Bait and Switch (9 page)

there's the enigmatic Cynthia, a tousled redhead of about fortyI want to tell you my philosophy. It's very powerful.
Every unit increase in
five, who manages to look fastidious and slightly remote even in
your personal sense of well-being increases your external performance exponentially.

blue jeans. But there are no introductions, and we leap right in.

Patrick, who had boomed confidently on the phone, is not the T h i s p r o p o s i t i o n i s e x p r e s s e d o n t h e f l i p c h a r t a s commanding presence I pictured. Partly bald, with colorless,

"EP/PSWB."
We're only five minutes into the day's work, and already I'm straining to understand. If
EP,
meaning external the "four questions," under Patrick's vigilant leadership. He tells performance, varies exponentially with PSWB—one's personal us that he "has permission" to interrupt us at any moment and say sense of well-being—why are we interested in the
ratio
of
EP
to

"freeze," upon which we are not to speak or make eye contact
PSWB?
Over the course of the day, this central proposition will with others. Who gave him "permission"? Certainly not the people take various pseudomathematical forms, such as
"EP10+/PSWB"

in the room, most of whom seem to have already been frozen and
"EP 10x/PSWB,"
driving me nuts. Of course I am losing into a state of dull acquiescence. As at the Forty-Plus Club, the sight of the fact that neither
EP
nor
PSWB
can be expressed in prevailing emotional tone is depression, leavened with timid numerical form; at least I can't imagine how you would quantify expectation. Anyway, this "freezing" business is called your personal sense of well-being. But, although the room

"pattern interruption," and, Patrick tells us, "it's very turns out to contain several IT and telecom guys who must powerful." The purpose is to "get value from experience," as if have some glancing acquaintance with mathematics, or at least experience were a novel new place to find "value."

with logical, digital-type thinking, no one else seems First up is Richard, who is about sixty and has a kindly face remotely bothered. The point is to pump that
PSWB
up.

etched with permanent wince lines. He had been in real estate but left that field for undisclosed reasons, seemingly having to do
PSWB
depends on authenticity and congruency and these are reinforced with its being "so high pressure." Then he realized his lifelong by a journey of self-discovery. You're going to watch people make changes in their lives . . . You have to trust that whatever I do will lead to dream of going into business with his son, but "that didn't this [self-discovery.] This is the Knowles group model of experiential work out." This is a trend, I've read: unemployed parents going coaching.

to work in their grown children's businesses. It can be a risky undertaking, involving, as it does, the overthrow of long-standing So this is how the "Knowles group model" operates: We will parental authority; and I can think of nothing sadder than to be go around the table, though not in any predictable order, with fired by one's own child on the threshold of old age. What each person in turn going to the front of the room and addressing Richard's looking for now is fairly cosmic: "some direction another "they"—some external force or entity that can be used as for my life."

an excuse for our failures.

All this is delivered in a flat tone, without the slightest self-This lesson is reinforced with Kevin, who says he is thirty-six pity but with an expression suggesting that Richard is accus-and a practitioner of something called "operations manage-tomed to having his utterances answered with slaps. I am ment." Poor Kevin—who offers, as his most positive self-afraid he'll start to cry or at least put his hands up over his face endorsement, that he is "dependable"—now faces rumors of to ward off oncoming blows, but, mercifully, Patrick "freezes" him impending layoffs at his firm and is contemplating a leap into his before any more failures can be confessed, telling us, "I have own business. But this won't be easy, because he has two children to dig the pain out, but he's very tender; I can't push too and a nonworking wife. Suddenly, as if losing patience, hard." We are all asked to comment on Richard's condition, Patrick "freezes" Kevin and turns to us: "The person who is and the overeager Billy, who turns out to have spent most of stopping Kevin is who?"

his life in the military, observes briskly, "They want ten to four-Everyone, myself excepted, answers in unison: "Kevin!"

teen hours a day now," apparently referring to the high-Somehow Kevin's plight inspires Patrick to launch into an pressure real estate job. "It's a challenge."

anecdote about his college friend Mitch. Years ago, when they were

"They?" Patrick interrupts. "Who are
they?"

