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         [  The Shunned Consultant  ]             [  By Eric Chaet  ]


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    ____________________________________________________________________



THE SHUNNED CONSULTANT

by Eric Chaet



IN A ROOM AT THE MICHIGAN JOB CENTER, a couple of dozen men and women of
various races - mostly poorly dressed, tho a few of us were dressed up for
the occasion - the Indians long-haired - were filling out applications. I
took one from a pile on the one upright table - among several which were
upside-down, gray metal legs stiff in the air, artifacts of obsolescent
actions - and began filling it out.

   I had to think back over jobs and periods between jobs - decades. I
needed names of supervisors and addresses and phone numbers I had allowed to
lapse from memory - I expected to have an established source of income long
ago - from before many in the room had been born. I decided to account for
only the last ten years or so.

   About another dozen people came in after I did, and began filling out
applications, too.

   A large woman - pretty, but pasty, nervous face; clothes properly severe,
but silky blouse under the blue blazer - looked up from notes, and spoke to
us. She knew she had things to say that we would not like, she said. "The
job - December only - will be ten hours a day, five days a week - or less,
as you are needed."

   Ten hours times five days, I thought, beginning to calculate. Finally!
Some money!

   "No beards or hair below the collar", she said. "Some of you would not
be able to work the way you look now."

   My beard was long, my hair its longest ever - for the winter. Last year,
we had had a month of twenty below zero. The pipes kept freezing. (I had
used Viv's hair-dryer to thaw them.) There were WEEKS when I could not get
warm.

   "You'll be wearing uniforms and representing the company, if you are
selected. Research has shown that the public like our clean-cut, industrious
look."

   "The job will definitely NOT lead to a permanent job", she added.

   She stepped thru a door, while we lined up against a wall, and waited to
be called to go thru the door, to be interviewed, one after another. I was
worried about the car - kept glancing at my watch. I had parked it in a
two-hour parking zone. I could not afford a parking ticket. No need to
worry, I realized after a little while - the interviews were only lasting
about three or four minutes, each.

   When my turn came, the young woman - Eileen, she said her name was, and
gave me a cold, limp hand to shake - asked me if I understood about the hair
and the temporary nature of the job - and could I lift sixty pounds?

   I did. I could.

   "Why did you want the job?"

   "I have a consulting business. Money's tight. This job will help me over
the hump."

   For a change, I thought, the truth - not quite so blunt as "for the
money", but the truth - would not undermine my chances. It would work. It
would have been a good lie to make up and use.

   Eileen said I would most likely be assigned to help the driver in the
area where I lived. I lived on the edge of Mechanicsburg, which was
gradually becoming part of Red Port. The Post Office called where I lived
Red Port, already. She asked my pants size. She seemed satisfied, and gave
me a slip of paper on which was mimeographed - very faintly - information
about the next step.

   In the car, before turning the key to start it, I read that next Monday I
was to call between 1 and 3 in the afternoon. If the number was busy, I was
to keep calling. If I did not call, I would not be considered. Who was
willing to jump thru hoops?

   Next Monday, I called. I had been selected, I was told. I was to attend
an all-day orientation session, at the Celebrity Inn at the airport, 8 to 5.
I would be paid $50, minus taxes, for the day. The money would be included
with my first week's pay.

   Saturday, I shaved and bled a lot. I washed the blood off, and applied
hydrogen peroxide. Viv gave me a haircut - I sat on a stool over newspaper
in the middle of the floor - when I caught her between commutes. She was
working twenty hours a week in Red Port, and going to school three days a
week in Marquette.

   I kept the mustache.

   I looked much older than the last time - about fifteen years ago, when I
was hunting for work in L.A., during the Stagflation - that I shaved. Still,
tho my beard was gray, I was brown-haired on top; and my mustache was brown
yet; so I was much younger-looking than before the haircut.

   At first glance, anyway.



THE ORIENTATION MEETING was in a conference room, fluorescent bright, with
the usual cloned furniture. There were about fifty of us. None of the
Potowatomi men had been selected or decided to come. There were two Black
men, one Indian woman with long black hair.

   Otherwise, the usual population of Red Port and the surrounding dairyland
- black and white cows standing in mud, saw mills and pulp mills and power
plants with tall stacks, woods and lakes, ducks and geese in the spring and
fall - and descendants of northern and western Europeans.

