Lightning Rods (25 page)

One thing that Steve knew Borelco would have to bring along as part of its culture was the lightning rods, because the men who had grown accustomed to the facility would have bitterly resented being made to give it up after the merger. It would have caused everything to get off to a bad start. But it was not all that easy a subject to raise with the other side.

“Look, Steve,” said Joe, when the difficulty was explained. “If you want my honest opinion, there’s absolutely no point in going out of the way to make trouble for yourself. If you think about it, everybody just takes it for granted that all parties concerned provide toilets for the staff; what’s more, nobody is going to go to the trouble to specify what people are supposed to be doing in the facilities provided. What I suggest is that you simply explain that Borelco has been a pioneer in introducing height-friendly toilets to all its sites; this is a record you’re proud of, and you don’t want it lost in the confusion of the merger. Once the necessary construction has taken place on all former NSI sites you simply explain that you’ve found it most effective to outsource implementation of your sexual harassment policy, and you can leave the rest to me.”

The net result was that they extended the facility to NSI, thus doubling Joe’s business at a stroke.

A by-product of the merger, whose significance Joe was only to understand much later, was that Steve began to appreciate the possible benefits of restructuring, not to say downsizing, human resources. Steve had been finding Roy a pain in the butt for years; now, for some reason, some kind of friction seemed to be developing between Roy and one of the top earners in the company. Might the merger not offer a tactful way of easing Roy out the door? Unfortunately the CEO of NSI had been finding
his
head of human resources a pain in the butt for years, and he got in first with the ax—unlike Steve he was
way
ahead of the game, and as soon as the merger was mooted a strategic downsize was the first thing he thought of. So Steve had to not only keep Roy but give him a bigger team to foist blue M&M’s on. He’d lost out this time. But the seed had been planted.

About six months or so after the merger it occurred to someone that BNSI, as it was now called, was now up to the fighting weight of the company which had originally threatened a takeover. So they merged with Vesey Syndicates, forming BNSV, and once again they took the height-friendly toilets and outsourcing of sexual harassment management with them. Then BNSV merged with Sinclair Products, and BNSVS kept the lightning rods, and by now the concept had extended right across the country without Joe having to do a thing.

He didn’t have to do any work at all apart from keeping up the supply. That certainly kept him on his toes, but nothing compared to what would have been involved in drumming up that kind of business from scratch.

Because the thing was, every time there was a merger there would be a complete structural reorganization. People were getting made redundant to here and gone, they had other things on their minds than the realignment of the sexual harassment policy. Plus, if there were some new faces around, people didn’t make much of it because they had other things on their mind.
Plus
, things were changing all over the place, so no one was going to question something like some construction on the disabled toilets. That was the
least
of their worries. So unlike the word of mouth referrals, where there was a lot of persuading to do after you got your foot in the door, here a succession of companies were just his for the asking.

By this stage, obviously, Joe was not able to carry the whole show on his own shoulders. He had had to recruit for that person in a thousand who is able to put across an innovative product to people who can be expected to be initially unreceptive or even hostile. He wasn’t looking for hot shots—experience had taught him that this was not a job for prima donnas. He was looking for people with a genuine understanding of the dilemma facing the modern employer. He was looking for people with a genuine understanding of the dilemma facing women trying to put themselves through school, or bring up a family singlehanded. People with a genuine desire to help people resolve those dilemmas.

He was not wholly satisfied with the crew he had signed up so far, but a good businessman makes the best of the material he has to hand. We have to deal with people the way they are, not how we’d like them to be. A good businessman knows that and acts accordingly.

Anyway he had three guys on the sales team, and he had also taken on staff for the recruitment side, so that he was well positioned to take advantage of his big break when it came. The first merger took place just a year after Steve had approved the trial run, and within another two years Joe had installations in all 50 states of the Union.

On the positive side, Joe was never going to have to worry about cash flow again. Besides which, Lightning Rods was now the temporary personnel provider of first resort for one of America’s largest corporations: This gave it a credibility which it had not had when it had only had a few small, relatively obscure clients on its books. People would come to Lightning Rods just looking for a temp. This was all to the good, since it offered further protection against the possibility of ghettoizing bifunctional staff. Not to mention a chance to spread the word if the opportunity presented itself.

On the negative side, Steve had finally succeeded in downsizing Roy out the door. He’d been foiled again after the second merger, when yet again someone
else
was quicker on the draw and someone
else’s
albatross was given the old heave-ho. Third time around he knew better. No sooner had forces been joined than Steve made it clear, in subtle ways, that he would not be heartbroken if Roy walked the plank. Joe watched from the sidelines, little guessing that the outcome of the battle had relevance to himself; as far as he was concerned, he didn’t care who ran human resources as long as they didn’t interfere with the temp outsourcing. In this he was making a serious mistake.

Roy put up a good fight, but he knew it was time to quit. He was up to six bags a day; things couldn’t go on like this. So he gave notice, accepted a big pay-off, and went home to brood. For some reason, the incident of a couple of years earlier kept coming back to haunt him. He had nothing to lose now by mentioning it, and one night, when he had had one too many to drink, he happened to mention it to his brother-in-law.

This, too, in itself, might have had no adverse consequences for Joe, but for one thing.

When Walter had left the Army after ’Nam, he had thought at first that he’d had enough of killing people.