both young, they had gone to Mitch's house for Thanksgiving It turns out that we are not to talk about "them"; we are to dinner. Patrick sets the scene carefully: Outside it was cold and confine ourselves to speaking "experientially." But Cynthia, slushy. Inside, the house was warm, filled with enticing cooking the redhead, who turns out to be a real estate agent, makes the smells. Before dinner, he and Mitch decided to sneak into the same mistake, commenting that "Richard's taking personally kitchen and make turkey sandwiches for themselves. They were the fact that the real estate market is so awful." Patrick ignores gleefully stuffing themselves when Patrick heard a crash behind this sensible interjection. The market is of no interest to us; it'sjust him. Mitch had fallen to the floor. Patrick thought that this must have been another one of Mitch's pranks, but Mitch Patrick must have liked the device enough to apply it, however was lying there turning blue. He had had a stroke. As a result sloppily, to himself. But the details need some tweaking. What he became disfigured and unable to speak for months. But were they doing carving up the turkey for sandwiches just guess what?
He
is Mitch. Mitch is really Patrick.

before dinner? No matter how hungry you are, the carving of the And this shows . . . Well, he went through this terrible turkey is a ritual activity, performed at the table on an intact bird.

struggle in rehab to learn to speak again. Patrick pauses, lost in And why was the kitchen empty at this crucial moment when some personal zone. What it shows is, well—and all he can the potato mashing and gravy making should be in full swing? I come up with is "the importance of being understood."

would like to share these questions, but they might seem Baffled by the anecdote, we are dismissed into the hotel unkind. James, anyway, has exhausted his interest in the topic and lobby for a break over coffee and juice supplied by the Hamp-moved on to the juice dispenser, while Cynthia is sharing with me ton. I introduce myself to James, the wild-haired guy, explain-her concern about confidentiality. I agree, it's hard to let down ing that I've only been searching for a couple of months.

your guard if you don't know the people, and at this point I see

"Welcome to the land of the undead," he says, adding that no reason to trust Patrick himself. Boot camp seems to be he's been looking for a telecommunications job for over a year.

structured like group therapy, but the most challenging case in the I ask what he made of the story, and he shrugs, wondering group may be that of our leader.

only why Patrick had changed his name from Mitch. My the-Back from our break, we hear from a thirtysomething ory, which I do not share, is that somewhere along the line woman who "loves" her job as a hospital administrator but can no Patrick heard a similar narrative from a motivational speaker: longer keep up with the hours, given the demands of motherhood, there was this boy who grew up in poverty and was abused all and would rather do something more meaningful and "people the time and had a learning disability to boot, and guess what?

oriented" anyway. Patrick has nothing to suggest except that she That boy was me.

should keep a journal of "major events, thoughts, and feelings of the day," and moves on to a large, deflated-looking fellow when I would have had more time to study the other campers'

who speaks poignantly of having been the "go-to guy" in his performances and mentally rehearse my own, but here I am, branch of the trade show industry until he lost his business in plucked straight out of my reverie and marched to the front of the wake of 9/11 and turned into "nothing." Then there's the room. I keep my self-description brief: that I've been an Chris, a sad-faced telecommunications guy in his late thirties, event planner and public relations person on a consulting basis who is tired of the excessive demands of his job and hearing and am now seeking the security, continuity, and camaraderie of the drumbeats of layoffs all around him.

a corporate job, though, listening to them, I wonder if I'm not I am surprised at how many of my fellow campers are actu-heading in the wrong direction, since a lot of them seem as eager ally employed, at least at the moment, since I had expected to to escape the corporate world as I am to enter it.

be surrounded by jobless seekers like myself. But the white-This fails to elicit even a nod of acknowledgment from my collar workforce seems to consist of two groups: those who audience, so I move on swiftly to my "challenges," listing, first, my can't find work at all and those who are employed in jobs age, and, second, my fear that I won't fit into the corporate culture, where they work much more than they want to. In between lies because I'm beginning to sense that there is one, and that I may a scary place where you dedicate long hours to a job that you be just too flippant, sarcastic, and impatient for it. I feel, I say, sense is about to eject you, if only because so many colleagues have like I'm supposed to force myself into a mold. At this, Patrick been laid off already. I've read about a form of depression called interrupts to "freeze" me, an assault that I, automatically and

"survivor syndrome," which is said to be rampant in layoff-prone without the slightest forethought, ham upraising my hands firms, and several of these campers would seem to be among the and jerking backward as if immobilized by a laser gun.
What's
victims. In Chris's case, no solutions are offered, though he is
wrong with Barbara?
is the question on the floor, although instructed to "own his experience."

