Lionel pondered the first help-wanted ad he saw on Craig’s List.
“Don’t ponder!” a voice inside him shouted. “Just do. Go. Be!”
Lionel decided to name this voice Mr. Dogobe. It would be his friend and ally during the job search ahead. Job searches were grueling ordeals and you needed all the resources you could muster, very much including imaginary ones. Imaginary resources were in some ways preferable to actual ones, because they demonstrated resourcefulness and creativity – both desirable job skills.
This particular job — as a customer service representative for an online auction company – sounded potentially fascinating. Lionel could envision himself as the personification of the global economy. Part mascot, part trusted helpmate, like Jiminy Cricket or Batman’s Robin. Lionel wondered if wearing a superhero outfit would be part of the job description. If not, he could suggest it – once he had learned the ropes. Employers liked employees who made suggestions. It demonstrated caring. They didn’t like implementing suggestions, because that was too costly and anyway who did these employees think they were, questioning Standard Operating Procedures (S.O.P.)? But they liked the employees who made the suggestion, because it showed they were upbeat and involved and not spending every waking moment plotting the company’s downfall.
This ability to see things both from management and worker’s points of view was another thing that made Lionel so valuable as an employee. He should be keeping a list, so on a separate piece of paper he jotted down:
1. Imaginary inner resources
2. Makes suggestions
3. Management and worker POV
“That’s three already!” Lionel marveled. “And I’ve only just begun.” He had high hopes that his job search would prove truly to be a journey of self-discovery, not a maelstrom of self-loathing.
“Get on with it!” cried Mr. Dogobe, whom Lionel imagined as a little West Indian chap, dressed immaculately in white, sporting a sailor’s cap.
Seeking only to oblige, Lionel scanned the rest of the ad. The Customer Service Representative was required to be intelligent, self-motivated, resourceful, well-organized, and detail-oriented.”
“It’s as if they know me!” Lionel murmured. A recent foray into bird watching proved his detail-orientation, and though it was perhaps not strictly job-related, it was a life experience he could mention anecdotally, allowing the wise interviewer to draw the smart conclusion.
Feeling himself enveloped by the universe’s abundance, Lionel continued down the list of the job’s duties and responsibilities. Only it was more than a job. He saw this clearly. It was a calling. He was going to put that into his cover letter.
“Don’t!” warned Mr. Dogobe. “Just write a normal-sounding letter and spell-check everything.”
It was good advice, and Lionel was glad to have it. In short order he had written up a concise cover letter listing how he had demonstrated the job’s desired duties and responsibilities in an exemplary manner throughout his prior experience. Much (but not all) of this was imaginary, but that was okay because Lionel was drawing upon his inner resources – strength! – and also, he felt completely confident that he could cheerfully execute each of the requirements. Cheerfulness: that was a quality in short supply in the global economy. Lionel was ready to be the international ambassador of cheerful effectiveness. Just give him the chance.
Lionel found within himself the wherewithal to pen many such job applications – if five counted as many, which he felt strongly that it should, since five was two more than he thought he had in him. Three would be the max, he had assumed, but Lionel pressed himself. He exerted himself. He reached down deep, and then deeper, because he knew that this was a requirement of job seekers everywhere. You couldn’t just pay lip service to the rigors of job-hunting.
Lionel knew that jobs – good jobs, satisfying jobs, soul-enriching jobs – did not just present themselves, like turkey vultures had at the beach, during his bird-watching phase. You had to work for them. You had to strip yourself down to the bare essentials, although not literally, especially not at an interview. But you had to be willing to put yourself out there in a way Lionel could not actually quite articulate, so for help he turned to Mr. Dogobe.
To his surprise and dismay, however, Mr. Dogobe was sound asleep, leaning with his back against the post of a pier. He appeared to be fishing. There was a fishing pole next to him with a line attached to a plastic ball bouncing up and down with the rippling tide. Up and down, up and down, up and down it bounced, while the tide rippled, and Mr. Dogobe did nothing but quietly snore.