Then he’d changed his mind.

THE NET CLOSES

One day Joe was sitting in his usual booth at the back of Stan’s Grill, eating a char-grilled burger and drinking an ice-cold Bud. It was the end of a long day, and when he’d had a long day he liked to come to Stan’s to unwind. Stan’s was almost empty—it almost always was, which was one of the things Joe liked about it, though presumably it wasn’t such a source of satisfaction for Stan.

Joe was just about to order another beer when a stranger walked in. He looked around, then walked down the length of the room with firm, even steps, and he stopped at Joe’s table.

“Mind if I sit down?” asked the stranger.

Joe looked at the room of empty tables. He looked up at the stranger.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

The stranger took out an ID from his inside pocket. “Walter Pike. FBI.”

Holy shit, thought Joe. “Please sit down,” he said.

The stranger seemed to know everything there was to know about Lightning Rods. Names, places, dates—the works. Also, he seemed to have a terrifying grasp of the law. He kept pointing out various legal irregularities relating to the services provided.

Joe couldn’t really think of anything to say so he just kept saying, “Is that so? I didn’t realize the law said that.” It was no more than the truth, since Joe’s attitude to the law was that it was something best kept at a safe distance—but for some reason the stranger seemed annoyed.

“Look, Joe,” said Walter at last. “You don’t seem to understand the gravity of the situation. You’re in big trouble. You’ve been operating this service of yours in all 50 states, which means that you’re not only in breach of Federal regulations on about 25 counts, you’re also in violation of something like 892 separate laws at the state and local level.”

“Huh,” said Joe.

“You’re in deep kimchi, pal,” said Walter, and he began to list the various statutes which had been flagrantly breached. Walter had watched a lot of
Dragnet
as a boy; he knew just how to make a criminal feel like dirt.

Joe thrust his hands in his pockets and waited for it to end. If you start up an innovative business something like this is always in the cards. You go into it with that knowledge. The important thing is to decide ahead of time what’s important to you.

There’s an old saying that goes something like this:

Lord, help me to have the patience to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Now, the United States of America, with its 50 states, has one of the most complicated legal systems in the world. You’re never going to change that; learn to live with it.
Because
the legal system is so complicated, it takes a lot of training to get on top of it, so that American lawyers are among the most expensive in the world. You’re never going to change that either. What that means is that in the early stages, when you’re just starting out, you can’t afford to pay a lawyer to find out what the law requires. If you’re starting up a new business, there’s always a possibility that some aspects of the business may not be within the strict letter of the law. But if you are doing something that happens to fall foul of the law, you don’t have a hope in hell of doing something about it.

What you need is the wisdom to recognize that fact, and the patience to accept it. If you can’t deal with it, fine, don’t start up a business. But if you’re going to take that attitude, you might want to think about where the country would be if everyone had waited to get the green light from the law in its current form.

The thing you have to remember is that the law is made by human beings, with all the flaws and imperfections that that implies. Like all of us, they’re just doing the best they can. They’re not telepathic. They’re not scientific geniuses. They can’t tell what the world is going to be like tomorrow, let alone ten years down the line, let alone however many years have elapsed before you happened to come along with your idea. In other words, there may well be laws in place which are inappropriate to the world in which your idea can give people a chance to lead happier lives. But the only way to determine whether that is the case is to give your idea your best shot and see whether it takes off.

If it does reasonably well, you’ll be able to afford a lawyer to tie up any legal loose ends that may have been left hanging. If it does spectacularly well, so that some of America’s largest corporations have made it a part of their business enterprise, you may well be able to bring about any little adjustments to legislation that may be necessary to square the law with what people turn out to need. If it doesn’t do so well, or if it does really well but prejudice stands in the way of legal reform, you can always just retire to the Cayman Islands with whatever profits you have managed to accumulate in the interim. The Cayman Islands have beautiful white sandy beaches washed by brilliant turquoise seas, and if you can’t be content to spend your declining years in that kind of environment you’re obviously the kind of person who’s going to be miserable
wherever
they are, you might as well be in jail for all the difference it will make.

This was the way Joe had looked at the question of the law when he started out. Now of course, most of his clients had probably assumed that he had actually cleared the legalities before hanging up his shingle; they would probably be pretty upset to find they had been embroiled in something that was not strictly legal. But some of these clients packed a big punch. If they decided a facility was essential to the effective running of their operations, they could deal with the law a whole lot more effectively than Joe could. Even if they were upset, they would not let their emotions rule them; they would determine the level of value of the service, and take measures accordingly. And it was Joe’s bet that not one of his clients would want to go back to the bad old days of unread guidelines and embarrassing workshops and sexual harassment tribunals, the days of not knowing when or where the ax would fall, the days when the most minor and dispensable of employees could suddenly turn up with a suit for a million bucks in damages.

Still, there’s no point in gratuitously alienating an FBI agent. However philosophical you may be about being in breach of Federal regulations, if an FBI agent starts going into detail it’s only polite to show concern.

“Gee,” said Joe. “That’s terrible.”

Something in Walter’s expression suggested he had not shown enough concern.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is just tell the truth.

“Well, the way I see it,” said Joe, “is what would our Founding Fathers have done?”

“What do you mean?” asked Walter.

“Well, the reason we had the Revolution in the first place was no taxation without representation, am I right?”