Lightning Rods (31 page)

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 according 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?

There’s nothing like the feeling that you’ve had an idea that everyone expected to fail, and gone and made a success of it. And yet it’s funny to think how big a part luck plays in these things.

If I hadn’t walked to the 7-Eleven that day and seen that heron, I might be selling vacuum cleaners to this very day, he thought.

“You’ve been lucky so far, Joe. You’ve already succeeded at what you set out to do. But don’t ever take that for granted. There’s bad luck as well as good in this world. You can’t afford to rest on your laurels.”

The sky was darkening, but it was not yet dark. In the west the molten gold of the setting sun slipped through the hills, and in the darkening hollow the yellow arches and the 7-Eleven and the Waffle House and the TCBY were glowing in the golden light. High above a flock of geese sped southward in a V formation, and on the highway the cars and trucks sped north and south.

He remembered standing on a beach in early morning watching the pelicans. A pelican does what it’s designed to do. A sandpiper does what it’s designed to do. A goose instinctively heads south in a V-formation in a V formed of other geese instinctively heading south. It doesn’t check out the beach and experiment with a sandpiper lifestyle. It does what it’s designed to do.

The thing about animals, though, is that they live in this incredibly beautiful world without noticing. It can be the most beautiful morning since the world began and a bird will be out there going after worms, oblivious to the beauty that surrounds us. Whereas a human can just stop the car and get out and look around and think What am I doing with my life?

We all have a choice, thought Joe. Every single one of us has a choice. Look at all those hundreds of people driving up and down I-95. Every single one of them could pull over to the side of the road. There’s nothing to stop someone pulling over to the side and looking around at this beautiful sunset and choosing to follow a different path.