It irritated Lionel to see his inner resolve sacked out like that, because there was a problem. The problem was, it was still only ten o’clock in the morning, and as heroic as Lionel’s efforts had been, he still had twelve hours of consciousness ahead of him, which he had to fill up with something, somehow.
This was very daunting. It was one thing to be possessed of a divinely ordained conviction that you were going to change your life for the better, and another thing entirely to… um. Y’know. This was Lionel’s point, exactly. What to do?
Napping would normally have been his first line of defense, in the hope that either being additionally well rested or having a dream would point him the way to go. However, he could not really justify a good snooze right at the moment; because first of all, at the end of that bird-watching phase, he had been the beneficiary of divine inspiration and he didn’t want to come across to God as either unappreciative or needy.
Secondly, there was his imaginary avatar, already napping up a storm, and it would be unseemly for them both to be zonked out.
Left with no recourse, Lionel made the executive decision to go for a walk. He did this with neither haste nor undue deliberation. His tempo was like Goldilock’s pick of porridge: just right.
Lionel held his chin up as he strolled. No. Not strolled! That implied leisure, and Lionel just now was a man of purpose –though of what purpose, he could not say… as he strode out into the morning sunshine, which struck him like the blast of a death ray.
Was he dying? Having a stroke? All Lionel knew was the sky was full of yellow-blue-white light, bearing down on him intent on annihilation. He covered his head with his arms and drew in his final breath, rich in oxygen, sweet oxygen, thank you oxygen for enriching every breath I’ve ever taken. I’m sorry it’s only now, at this moment of ultimate surrender, that I…
As his gratitude increased, so did Lionel’s awareness that as yet he remained seemingly intact. Was he in heaven? Not heaven? A parallel universe? Most likely, he thought with frantic re-assurance, it was none of these things, but rather he had simply jumped a track into an alternate version of his regular life. Usually such transitions were seamless and went unnoticed, but Lionel was possessed of heightened sensitivity due to his recent SFG (Sign from God).
Also, he noticed, as he patted the air at waist level all around him, instinctively seeking someplace to sit down, there were far, far fewer trees outside his apartment building than there used to be. Like, drastically fewer. And then it came back to him that management had been putting up signs for months that they were going to be chopping down the palm trees in front of the apartment because they were sick and dying and represented a big threat to topple over and kill someone, even though they looked perfectly healthy. The chopping-down must have happened while Lionel was in Baja, and he simply hadn’t noticed while coming home at night, pre-occupied as he was.
He noticed now, though. Wow. What a difference. Without the usual canopy of palm fronds, the sky seemed twice as big. Lionel would not have been the slightest bit surprised if a spaceship appeared at that very moment, lowered its beam, and disgorged an army of giant robots. In fact, he was surprised when this didn’t happen. All he heard was the rush of traffic going by on the freeway across the street, and all he saw was the fierce sunlight reflecting off the car bumpers with the insouciance of bullets that had missed him. An indomitable feeling soon arose in Lionel.
“They can take away my palm trees, and yet I prosper. Still I thrive,” he thought to himself. He had no thought of joblessness, no inkling of purposelessness. He was awash in his own irreducible essence. With each step, the sidewalk became more the instrument of his destiny. What this meant, he worried not.
At the end of the block he pressed the walk button and waited contentedly for his command to be carried out. As he waited, his eye lit upon a paper posted to the lamppost. It read, “Work at Home. Earn $1K/wk or more. Call to find out how.”
Lionel’s hand reached out toward the flyer and tore off the deed to his future, as effortlessly yet mightily as if pulling a sword from a stone.
“Hello. I’m calling about…”
“Yes. Excellent. Tell me more.”
The voice was not too low and not too high, and steady, like the banister of a good staircase.
“I saw your work at home flyer, and I want to find out more.”
“That’s a big check for you in the Self-Starter box.”
Lionel thought he could hear the squeak of a thick black magic marker, putting a check in a box. He wondered what other boxes were on the page and hoped they would all soon have a big thick check. He visualized this happening and felt brave.
“Can you tell me more about what the work entails?”
“Certainly. It entails making the world a calmer, healthier and happier place. How does that sound so far?”
