also runs a weekly morning session for with Thousand Island dressing.

job seekers. Any tips for me? He tells me to study the local business newspaper and, echoing Kimberly, to avoid wasting time easy stuff. Americans should be learning to do something new."

with my fellow job seekers. Surprisingly, he also advises against I cannot think of a response that will fall within the accessi-using career coaches—"there are plenty of free sources of bly feminine framework I have set for myself, so I make do with an information."

appreciative "hmmm" and ask him if he would recognize Laimon

"You mean on the Internet?"

Godel. "Over there," he says, and points out a round-faced fellow

"Mmm," he says, without elaborating.

who is back-slapping his way around the room. I rise to

"Why is it almost all men here?" I venture to ask.

introduce myself to Laimon, but the get-together suddenly

"Most of these groups started out all male. It's a religious comes to an official start with the affable Larry, who is introduced thing."

as the owner and operator of several mobile home parks, going to I want to ask what religion this might be, but settle for a the lectern and shouting, "Praise the Lord!"

coy "You're sure it's OK for me to be here?" I am wishing my This exhortation is echoed by several people among the

"host," Mr. Godel, would show up and somehow identify about fifty now assembled in the room, along with "amens."

himself.

"We've been meeting for fifteen years now," Larry goes on, "and

"Oh yeah, anyone can come now. And for you, it's a perfect I know God's been present every time because scripture says place to network. You've got a lot of the real business leaders wherever two or more of my followers meet, there am I." Now here."

a man in a boldly striped sweater steps forward to give a He returns to chewing, but the word
network
reminds me of blessing, which includes a request for prayers for an Atlantan who the advice in
NonStop Networking
to keep the conversation going has gone to work as a missionary in Czechoslovakia—a country, I with some item from the news. "So, uh, has the outsourcing cannot help but note, that hasn't existed since 1993. Well, of IT to India had any effect on you?"

wherever the missionary has gone off to, a large white-haired

"No, and I think it's a good thing too. Let the Indians do the man in the audience raises his right hand, palm to ceiling, and shuts his eyes in a gesture of prayer.

ally." Awkwardly enough, I am sitting in what is now the front of The fellow in charge of the blessing goes off into a long, me-the gathering, just in front and a little to the side of the andering anecdote about a dying man, a doctor, and a dog, lectern, where any inappropriate facial expression could be which is attributed to the last e-mail sent by "coach Venable" on visible to a good half of the assemblage. As for leaving—say, with a his deathbed. As far as I can tell, the message is that we have quick glance at my watch as if recalling some simultaneous nothing to fear from death, but I cannot be sure, since this is appointment—that could only be interpreted as a statement, one extremely shaggy dog. Larry reclaims the lectern and, to my and surely a heretical one.

complete surprise, launches into the most incendiary part of the Besides, we have come to the moment for new people, like New Testament, the part about the rich man and the eye of the myself, to stand and introduce themselves. I give my name and the needle. Will the meeting come to a sudden end as everyone empties information that I am considering relocating to Atlanta and am their pockets and rushes out to minister to the poor?

looking for a PR job. A handful of other job seekers identify No, the point seems to be that the disciples were "afraid of themselves and their desired jobs—chiefly in accounting and IT—what they might have to give up" and that Jesus taught them though most of the new arrivals are established businessmen. A that they didn't have to give up all that much after all. "Praise man in suit and tie gets applause for his announced intention to the Lord!" concludes Larry.

set up a similar fellowship for downtown lawyers—a mission no Maybe I should have guessed from the word
fellowship,
al-less risky than proselytizing in darkest Czechoslovakia to judge though that had sounded pleasantly secular, as in "fellowship of from the "oohs" and "ahs," which are mixed with a few jeers at the the ring." But here it is, right on the blue sheet of paper that very notion of lawyers. Back to Larry, who has "just a few more serves as a program: the "mission" of the NFL is to "provide a words." "What a mixed-up world!" he observes, "where we can platform for Christian businessmen to share their story of how have a debate over whether a man can marry another man God has touched their lives both personally and profession-

[chuckles from the audience] . . . Where we have a presidential candidate who says we shouldn't be over there [I assume he largely ignored. In a stumbling manner, and with reference to a means in Iraq]. Whaddya do with people like that?"

large number of handwritten sheets of paper in different sizes and There is an expectant silence as he scans the room before colors, he sets out to narrate "three ways God's been working in my answering his own question: "Whip 'em!" Somehow the life." The first has to do with his conversion experience in 1981, prospect of a whipping gets him going into a digression about when he was "moved to get on [his] knees and accept God." Such how maybe it isn't politically correct to say that, because there humility does not come easily to him, on account of his being a are people today who want to tell you that you can't discipline Texan. "Being from Texas is like being born red-haired, bald, or your own children, but in some cases that's what you've got to Jewish. Everybody notices, and you never grow out of it." The do—whip 'em. This sets off general laughter and some self-audience chuckles at this apparent witticism.