Patrick doesn't put it quite so baldly.

Now it's my turn. I had hoped to go a little later in the day, First he blows off the age issue. He himself is fifty-nine (although it should be noted here that, when I see him a month later, he and Nietzsche are dead, but I'm here."

will be fifty-eight). As for the personality issue, Patrick appears There is a shocked silence in the room until, after a few incensed that I would suggest that there is a corporate culture we beats, Patrick recovers himself enough to ask what James's have to conform to. "You can't remake yourself. You have to

"challenge" is.

find the one place out there that will nurture and value YOU!"

"To market myself," he says, and I struggle to imagine these Breaking out of my frozen condition, I object that there are words coming out of Socrates' mouth.

hundreds of thousands of companies out there, so how do I

"You need to add clarity to your message," Patrick counsels.

find my "one place"? His response is to recommend that I cre-The others are far harsher: "Where's the bottom line?"

ate a "support group" to function as my "team." I am now of-someone asks. "Where's the value added?" Billy throws in, and ficially unfrozen and sent back to my seat to write all this someone adds the sniffy judgment "Not too practical!"

wisdom down. Billy speaks up to advise me that T-E-A-M

I can't resist jumping in to defend James: Look, I say, you're means "Together Everyone Achieves More," and that
F-E-A-R

trying to squeeze him into the corporate mold! You're not let-means "False Evidence . ." but I miss the rest of it. Patrick ting James be what he is! I would like to say I did this solely wraps up my case with the Zen-like pronouncement: "The out of the desire to defend philosophy over telecommunica-point is, it's whatever you make of it."

tions, but mostly I'm just vindicating myself: there
is
a mold! James, I am both relieved to be out of the spotlight and dismayed although now officially "frozen," picks up on my support, at the uselessness of Patrick's advice. For this I paid $179 and insisting he will not remake himself to fit into the corporate flew all the way to Atlanta? But we are on to James, who, it world. For the first time so far, the group laughs. "You like to turns out, is the one real rebel in the room. He describes eat?" "You win the lottery?"

himself, calmly and confidently, as a "thinker, communicator, But James's response to my intervention on his behalf sets off a writer, instructor." In short, he's a "philosopher." "Plato, Socrates, train of thought that entertains me through Patrick's ramblings all the way to lunch. If I could win James over, could I organize the mand than he is. As for his philosophy, it's straightforward whole group to rebel against Patrick and
his
philosophy?

victim blaming: your problem is
you,
which is of course the only Cynthia could probably be won over, and possibly Chris, who thing Patrick, with his ad hoc blend of pop-psych insights, is confided to me during the break that he's "tired of making other prepared to take on anyway.

people rich," possibly Patrick included. Billy, however, would be At the lunch break I find myself a fairly popular girl; Cynthia a problem, since he seems to be somehow in league with Patrick wants to eat with me, so do Billy and James; Kevin and Richard or at least a little too invested in the program.

tag along. After a scuffle, my choice of a nearby diner prevails over Among the other irritating features of the boot camp, I'm Chik-Fil-A, giving us about forty minutes to chat over burgers getting tired of Patrick's self-advertisements, as when he con-and salady substances. James reveals that he's just refinanced his fides that he has "the same skill set as Dr. Phil," the TV guru, house. Billy explains that he's transitioning from aviation to career and lacks only a backer like Oprah. The boot camp, I'm begin-coaching and will soon be starting up a networking group of his ning to see, serves up recruits for his personal coaching ses-own. When I mention my possible relocation to Atlanta, he looks sions, just as the sessions have generated at least four of the at me forcefully and says, "Tea," in a tone that suggests I should campers. Those who have already been through his personal surrender my glass of the iced beverage to him at once. But no, coaching, like Ken, a pleasant-looking forty-something who this is another acronym—Thought, Emotion, Action—which remains silent throughout the day, are praised lavishly for their he explains is a military notion. Meanwhile, Kevin is busy