   Eilieen led the meeting, showing us a video on proper lifting and
customer-interaction procedures, leading us thru exercises which,
unfortunately, involved obsolete record-keeping - using sheets of paper with
boxes to check off and abbreviations, rather than the electronic boards we
would actually be using.

   The young woman sitting next to me, noticing my admiration - she was
slim, energetic, long blond hair, and kept reading pages of a paperback she
had sneak out of her purse - thin arms tho; she could not lift sixty pounds,
even once, I guessed - flirted with me more and more as the meeting went on,
and her attention waned - arching her back and shaking her long hair loose
for me, checking out of the corners of her eyes, to see whether I was
noticing.

   "Call in each morning, for your assignment, or to be told there won't be
an assignment that day", Eileen concluded.


FIRST DAY, I CALLED, no assignment. Second day, no assignment. Third day, no
assignment, and do not call any more, we will call you by 8:30 if there is
going to be work that day.

   Each morning, I was waiting by the phone, at the counter by the stove,
under the loft, in many layers of clothes - having worked out, eaten, used
the bathroom - anxious whether, once I began, I could work all day without
having to piss. (Pissing was becoming more and more problematic.)

   No call Thursday morning. I called about 9:30, asking how could I pick
up my check tomorrow - payment for attending the orientation meeting - if
there was no assignment tomorrow?

   But it seems that Eileen had neglected to fax in the paperwork on time,
so our checks would be delayed a week.

   No work Friday, Monday, Tuesday.

   How would I pay the rent the first of January?

   Our little cottage - one room, with a loft, surrounded by cedars and
pines, on the edge of a golf course across which the snowy wind blew - was
my office and Viv's study, as well as our living room, bedroom, and kitchen
- all one big room.

   I had six dollars in cash, for gasoline. There was no money for food. We
still had some oatmeal, rice, canned fruit and vegetables, a few eggs, a few
potatoes, and a couple of bananas.

   Viv was hardly prodigal, spending money - and she had more respect for
what I did and said than anyone else. But no one else was indicating ANY
respect for what I did or said. Even Viv discounted most of what I said,
especially about practical matters, like not spending anything, since we
did not know how we would get more - when it was so obvious that I knew less
than everyone else about getting and spending money - even while she prided
herself on being the one who understood me the most and was most
supportive. I watched, without authority to forbid, her spending hours and
hours on long-distance telephone calls (lots of laughter, which I had to
admit was precious - but the cost!) each month. She loved to talk to her
mother and daughter, both of whom had ended up in Minneapolis.


FINALLY, WEDNESDAY, I got the call to meet a driver in front of a department
store - The Grab and Go - on Main Street in Red Port - but not until noon.
So it would not be a full day's work. Still, it was something.
 
   In the parking lot of The Grab and Go, I changed into the blue pants and
blue jacket I had been issued, and put on a blue knit cap. I worked two
hours with Paul Waube, a nice young fellow, maybe 25, inclined to joke -
and, the first hour, with his supervisor - burly, hiding inside brown eyes
that would not be met and a Hitler mustache - who hurried to each door with
me, practically and sometimes actually running. "Release, rap, run", he
said. "The three R's. Put the package down, knock on the door, and get back
to the truck, before you have to talk to them."

   The big blue truck had shelves in the back, with some packages, most
small and light, on them, and some on the floor. It was more than half
empty. There was a little fold-down seat for me to sit on, and a safety
belt. I would slide the door shut as soon as I got back into the truck - and
we were off.

   Paul had planned our route in advance. He knew the neighborhood like I
knew the factories and distribution centers in which I had designed and
installed the racks and conveyors. He had been driving the route a couple of
years, he said. At the end of two hours, Paul said we were done - and he
dropped me off. As I expressed disappointment, he said to call in, that
maybe I could be assigned to someone who needed more help. I said I liked
working with him, but I would have to do that - I needed every penny I could
get. He said he understood.

   In the mail, when I got home, was a check for fifty dollars, without
comment, from E.A. Manuel, the Austin attorney who defends pariahs. Ten
years back, had sent me five hundred dollars, after reading my article on
labor-management relations in PACIFIC RIM (an article whose main effect,
apparently, over the next few years, was to frighten off my best repeat
customers) - to encourage my work. A couple of weeks ago, reluctantly, I
had written, asking for help. I got back in the car, and hurried to the
bank, to cash the check.


