The Women's Job -

 Whatever It Takes To Get The Job - Chapter 1

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He looked like the handsome grandson of the banker on Monopoly cards, competing with a roundish face and cigar. Andy had been told by the chauffeur to ring the doorbell after they pulled up to the gated mansion. The bell brought a butler, and the butler went away a skinny guy in a suit showed up and said Mr. Pick was expecting Andy and to follow him. He didn't bother to introduce himself.

Andy was ushered into the most sumptuous, high-tech den he had ever seen. The pick was waiting for him. Instead of introducing himself the man looked Andy up and down and said, "Uh-huh." Andy, in turn, looked at the man. The pick was neat, casually dressed in jeans and a golf shirt, and wore socks but no shoes.

"Want a job?" the man said. "Yes, sir," Andy said.

"Turn around," Pick said.

Andy frowned but turned around.

"Keep turning. Face me," Pick said.

Andy did, expecting an explanation but Pick said, "What we have here is a low starting salary, but that only lasts as long as your employment agency contract lasts. Screw the bastards and their percentage.

Parasites on the down and out, like yourself. When they're out of the picture we give you a big raise. Mucho moolah. Folding money. Along the way, if you last, will be more raises. Nice chunk of change. Cash in your pocket. Like that?"

"Sounds good," Andy said. "What exactly is the job?"

"Ah, yes," Pick said. "What something to drink? No alcohol touches these

lips, but I've got everything else you can think of."

"Blueberry juice would be nice," Andy said, naming something he figured the man wouldn't have.

"Yes! Anti-oxidants," Pick said. "Good choice. Don't have it.

Cranberry?"

"Coke," Andy said.

"Yuck," the man said. He walked over to a chrome and leather side table and reached underneath, pressing a button.

He turned and looked at Andy until there was a knock on the door.

"Enter!" Pick called. A butler, different from the doorman, came in.

"A Coke for Mr. Burton, and a blueberry juice for me," Pick said.

"Blueberry juice, sir?" the butler questioned.

Pick turned to Andy and said, "Pretty funny, huh?" He turned back to the butler and said, "A Coke for me, too."

"Yes, sir," the butler said and left.

"I'm very humorous when you get to know me," Pick told Andy.

"I can see that," Andy said.

"Brown-noser," Pick said. "Well, I guess Intergalactic told you what this was about?"

"Intergalactic?"

"That's what I call him," Pick said. "Can never remember his name. He says that all the time: Intergalactic."

"Mr. Nilstadt," Andy supplied.

"Is that what it is? He's a brown-noser, too. But he did find you, so one point for him. Bonus for him if you work out. For you, too. Did he tell you what this is all about?"

"Not really," Andy said.

"He doesn't know, that's why. Did he tell you I was nuts?"

"No."

"Sure?"

"I'm sure," Andy said.

"I've got his office bugged. I'll find out if you're lying to me. Don't like liars," Pick said.

"He said you had very creative notions," Andy said.

"I don't have his office bugged. Bluffed you, ya little squirt," Pick said. "I do have very creative notions. I'm perhaps eccentric. I like to think I'm a visionary. Outside the box and all that. You know how I made my fortune?"

"No, sir."

"Father died," Pick said. "Happens to everyone. Can't be helped. Of course, I've increased it many, many times over. Many. Lotsa many. Thinking outside the box."

There was a tap on the door.

"Enter!" Pick shouted.

The butler brought in two glasses of Coke on a silver tray, placing the tray on the glass coffee table.

"We'll take it from here  uh"

"Yes, sir," the butler said.

"Not good with names," Pick said when the man left.

"Sit down, Bill."

"Andy," Andy said.

Pick smiled. "Said I was humorous, didn't I?"

Andy sat down and the man took a large chair on the other side of the coffee table. He picked up his drink and pushed the tray over to Andy.

"Very secret project, so you can't tell anyone," Pick said.

Andy nodded.

"I own Western Square Employment Agency," Pick said. "They find people

for me and they found you."

"There was a problem at first" Andy started.

