Linda Goodman's Sun Signs (70 page)

Sample conversation in an office about a typical Pisces executive:

“What's the name of that new boss the firm hired last week?”

“You mean the one who took her coffee break with us yesterday?”

“No. The one who left this morning.”

With only slight exaggeration, that's about the normal length of time the average Piscean will remain in an executive position. There are a limited number of streams for Pisces bosses, and we'll concentrate on those. In most corporate and industrial areas, the Neptunian chief is as rare as a bathing suit at the North Pole. The great majority of Neptune's children prefer to swim alone—unconfined—as writers, salesmen, creative artists, consultants, actors, wandering minstrels or soldiers-of-fortune.

However, there are a few areas where she can apply her talents and make herself an indispensable boss. She has top qualifications for radio stations, TV networks, advertising and public relations outfits. Running any of these operations, she'll go around happily dispensing creative ideas from his superabundant fountain of imagination. Pisces sees no reason to blurt out the plain and often brutal truth, as certain other Sun signs do. Unlike Gemini, Sagittarius and Scorpio, the fish prefers not to tell it like it is. She would rather tell people what she thinks will have the best effect on them in the long run, or what they want to hear. It's not because she's dishonest. She's learned through bitter experience that society does not want to hear the cold and naked truth. Besides, she feels the soul requires the added dressing of ritual and beauty painted over sound facts. Madison Avenue loves her.

She's a superlative director of stage and screen, also a capable producer (if she has a good company manager). She can run a dance studio like a dream. Whether she's involved in a some kind of detective work or criminal research, her uncanny psychic ability to penetrate mystery leads him straight to the top of the heap. Lots of travel agencies have Pisces executives, and they're usually tremendously successful. She's often found as the head of a charitable organization. Many fish happily lead orchestras or bands, and keep rehearsals running smoothly, not to mention producing great music. They're unexcelled as executive managers of country clubs or hotels (if there's a good bookkeeper around). They can run a progressive publishing company, magazine or newspaper competently, even brilliantly. You'll often find the fish heading up a service business of some kind, and this sign is certainly in home waters as the director of a camp, or in an official capacity in a church or synagogue. But that's just about it, except for teachers and professors and a few administrators in medical or law schools. Pisceans aren't cut out to be bosses, in the strict sense of the word.

With her sensitive nature, Pisces was born to serve humankind, not to accumulate power or build huge empires. She can be a capable and competent financial advisor and a shrewd trader, but she'll almost never take over as the head of a brokerage or bond house. Too much responsibility. However, thanks to her quick, clever mind and her sometimes uncanny grasp of figures, the fish can have a lot of fun juggling the points of fluctuating shares, thought it will be more like a game than actual work.

If your boss was born in March, she may be the type to behave like a crosspatch when she's irritated by something. She has a gift of words, and when she's being brusque, it's a caustic brusqueness that can scald a little, but she'll seldom be aggressively domineering or truly mean and petty. One minute she may shock you with her unconventional ideas, then she'll do a rather slippery turnabout and appear to be a conformist. You'll eventually catch on that she's neither a great liberal nor a cautious conservative. On different occasions, she takes either view, to find out what your ideas are. She can be, in other words, a mite tricky. When she finds your ideas and your conversation interesting, your Pisces boss will listen with flattering concentration, silently and sincerely, maybe even offer you a glass of sherry to create a relaxed atmosphere. If she finds what you say boring, her mind will wander. She'll probably daydream about far-off people and places while you're talking, carefully keeping a fixed smile on her face. Since every one of them is a born actor, you'll think she's being attentive, but after a certain period, she'll get tired of her mental wanderings, notice that you're babbling away, and suddenly interrupt. Then she'll do the talking and you'll do the listening, sometimes for hours—and hours—and hours.

She may be well-traveled, and if she isn't, she'll soon make up for lost time. Like the Sagittarian and Geminian boss, the Pisces executive will keep a packed suitcase behind the couch in her office. If not, she should. Why don't you suggest it to her? She'll probably think it's a splendid idea. Besides, the knowledge that the bag is zipped and ready to take off can give her strange comfort on dreary rainy days, or in the dead of a slushy, bitter winter when she feels like jumping off the penthouse roof with boredom. She'll have his depressed moods and they will be real humdingers. Better stay away from her at those times, hum cheerful melodies while you're working, and make sure she has her hot toddy, laced with the best bourbon.

Be nice to her spouses—I mean her spouse. (It's a natural mistake. Along with your Gemini and Sagittarius boss, the Pisces boss is more apt to undergo multiple double-ring ceremonies than other bosses.) Her husband is probably a nice, sensible, practical man. If he were as imaginative and original as his wife, they'd likely both drown together in an ocean of misty dreams and fancies.

The Piscean executive is somewhat partial to the creative thinkers in the firm. If you tend more toward caution than imaginative strategy, you may not get as many glasses of sherry or as many comradely smiles, but you probably won't get fired. She may enjoy the others more, but she needs you. She leans on your practical approach and your organizational ability. The favored, highly inventive, employee of a Pisces boss is often shocked right out of his sparkling ideas when the firm has an economy drive and the fish gently lets the ax fall on him, and keeps the steady, reliable, rather stodgy worker on the payroll. The Pisces will wave farewell sadly, but she is a shrewd judge of human nature, including her own. Although she enjoys the company and the progressive contributions of the imaginative employees, her own brand of creativity works more smoothly when it's backed up by the careful planning and office discipline of the old gray heads of wisdom, even if they're young, blonde or brunette heads. Discretion and conservatism aren't her greatest assets, and she's clearly aware of her deficiencies. She can always find another daring, enthusiastic dreamer when business picks up, but when the profits dip a little, she can't afford to be without the workers whose noses are worn down by the grindstone. Meanwhile, she figures she'll take care of the daring, enthusiastic dreams department herself until things get better and she can put some more compatible blue-sky people on the payroll. Of course, there are always exceptions to any rule, but it won't hurt to let your Pisces boss know that you can be serious and sensational at the same time.

