Lightning Rods by Helen DeWitt Page A

again.
    He said: “And the hell of it is, you could be on to something. I’d be interested to see how you do.”
    He went outside. It was a soft, bright day, and the wind was pulling leaves off the willows. A dog trotted by, lifted his leg, and trotted on.
    There was a statue in the center of the square of General Lafayette. His green bronze three-cornered hat and the green bronze shoulders of his coat were white with pigeon shit.
    On the sidewalk beside a fire hydrant were a couple of dried dog turds.
    He thought: You know, if people went around doing that it would be really disgusting. If some guy just squatted down by the fire hydrant and left a couple of turds it would be really gross. And can you imagine what it would be like if everyone did that?
    He walked down the steps to the sidewalk. The wind was ruffling the fine grass of the lawn like the fur of a glossy green animal.
    He thought: Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.
    Now previously, in the days when he was selling, or trying to sell, vacuum cleaners, he would have thought this kind of self-doubt was a sign of weakness. He would have thought the problem with him was that he kept having doubts, and that the way to solve the problem was to just pretend they didn’t exist and hope they would go away. He would have thought that he would have been a better salesman if he didn’t have doubts. He would have thought being the type of guy to have doubts was exactly what made him relatively unsuccessful as a salesman.
    The fact is, every great salesman has doubts. In fact, a great salesman has more doubts than anyone else. Because what those doubts are, is the questions other people are going to be asking you . A great salesman is able to anticipate a wider range of questions than other people. And instead of just hoping they’ll go away, a great salesman uses those doubts as a chance to tackle those questions head on. Which is why a great salesman is never taken by surprise.
    This time, anyway, instead of just ignoring his doubts, he asked himself: “OK, if it isn’t a good idea, why isn’t it a good idea?”
    And by actually looking at the question he was able to come up with an answer.
    Of course it would be disgusting if people went around depositing turds in the street. That’s what we have toilets for. Nobody wants to look at something like that, so you put it out of sight so they don’t have to.
    But that was exactly what a lightning rod was supposed to do. Instead of a young girl jeopardizing herself by standing on the street in a dangerous neighborhood, putting herself at risk and in all likelihood being exploited by a pimp, you give her the opportunity to work in the safety of an office environment. Instead of acquiring a criminal record she is able to work at filing or some other clerical task and improve her skills. Her pay reflects the fact that she is providing an outlet for men who would otherwise be putting themselves at risk. But the whole thing is conducted in the privacy of a toilet cubicle. As far as her fellow workers are concerned, she is no different from anyone else. As far as his fellow workers are concerned, he is just going to the john. The whole point of the arrangement is to avoid giving anyone cause for offense.
    So he went on to work his way through the other companies on his list.
    Once he had a foot in the door he explained, “It’s not for me to make moral judgments. I’m a businessman. I deal with people as they are, not as they ought to be.”
    “Speaking as a businessman,” he went on, “I know that it is often the most valuable individuals in a company who present the greatest vulnerability to sexual harassment related issues. We know that a high level of testosterone is inseparable from the drive that produces results. Speaking of people as they are rather than as they should be I know that a high-testosterone-level individual has a high likelihood of being sexually aggressive; if the individual is working twenty-hour