Pick held up a hand. "Not a problem; a test. See how much you wanted a job. Others failed. Not desperate.  Hard to believe, but people these days well, You passed. Very needy. Desperate. Good for you."

He held up his drink in a toasting motion.

"It caused me a lot of anxiety," Andy said.

"Ooooh, poor you," Pick said, making a face to show he thought Andy was a baby. "Anyway, water under the bridge."

"Wait a minute," Andy said. "You said I started with a low salary in order to screw Western Square. If you own it, what difference does it make?" "Sharp as a tack," Pick said. "Taxes. They're a write-off. Created a big ass database. Gave me lots of qualified candidates. Too complex to go into. Why else would I live in this god-forsaken state? Tax accountants rule the world, Andy. But that's another story. Drink up!"

Andy took a drink of Coke.

"So here's the idea," Pick said, leaning forward.

"Women are better workers than men, no question because they follow orders better, bred into them, and better order followers do things the way they're told, which is what a successful company needs because that's more productive and higher productivity means more profits. Am I going too fast for you?" Andy shook his head, but truthfully the man had already lost him in his series of debatable assumptions.

"Good. But women are lousy employees because they stop working and have babies and want to raise kids and all that. And they're lazy. All they want to do is get married and quit work. Now I know that raising a family is hard work, and a woman's work is never done, and they keep a family together, and a family that prays together stays together and zipadee do dah. But that kind of work could do me better.

Understand?"

"Yes," Andy said.

Pick looked skeptical, but he was on a roll. "So what does a smart businessman do? I mean a very smart businessman? Verging on genius. A businessman not verging on genius realizes that there are two ways of looking at this, and neither one means a thing to him. Dumb as stumps, most of them," Pick said.

"The first way is, of course, to take all your male workers and give them the characteristics of a female that make chicks so productive.

Best of both worlds, see? But there's also the thought that you take all your female employees and give them all the best characteristics of a male and that's also the best of both worlds. And both ideas are stupid as hell to a smart businessman. Won't work at all. That's where I come in." The man stopped long enough to take a sip of Coke.

"A problem with no solution for a lesser man, even if I do say so myself," Pick said. "But I just gave you the solution. Listen carefully and you'll see the genius in this. Go with Solution One. But Mr. Pick,

you say, how can you implement that? It's impossible. But contemplate Solution Two: Giving a woman some of a man's characteristics is plain dumb because she'll still have a woman's body and she'll want to have babies. Good for her! No good for me.

"Now Solution One is impossible, too, because how can you take your male workers and give them female characteristics? Here comes the genius part. The answer is Nike."

"Nike?" Andy said, surprised that sneakers entered into the plan.

"'Just Do It'. Swoosh," Pick said. "Well, do you want the job?"

"What job?" Andy said, exasperation in his voice.

"Slow on the uptake, squirt" Pick said. "Well, that may be too harsh.

Revolutionary concepts take a minute to grasp. Here's the score, uh Bill?"

"Andy," Andy said.

"Got it! Okay Andy, listen close. We set up an experimental office, see. We staff it with guys willing to adopt the best characteristics of a woman. Bingo! You'll end up as a new model of employee, the best a company could hire. Western Square will go through the roof. Everybody rushing to hire our workers! Productivity out the yin-yang!"

"But, But how does that get done? In practical, real-life ways."

"Dresses, lipstick, all that foo-fah," Pick said.

"That's it? That's supposed to give a man the best characteristics of a female employee? I'm sorry, but I don't see it," Andy said. "I really want the job, but"

"Don't expect you to see it," Pick said. "You're only an employee.

Would-be employee. Anyway, there's a lot more to it. A hell of a lot. Hired a bunch of behavioral psychologists to figure out the training and all that. Had beards. Every last one of them." He shook his head in wonderment. "New employee handbook a foot thick. I haven't read a word, of course. I just paid for it. Got two employees now. Started a few days ago. You game? You'll be on the cutting edge. Busting through the envelope.

Creating tomorrow's new employees. Well?"

"I don't know what to say," Andy said. "I'd like to know more, and I'd like to know the exact salary."

"Can't give you much for the first six months. I told you why," Pick said. "How much do you want?"