NEXT DAY, I WAS BACK WITH PAUL, learning to use the electronic keyboard and
laser scanner, as well as taking packages to the door, leaving them there,
or, if necessary, in the back of the house, behind a bush, or with a
neighbor - in which cases, filling out a slip and sticking it on the door -
it had adhesive on the back.

   In the truck, Paul set up the next delivery.

   I had trouble registering signatures.  After someone signed for a
package, I had to press SIGNATURE, then type in the person's last name -
but, of course, I did not know where each letter was on the board - so I had
to look, and, meanwhile, forgot what came next - then press ENTER, then STOP
COMPLETE - then, when a menu of choices came up regarding what kind of place
I had delivered to, press 8.  I got this sequence wrong several times. Paul
was patient. I said I had never used the board before.

   "They didn't train you?" he asked.

   "They didn't have any boards at the orientation session", I said. "We
used sheets of paper with boxes to check."

   He laughed.

   I said, "I wish I could do the signature business three times in a row."

   We were traveling all over Paul's section of town - mostly old wooden
houses broken up into aparments for the St. Ignatius College students, or,
off the main streets, far nicer brick houses and duplexes, and, on the bluff
over the bay, ugly mansions with lots of beautiful trees, curved brick
walls, tall windows, statues.

   I was getting out and delivering packages, filling out slips, avoiding
icey spots.  The weather was not bad, right around freezing - no sunshine,
tho. Paul got out and made several deliveries in a row with me, showing me
how to do the signature protocol. I was getting tripped up, because I could
not get the hang of scanning the bar code with the laser - I kept aiming it
wrong, so it would not register - and then, of course, I forgot the sequence
of the signature protocol. Every time I had to press number or letter
buttons, I had to search for each button - and my eyes would not focus on
the symbols on the buttons - tho I was careful not to mention the eye
problem to Paul.

   "I know how it is. You're not doing bad", Paul said.

   "Thank you."

   He was unusually considerate: he heard me say thank you: I saw it
register. He kept telling jokes, when he could think of any. They were
pretty lame - so were the ones I told - but he laughed at mine, and I
laughed at his - which he said he was getting from sitcoms on TV - each
appreciating the effort. And he began to try to learn something about me.

   I did not want to tell him I was a distribution consultant, or that my
business had evaporated after I had published ariticles about the cruel
folly of spending millions on state of the art equipment, while refusing to
spend thousands training workers to do things more efficiently without ANY
new equipment, or with only inexpensive upgrades - or on developing their
morale by simply paying them a little respectful attention, or, more
radically, sharing profits with them, taking into consideration their desire
to thrive.

   The new global competition made it necessary to forget, for now, how
operators of equipment were treated - that was the conventional wisdom,
endlessly repeated, in speeches, broadcasts, print. If companies did not
make profits and survive - while CEO's and shareholders socked away
billions - workers would have nothing. There was SOME truth to it.  You
could not honestly say - damn it - that it was ONLY a screen for muscling
everyone, who could not prevent you, out of your way at the trough.


WHEN WE WERE DELIVERING TO APARTMENTS in houses near St. Ignatius, Paul
said, "The doors aren't locked. The students don't lock them. No one would
want to rob them. So we can open the doors, and leave packages inside."

   I said I understood, that I had been to college.

   Where? he wanted to know.

   "Washington University," I said, "in St. Louis" - not mentioning the
others.

   He laughed. "St. Louis? I'm going there for a meeting for my church.
Where are you from?'

   "New Jersey", I said.

   "You've traveled!"

   "Yeah."

   He wanted to know if I had a Christmas tree yet.

   I said, "My girlfriend got us a little one - she's already decorated it."

   That pleased him. Christmas trees were safe territory. He was confident
about Christmas trees. He said that this year, he and his wife were getting
an artificial one. Last year, they had used his mother-in-law's artificial
one - but it was so tiny. Their house had a vaulted ceiling, he said. But
this year, the mother-in-law wanted her tree back - and they wanted a bigger
one.


RIDING AROUND WITH PAUL, seeing streets and homes and yards I had never seen
before, lasted two weeks, once it started - but most days I worked just two
hours; only three hours one day of each week.