“It sounds good but vague.”
Lionel regretted the last comment. He should have thought of some way to phrase it positively. But you know what? He wasn’t going to eat himself up over it. He was going to let it go, like a called first strike. Verbally striding into the silence, Lionel offered, “I’m curious to know more.”
“Curious. Did you say curious?” The voice was welcoming as a witch who had just put on a cauldron to boil, but without evil intentions.
“I am curious,” Lionel stated flatly.
“Curious is good. You need to be curious to succeed in this position. You need to wonder how many people will, if given the chance, grab onto a lifeline while they’re drowning.”
“Wouldn’t everyone?”
“You’d be surprised.” The voice spoke matter-of-factly. Lionel felt himself wishing he could simply state things the way they are, without longing, regret or fear. He decided he could, and would – starting right now.
“What’s your name?” As soon as the words were out, he regretted them. He should have introduced himself, first. That would have demonstrated a better grasp of social conventions. He decided to instantly right any wrong he had committed, instead of worrying about it.
“My name’s Lionel.”
“Eddie. Glad to know you, Lionel. How do you feel about goats?”
“I wonder – do they really eat tin cans?”
“No, that’s a myth. Goats are herbivores. They only eat plants. If they get hungry enough they’ll eat almost any kind of plant, but we don’t want our goats to get that hungry. Our goats are happy and we intend to keep them that way.”
“So the job is about goats?”
“Fast learner. I just gave you another check.”
“Does it involve feeding goats? The sign said work at home.”
“The job involves feeding goats, but only indirectly. You would not have to feed them yourself unless you decided to avail yourself of the employee agricultural development program. That’s where we bring you up to one of the farms for a week and give you an introductory course in goat-herding.”
“Really?”
“Yes. It’s the same course we give to inner city youths.”
Half an hour later, Lionel was on the job.
The first thing you did when the member picked up was baa. When you baa’d, it cut through preconceived notions about telemarketing and went straight to primal communication. How did we all learn to talk? By imitating farm animals. Who hung up on telemarketers? Everyone. Who hung up on a talking goat? No one. Exactly! That’s why you started off with a happy baa, like a goat who had just discovered a fresh clump of clover. If the member was having a problem at that moment with animal contentedness, well, so be it – but most people were okay with animal contentedness. It’s what they craved, more than anything. That’s what made this business such a winner.
So: “Baaa.”
The silence on the other end was nothing unusual. You wanted silence. It showed the member was considering the initial proposition. What more could you want, one second into your presentation?
“Feeed meee.”
These were familiar words. People knew what they meant. More important, members were used to hearing these words, coming from their own inner selves. Most often, it was Love the inner selves wanted. The ranking went like this:
1. Love
2. Knowledge
3. Sustenance
Those were the main three. Everyone could relate. As for the elongation of the vowel, the exaggeration of the long “e,” that was simply more goat-like. You wanted members to be able to believe they were talking directly to a goat, not an intermediary. That captured the magic of trans-species communication, and you wanted all the magic you could muster. Members were captivated by the notion of talking to animals, as you could see by the widespread phenomena of having dogs not just as pets but as children, or by the habit of building theme parks as a pretext for worshipping dolphins as deities.
“What do you want?”
That was the desired first spoken response from the member. It was money. It was silver and gold. When the member voiced concern for your needs? Less than five seconds into the presentation? You felt the power then. You felt the nimbleness in your very haunches.
“I want to offer you a goat share.”
Directness was the motto at this point. The member had expressed a desire to know what you wanted. Your responsibility was to fulfill the member’s desire. Always fulfill the member’s desire. AFMD.
“What in the world is a goat share?”
“No one expects you to buy an entire goat, even though they are very affordable. But, let me ask you this: what is your favorite part of a goat?”