"I don't know," Andy said. "I've got to move all my stuff here from Las Vegas,"

Pick held up a hand. "I own a moving company. Truck line. Taken care of. I saw your application and the minimum salary you'd take. How about that?"

"For something like this,"

"Greedy bastard," Pick said. "I'll give you an equal amount each week under the table. Don't tell Western Square. Our little secret."

"But you own,"

"Taxes!" Pick interrupted. "What do you say?"

"I'd like to talk to the two people you've already hired, and take a look at that employee handbook. You have to admit this job is a little unusual." "A little? A lot. A lot. Genius is always a lot unusual. You don't know that. Employee's brain. I'm letting you in on the secrets of getting rich.

A fat lot of good it will do you. And you're welcome to talk to the two I've already got. Guys in dresses, you see. Not fags, just" He froze. "Homosexuals, Best of both worlds, would that work?" He rubbed his chin and looked toward the ceiling. "Nah. Anyway, talk away. Read away. You've got until ten tonight. Have to move fast on this one. Plenty more like you in the database."

"Well," Andy said. "I guess I'd better get started. Anything else I should know?"

"Probably," Pick said. "But how would I know? I'm not you, am I? No, I'm not, and thank Zeus for that."

The man stood up. "The chauffeur will take you to the new building. Out in the back forty. The back forty. Witty, not funny ha-ha, you see."

Andy still didn't have a clear idea of what the job would be. He never thought he'd be hesitating if he was offered a job, but this was too weird to jump into without knowing more. The money was okay, and obviously, more than he had been willing to accept for something normal, but was it enough to cover the strangeness?

Pick was the oddest person he'd ever met but apparently removed from the day-to-day operation of his own experiment on workplace efficiency. He'd never read his employee handbook, having told people his "notion", as Avery Nilstadt described it, and delegated them to get the job done.

The entire thing seemed unstable, but he didn't think it would be short-lived. People higher than Andy were making money off of Pick and they would figure out a way to keep their paychecks coming. But did he really want to become a part of something so off the wall? He was desperate for a job, so maybe he could make this thing work. Maybe between talking to the other employees and looking at the handbook he'd get a clearer idea of what was expected of him.

"I don't really know what the job is," the guy said. He was one of the two new employees, and the guy next to him, the other employee, nodded in agreement. They were both wearing dresses, and flimsy sandals, and had on make-up and wigs. "Sorry, I can't tell you much." The guy added.

They had introduced themselves as "Glenn, but call me Lexi" and "Ryan, call me Melissa."

"Mr. Pick said it was something about guys being girls," Andy said, "and that would make them more productive workers. But he was pretty vague."

"Yeah, that's what he told us," the guy said.

"So what do you do?"

"We're in training," the guy said. "I'm not sure what we'll be doing. I used to be a clerk in a convenience store before I got laid off."

"Before that?"

"High school," the guy said.

"You?" he asked the other guy.

"After high school, I went to live with my Dad in Georgia but there were no jobs there, so I went back to my Mom's in Maine. I sold Christmas trees last winter."

"You didn't ask what you'd be doing?"

"I don't care," Glenn call me Lexi said. "It's a job, you know?"

"What's the training like?" Andy asked.

"Just weird stuff," Glenn said. "How to put on make-up and how to walk and like that. It's weird, but it's real easy."

"Yeah," Ryan call me Melissa said.

"What does the handbook say?" Andy asked.

"Are you kidding," Glenn-Lexi said. "That thing weighs a ton."

"You haven't read it?" Andy asked.

"I sort of looked at it," Ryan-Melissa said. "But it's hard to follow.

All you really have to know is you're getting a good paycheck and you've got a sweet employment contract and it's the easiest money you'll ever get. It's worth it. It's definitely weird, but it's definitely worth it. You got anything else lined up?"

"No," Andy admitted. "Can I see the handbook?"

"On the shelf," Ryan-Melissa said, pointing to a standard metal office bookcase. There was a single, very thick book on each of the two shelves and the rest of the space was bare.

It was called, The Path to Opportunity, New Employees' Handbook.