   I circled a newspaper ad about a job loading sixty-eight pound blocks of
butter onto a Russian boat, at eight dollars an hour, and, Monday, drove
into town. The address was in an area of big warehouses. I filled out the
form, including a few problems demonstrating my ability to multiply and
divide, and my understanding of decimals, percentages, and fractions of an
inch. After I waited a while, a young woman took me into a little office,
glanced at the form I had filled out, acted excited. I was special, she
said. Would I like to do some lifting and carrying tonight, for $6.25 per
hour?

   "Okay."

   She gave me my instructions. The work would be down by the docks - turn
south just past Flo's....

   I looked at her without comprehension.

   "You know, Flo's - that tavern...?"

   "I don't know much about taverns."

   So she told me what roads to take, where to turn.

   I drove home and tried to get some sleep. I managed to doze off for about
an hour. I fried myself some potatoes and eggs, and ate. Then I drove down
there, and found a place to park. Gravel parking lots, taverns, big old
industrial buildings - nothing being produced in them - broken windows,
rusted old cars - tufts of blades of grass on hard dirt and poking up thru
cracks in concrete and asphalt. A little old, dirty snow. Bits of broken
glass. Beer cans.

   I waited in a room where about a dozen guys crowded together. A Black
fellow, a few Chicanos, mostly blue-collar young white guys - joking about
being real drunk. "So crowded in there, you had to go outside to change
your mind!" said one, delighted at the joke - which was new to him. Others
were talking about girl friends and wives...

   "How many hours you worked this time?"

   "Since noon."

   "Since ten."

   "Since seven."

   "Since 3 AM."

   It was going on 3 PM.

   A woman behind a counter hung up a phone, and shouted thru a door, for us
to go down a hall. We did - to a big meeting room, with rows of plastic
chairs. A small man with a clip-board, almost my age, told us a little about
the job, and told us each to pick out a sweatshirt with the company logo on
it, so we would be allowed in, where we would be doing the work.

   I picked out a shirt much too large, thinking that it would be wise to
wear it over my other clothing, to keep warm in the night. Unfortunately,
it made me look comic, not a good thing, among so many young men, to whom
appearance meant so much, as their experience was so limited - who were
looking for ways, anyway, to exclude everyone but themselves and those whose
approval they craved most, those whose winning - among so much losing - was
apparent to them.

   We were broken up into three groups - one each to work in Ashland, on
Main Street, and at Fort Harrison. We new guys were shown how to lift,
bending legs a lot, and keeping boxes close to the torso - and how to load
four-wheeler dollies.


I DROVE TO THE JOB - it was some distance away, thru parts of town I had
never been in before - giving a lift to a sick-looking fellow, named Jerry.
Jerry was, maybe, Chicano, maybe part Indian - with terrible-looking teeth,
very thin. He said he delivered newspapers thirteen hours a week.

   We drove in a convoy - speeding all the way. If I could have afforded a
ticket, I would not have taken the job. I had to keep up with a red pick-up,
driven by a careless fellow guzzling a can of soda.

   We rushed - only to wait for a truck to arrive at the dock of the Ashland
warehouse where, when we began to work, maybe ten women - who took a brief
interest in our showing up - were operating computers and microfiche
equipment in the midst of the boxes and shoved-together furniture. Many
shelves were still standing, full of boxes.

   We unloaded the shelves, keeping similarly coded items together, putting
them on four-wheel dollies or into 'speed packs' - large boxes with no tops.
We used pads to protect the computer equipment, put one in each corner of
the four-wheelers, plus one in the middle, on top. We rolled the dollies up
into the trucks, as far forward as they would go, then blocked the dollies,
which were inclined to roll backward, by stuffing pads where the wheels and
floor met. Or, when we ran out of dollies on which to load, we removed the
dollies and left the boxes in the trucks, and took the dollies back with us
among the shelves. We worked fast, most of us, for about six hours.

   The regulars worked together, joking. We temps tried to figure out whose
orders or instructions or suggestions to take. I tried to introduce myself
to whomever I was working with. The temps were friendly enough.

   One fellow, O'Hallaran, wore a black and white Chicago White Sox hat. He
had worked in a plant in Chicago, for twenty years, he said. Recently, it
had shut down, and taken his pension with it. But he had been raised around
here, and owned the land he had been raised on.