Members loved being asked to name their favorites. That’s why all professional sports had fans vote for the All-Star teams. The question drew them in. Also, the disclaimer about not being expected to buy the entire goat despite its affordability – that was simple parameter setting. Of course, you could buy the entire goat if you wanted. That was the Mountain Goat package, and it came with the shears and the bucket. It was hard for a member to receive the shears and the bucket and then not want to come to the farm. And once they came to the farm; well, then world calmness became appreciably closer, as did economic gratification for champions of sure-footedness. But it hardly ever happened that the member would immediately ask, “How much for the entire goat?”
What would happen, however, is they would tell you their favorite part of a goat, in this order:
1. Beard.
2. Smile.
3. Sure-footedness.
4. Horns.
5. Fur (or hair).
6. Clippity-cloppity sound of hooves.
7. Ability to eat tin cans.
8. Baaa.
9. Cheese.
10. Milk.
11. Meat.
12. Smell.
Any of these, except the one about the tin cans, was immediately sale-able. You just took whatever the member’s favorite part was and asked how they’d feel about owning it. For example, “How would you feel about owning a premium goat’s beard?”
And the answer – most gratifying to the telegoat-herd – would be, “I would feel happy about that.”
Happy. Think about it. You had brought happiness into the members’ life with a simple phone call. The rest of the call was confirmation of that happiness, and letting the member make the deal.
“How would you feel if I told you that you could own that goat’s beard right now?”
“I’d feel great.”
“What other questions do you have?”
“For how long?”
“For as long as you want.”
“For how much?”
“Twenty dollars for the first two months.”
“Can I do it for just one month?”
“There’s a two-month minimum.”
“How soon can I start?”
“You can start today.”
“Do you need a credit card?”
“Yes.”
With this sure-fire game plan in mind, Lionel made his initial “Baa.”
The initial reply was, naturally, “Fuck you” and a hang-up. Nature gives a “Fuck you” and a hang-up to virtually all initial forays, just to see if you’re really serious. Despite knowing this intellectually, the “fuck-you” still hurt Lionel’s feelings, though he had promised Eddie he had a thick hide.
Nevertheless, Lionel persevered, because that was becoming part of his nature now. The second reply was “Baa” right back at him. In fact, this member would not stop baa’ing. Lionel was so nonplussed he forgot to say, “Feeed meee.” They were just baa’ing at one another. Lionel felt an incipient kinship, but just as he and the member were getting into a rhythm, the call got cut off, and when Lionel called back, no one answered.
That meant his future must lie ahead, not behind, so Lionel called the third number and baa’d. This was met with silence. So far, so good.
“Feeed meee,” Lionel bleated.
From the other end: hysterical laughter. It sounded like sneezing, hiccupping and gasping all mashed together. When the member recovered her breath, she said, “Whoever you are, thank you. Unless you’re a crazy person. But even if you’re a crazy person, I still thank you. I must be crazy myself, talking to a prank-caller pretending to be a sheep.”
“It’s a goat, ma’am,” Lionel gently corrected, not wanting to take a risk by departing from the script. But what choice did he have? He couldn’t telemarket a sheepshare. That would make no sense.
A fresh round of laughter ignited, this time louder, with more gasping. Lionel felt encouraged. He felt happy. He felt like he was making a friend.
“All right, Mr. Goat,” said the member. “You have made my day and possibly my week. Tell me – what is it you want?”
They were back on script. Lionel went directly to directness: “I want to offer you a goat share.”
“I accept,” the member replied. “Can I get one for twenty dollars?”
“That’s just right,” Lionel said, improvising again. He sensed he would have to be doing a lot of this. “Will you be wanting to stroke its beard or hear its clomping hooves?”
“I want both.”
“To get both is $30.”
“All right. Thirty. Just don’t upsell me any further, Goatman, or I won’t be able to afford it, and that would spoil the precious thing we have together.”
So, thirty dollars it was. Lionel had broken through. Not only had he made his first sale, he had also made his first upsell. Someone out there loved his goat voice so much she had to have it. She spent money on him, and that made Lionel feel real.
Mark Gozonsky lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughters. He has published fiction in New York’s Avenue, and non-fiction in The Austin Chronicle and Texas Monthly. Mark teaches fifth grade at an inner city public school, where he’s the leader of the Don Quixote Book Club.