You've probably already learned that she's installed a Capricorn or Taurus as a middleman to deal with employees who seek raises. She knows better than to let you appeal to her personally. The Neptune nature is so constituted that she finds it almost impossible to say no to a fellow human being who has a sincere need, or even just a sincere desire. She learns early to insulate herself as best he can.

Remember, she lives in two different worlds. Such a division of nature can cause a confused personality, but it can just as easily cause brilliance. Her thoughts may be as abstract and deep as Piscean Einstein's, who once said, “God doesn't throw dice.” Einstein meant that the law of mathematical probability isn't necessarily sacrosanct. Your Neptune boss feels the same way about accepted business procedures, and time usually proves her first instincts are right, no matter how visionary they may sound when she expresses them. She's a mystic at heart, a secret believer in the unseen and the supernatural, though she may be a little bashful about it. She won't practice Voodoo at her desk or meditate in the lotus position at the water cooler, because she fears ridicule if people discover the undercurrent of her psychic vibrations. But they find out anyway, for all her clever playing of the role of tough realist.

Remember that time your heart was broken by a boyfriend who flew the coop and took your engagement ring and all your dreams with him? Your Pisces boss casually invited you to dinner, filled your sad head with the nicest compliments, and then hurried you to the theater. Afterwards, she took you backstage, introduced you to the leading players, and then treated everyone to a late supper. With all that food and wine and glittering conversation, she took your mind right off your fickle fiancé. Though sometimes she was frosty deliberately, so it wouldn't look obvious, for weeks afterwards, she found little ways to cheer you up until the ache stopped aching. You hadn't told a soul in the office about the breakup. Now, how did she know you needed help over that black period? The gypsy who read her fortune one day by the lines in her hand could have told you. She noticed right away that she has a rare mark on her palm—which means she's a compassionate genius. There aren't very many of them around. That's why she's a rare fish.

The abilities of the Piscean employee depend entirely on which pond he swims in. He can be such a miserable misfit in an incompatible occupation or career, that he drifts from one place to another, until he eventually realizes that he's better off going it alone, with his own dreams for company.

To work successfully with other people or be part of a team, the fish must be doing something that doesn't offend his sensitivity. It has to be a position that gives him the opportunity to utilize his unsurpassed understanding of human suffering, or that allows him to channel his unique imagination toward a progressive path. A job that fails to supply one or both of these deep-seated Neptune needs will create a lazy, disinterested, not to mention disheartened employee. When his needs are satisfied, however, he can be a gem of a worker, often one-of-a-kind in his field—difficult, if not impossible, to replace. There's a side to the fish that allows him to surprise you with his painstaking attention to detail, when he's in the mood. It seems to be totally inconsistent with his obvious mystical bent, but these people were born under the Sun sign that encompasses the qualities of all other signs. It can be the “dust bin of the zodiac,” as it's often called in astrology, or the turning path to shining glory. The glory needn't be achieved hanging from a star. It can be realized in a quiet way, right in your office, if the fish is happy and content with what he's doing.

The most common remark heard around an office where there's a Pisces employee is, “I can't understand him. What's he up to?” They may never know. The Piscean man or woman is compelled, possibly by inner doubt and confusion, to disguise motives and keep his true aims hidden. If the fish revealed his entire nature it would startle or shock most people, so he keeps his counsel. All the chattering of the occasional talkative Pisces is deceptive. It still won't reveal what he really thinks, even if he talks all night, as some of them do. The quiet ones can also drive you wild by keeping their most interesting thoughts and ideas a secret. You never know what's going on inside those dreamy Neptune heads.

He'll work with a terrific sense of duty if he's happy with his job. When he's not happy, he withdraws. Only his body is there. Eventually it will also disappear, leaving only the memory of his grin and his wise eyes. It's not easy to keep this slippery employee peaceful. When the water gets stagnant, he swims away before you have a chance to filter the pool, and that can be frustrating. If he would be more open about his true desires, compromise might be reached, but too often the fish chooses abrupt change to long, honest discussion that might turn things right-side up again.

There's no doubt that the Pisces man or woman is more often found in the world of the arts, but the term can cover more than you might suppose. Pisces is happy adjusting the lights in a theater, hanging canvases in museums, stitching the lace on doll dresses, polishing the brass of musical instruments or designing the cover of a book. He or she can spend hours blissfully teaching tots to dance, blowing up balloons for a party, arranging flowers, planning a poster advertising campaign, engrossed in creative writing, or experimenting with unusual hair styles. Now and then you'll find a Piscean engaged in a mechanical occupation, relating to mathematics, engineering or computing, but he will always attack such subjects from the abstract point of view.

Pisces people make excellent teachers, with uncanny insight into the natures of their students and a deep grasp of the subject they teach. They seem to have a special knack for both preparing and merchandising food and drink, either serving it in posh restaurants, or supervising the operation with social grace.

If your business concerns medicine, hospitals or pharmaceuticals, the Pisces employee is probably your right arm. No one makes a finer nurse or servant to the sick. They're right at home with drugs and medicines, too. Unfortunately, however, the Piscean receptivity can cause them to saturate themselves in their surroundings, with occasional adverse effects on their own mental, emotional and physical health. If Pisces controls his instinct for instant empathy, he can be a shining light in the field of health. Needless to say, social work is also a Pisces occupation, and you'll find lots of Neptunians efficiently dispensing welfare to unfortunate humanity.