   "Slow down a little, hey!" he told me.

   But he had taken a liking to me.

   "There's better jobs than this around here, you know", he said. "If
you're not too squeamish. The packing places are hiring. Think you could
cut up steers and pigs?"

   The regulars were a little surprised I was so friendly.  That is how I
found out they were regulars. But they were willing enough to introduce
themselves - except one big guy with a handle-bar mustache and his hair in a
rubber band in back.

   "What's YOUR name?" I asked.

   "What's it to YOU?" he replied.

   Which would have intimidated me - as it was intended to - twenty years
ago.

   And other mind games: young Scott, short, with long blond hair: "My
father owns the company. I'm watching you."

   "That's good", I said. "You might learn something."

   One very thin fellow with an effeminate voice - I cringed for him - was
staying in the truck, loading it very fast, picking up and stacking five
boxes out of each four-wheeler the rest of us rolled in, while each fellow
waited to take the cart back with him. He was working by far the hardest.

   "You're strong", I told him.

   "That's just will-power", he said.

   "Will-power's strength", I said.

   Later, I offered to help him stack what I brought in on a four-wheeler.
"Any way I can help? Or am I just getting in the way?" I asked, as I held
one box, the whole time he loaded - very fast - the five from the previous
car, and the four others from my cart. I felt pretty useless just standing
there holding one box, while he did all the work - but I did not want to
risk knocking into him.

   "Get out of my way", he said.


THE ENORMOUS SWEATSHIRT I WAS WEARING with the company logo on it - the
words 'Huffy Transfer' on the side of a truck - made me look goofy - and I
was regretting more and more not having taken a moment to make a better
selection from the stack. I had thought we would be working out in the
winter, and not freezing would be the problem. Instead, we were working
inside, and I was sweating profusely.

   I was in the best condition of my life - I had been lifting weights, the
prisoner's defense against fatal discouragement - whether the cell had bars
or not - and I was enjoying the use of my muscles.

   When we had loaded everything, one of the supervisors - he wore a tie -
showed up. I had never seen him before. He had two six-packs of caffeine -
and sugar-laced soda. Since I was still dry after draining one, I drained a
second, too.

   Then, separately or in pairs, we drove to where the rest of the equipment
we were moving was - the Aristocrat Complex, a new office building with what
was supposed to be a glamorous facade. I had never driven east along the
river before - I did not know the industrial section, the run-down Asian
residential area, the downtown. In fact, I had not driven in town, at night,
before.  Railroad tracks - hopper cars full of iron pellets from the
Minnesota Mesabi Range, to the docks - ran along the river on this side.
There were only a couple of places to cross the river, just two bridges from
here to the Bay. There was no traffic.

   I figured I had find the Aristocrat Complex, eventually - Red Port is so
small - after L.A. and the years of working all over the country.  The whole
situation was pathetically small - like sixty pounds: once a lot to lift,
but no more. Briefly, I was confident and easy, enjoying the wonder of the
silent streets, dark buildings, parked trucks, a lumber yard, and orange
street-lamps, all in the bubble of the mellow light of a full moon.


AT THE ARISTOCRAT COMPLEX, we went in thru the swank lobby - into which the
regulars had jammed carts, pads, and boxes. A bubbly young red-head wearing
a blazer and skirt, working at a counter, was flirting with still another
supervisor I had not seen before - a tall, dark, heavy-set fellow, about my
age, smoking a cigar.

   A bunch of us went upstairs in elevators, packed tight, with four carts,
wedging ourselves in as best we could. We loaded mainly computers, from the
sixth, seventh, and eighth floors - wrapping the central processing units,
monitors, and keyboards - two computer sets from each cubicle - together.
We grouped them by code: 3A and 3B together, 4A and 4B together, etc.
Whenever the elevator doors opened, we pushed in carts with computers, and
sent them down - and went back to fill more carts. Presumably, someone
downstairs was pushing the carts thru the lobby, and loading the trucks,
which were taking them wherever the computers were to be used.

   After several hours, the supervisor smoking the cigar showed up, to say
that some of us were mixing things up. They were spending all their time in
the huge new building putting one thing from a forklift in one corner of the
building, putting the next item all the way across the building, and the
next item back in the first corner, and so on.

