This story is a bit difficult to tell because when it comes to the private relationships between sales representatives and clients obviously no one else was there to witness what went on in intimate moments. People in the workplace make statements like: “She’s fucking him,” or “He’s doing her regularly” in an authoritative insider-knowledge tone, but, how do they know? Really? We do observe other people’s interactions and draw inferences, but how accurate are our interpretations? Everything we experience is filtered through the sieve of our prior experiences and expectations so can we trust anything we think we see?
At the same time, when I was a student I knew a young woman who went to work for a large corporation. I had a drink with her one evening after work and my jaw nearly hit the floor when she told me that her intention was to fuck her way to the top. Other than uttering that one sentence she presented herself as a nice young woman from the suburbs. Of course I was young and still somewhat naïve, not realizing at that time that nice girls do and that women can be just as cold-blooded and manipulative as men when it comes to sex. More so, in some cases, as the male usually is satisfied with the act while females can use the act in order to achieve some other end. Still I was thunderstruck by the rawness of her statement.
During my career I have worked with about a half-dozen women who made no secret of the fact that they were using their sexuality as a tool in the workplace. A few admitted it openly to me. I can think of four different women, in different jobs at different times, whose standard daily work outfit included a micro-skirt that rode up to their hips, when viewed from the side, when they sat down. I am fully aware that one of the reasons for wearing so little covering that one’s underwear is exposed as a matter of course is to assert a woman’s right to wear whatever she wishes without being subject to harassment or unwanted attention. That’s what they say, anyhow.
I met one such woman when I was working on a contract where she was the sales representative for Digital Equipment (DEC). She was, by any standard, a stunningly beautiful woman in her early 30’s, and she dressed the part. Every male eye was on her when she entered a room and she exuded an attitude of secure and infallible sexuality, apparently aware that she could turn any man in the room into a gibbering idiot. Of course, she was not interested in gibbering idiots. She was attracted to the men apparently immune to her charms, the men with power to control others and to face her with serene equanimity.
She was supposed to teach me how to use a new product that Digital was promoting. She did so disdainfully and unwillingly. I worked for a competitive company and she was not keen to share any advantage. I let her go through her condescending dismissive demonstration without comment, then, afterwards, set about teaching myself how to use the product.
I then moved on to the Prime Minister’s Office. I was there for about three months as a consultant to the operations group, helping them to get their procedures developed and documented. As a matter of course I installed the system monitoring tools I had developed over the years. These tools kept track of performance and usage metrics and automatically produced reports on the system’s workloads. When I finished that contract, I went to another computer site for three or four months, but then returned to the Prime Minister’s Office in order to study and make recommendations for facilities management. In other words, produce a report indicated what kind of hardware upgrades they could expect to make during the next two or three years.
I already had my tools running, so, by this point, I had about six months’ worth of data to work with. I would have preferred data spanning a year or more, but, I had to work with what I had. I painstakingly analyzed the data, identifying trend-lines and projecting them, accounting for the interactions between different hardware. For example, if disk space requirements expanded by 50%, are their sufficient tape drives to back up this data within the constraints of the backup windows? That sort of thing. Being the Prime Minister’s Office I had all the latest toys to work with, including a four-color plotter. This was long before color printers and color photocopiers. A plotter consisted of four computer-controlled pens that could be used to draw charts and graphs. I made full use of it.
My report was a masterpiece. Beautiful four-color charts gave immediate visual confirmation of what my words communicated. I had solid lines where there was solid data and dashed lines where it was projected data. Relationships were all clearly identified and illustrated. I had projected the future of the Prime Minister’s computing centre for two years out with indications of what was to come beyond that. I handed in my report.
I was at home nursing the flu a few days later when I got a call that I had a meeting scheduled with the ADM that afternoon. An ADM (Assistant Deputy Minister) is the highest position in the civil service. The Minister of a department is the front-line political appointee and his deputy ministers are his staff, each responsible for a certain aspect or operation of the department. An ADM is as close to god as any human can get without entering the rarefied atmosphere of the political top dogs. You do not say no to an ADM. I showered, hoping that the sweat and sickness would wash away, and dressed in my suit (I did have one suit reserved for just such occasions), which was too hot considering my fever, and drove to the centre of downtown Ottawa.
I was escorted by security to the ADM’s office where a group of half a dozen were seated around a table. They were mainly elderly men with one stunning exception: the Digital Sales Rep who was sitting next to the ADM himself. The ADM was a friendly older man obviously used to wielding power. He congratulated me on my skilful use of colour in my report, then ruefully lamented that it didn’t survive photocopying. (There was no such thing as a colour copier then.) He asked me to summarize the report for the assembled.
I did my best. When I finished the ADM turned to the DEC Sales Rep and asked her for comments. She began by saying, “As we discussed previously…” and then she went on to present her analysis of what hardware would be required, completely ignoring my data and what I had said. It was as if I didn’t exist. The ADM then smiled at me and said, “Do you think you can revise your report before five o’clock today? We’d like to get the RFP out as soon as possible.” (The RFP is the procedure the government follows when seeking tenders for goods and services.)
What choice did I have? I stood at my desk for a long time considering what had just occurred. My report had been honest. I did not agree with the sales rep’s analysis, yet it was clear that the ADM and his team had already bought it. What would I gain by refusing the ADM’s orders? Nothing. I’d probably never work in a government department again. But, if I followed them my integrity would be compromised. We like to think of ourselves as heroes standing for what is right no matter what the cost, but, there are times when you have to weight the consequences. I sighed, and sat down to revise my charts to support the decisions that had already been made.
Later, when telling this story to a colleague he said without hesitation, “Everyone knows she was fucking him.” It made sense. I had picked up a hint of intimacy between them during the meeting. One thing was very clear: they knew each other fairly well before that meeting. But I don’t know the truth and neither did my colleague. “Everyone knows” is proof of nothing. One thing was clear to me: I did not exist in her world; she saw only power—and I had none. I’m okay with that. I am comfortable with the fact that I don’t exist for many people. There is one advantage I have: I can observe them.
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