   "If you think you geniuses are gonna get anywhere doing the job
half-assed, think again. Better start doing it right."

   About midnight, a call for volunteers to go home, then to come back for
another shift at 6 or 7. I volunteered, but others were chosen. The rest of
us would work til 2 or 3, the cigar-smoking supervisor said.

   About 3, when we had finished two floors and several of us were hanging
around waiting for directions with a couple of mid-level supervisors -
regulars supervising temps - I said, "I was told I was to work til 2 or 3.
This looks like a good time to go home, if that's all right." They sent me
to the cigar-smoker. He looked at me funny, but initialed my card.

   "Tomorrow?" I asked.

   "No, we have enough guys. But you know you won't get paid until you turn
in your shirt?"

   "Oh, I forgot about the shirt!" I said and took it off.

   "I don't want it now", he said. "Wash it, and turn it in at the place
where you got hired, or you won't get paid."

   "You serious?"

   "Yeah, my wife has enough laundry to wash."

   He made a show of leaning against a wall, at his lordly pleasure and
ease.

   What could I do?  He was taller and heavier than I was, in case I felt
the need - beyond merely toying with the image and the possibility - of
feeding him his cigar. (I was strong now, so I had a new kind of
temptation.) I struggled with the impulse, and also noticed: There is
apparently no end to my capacity to be offended, in no matter how petty a
way.

   I turned, and went out to the car, and began driving thru the early
morning traffic - drivers on their way to punch in for the earliest shifts -
brewing the coffee, baking the bread, delivering supplies. There would be
more driving - spending money on gas, and time without pay - in order to
collect the little money that would be left after income tax and social
security and medicare and state tax.


FORTUNATELY - FINALLY - A RESEARCH ASSIGNMENT came thru. Two campers in
Wyoming, using a propane-burning device inside a tent, had died of carbon
monoxide poisoning. Their families hired a lawyer, who sued the retailer who
sold them the tent. The retailer - a giant department store chain - hired
lawyers all over the country to build a case, to show that they were not
negligent or liable.

   One of the lawyers hired an expert-witness in Seattle, who was referred
to me by one of the attorneys for whom I had done research on a case
involving a worker injured while using a certain kind of crane I am familiar
with, while installing an overhead conveyor system - eight years ago. The
expert witness in Seattle hired me to help him build his presentation. He
would send me a five hundred dollar retainer.

   I went to retail outlets in Red Port and Hollandtown, to examine the
features and warning labels of competitive tents - and propane-burning
stoves - and called and wrote retailers and manufacturers of tents and of
the nylon of which the tents are made and of camping stoves - and phoned
federal agencies, and persisted until someone agreed to send me some
information.  I collected all kinds of sales literature and studies.

   It was frustrating work. People did not want to cooperate. There was
nothing in it for them, except possible involvement in the litigation.
After the first few weeks, I began to think I was going to be unable to come
up with anything of use - a situation I had never run into before - and my
self-esteem hit thirty-below.

   Toward the end of the two months I had, in which to find what I could
find, I discovered a company in Vancouver that was importing, from China,
ninety per cent of the camping tents being sold in North America. When I
called its president, amazingly, he spoke with me, and filled me in on
everything I needed to know, that I had been otherwise unable to find out.

   I wrote a twenty page single-spaced report on the obsolete old DOS-based
IBM-clone - with the green, flickering screen - sent me by Seymour Fisch,
the labor organizer, when he graduated to a better computer - and sent the
report by overnight express, to my expert-witness employer.


WHICH IS WHY, when the frequently-delayed Russian boat finally arrived,
I turned down the chance to work on it. First day, two of the butter-loading
temps - I read in the RED PORT RADIUS - were overcome by fumes from the
forklift, in the small space of the hold - and rushed by ambulance to St.
Urban. I don't know who paid for their treatment. I read, later, that Huffy
was fined $1,800, but that they appealed, and, two weeks later, the fine was
reduced to $180.

   I was able to send a check repaying E.A. Manuel, to pay the rent, and to
buy gas and more and better food. And to make the final - enormous - tuition
payment for Viv's college.

   The day Viv graduated we had twenty-three dollars left - but we did not
owe anyone anything.


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 uXu #537              Underground eXperts United 2000              uXu #537
                     Call KASTLEROCK -> +1-724-527-3749
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