Not a fast thinker

Once upon a time Julio applied for a job as an international salesperson at an Orthodontics company. As per the instructions in the newspaper add, he faxed the requested documents to their Human Resources office. Indeed, he thought it was dehumanizing to be considered a resource, but he had to eat, pay the rent and, most importantly, uphold his visa status with the all seeing and knowing INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service). Thus, he decided to swallow his sociolinguistic pangs like one does certain consonants in some languages and, two days later, was called in for an interview.

After seventeen and a half years of indecision, Julio had finally opted to take a break from institutionalized learning and quit school in the absolute middle of a bland and flavourless master’s course in Phonology. It was October. Like those candy-wraps that when thrown in the waste-bin fall through the mesh and litter the ground around it, he still lived downtown, near his old university; in other words, his lease hadn’t run out yet. This meant that, in order to get to where this life vest of a company was, he had to take a tram to Central Station, ride a train for thirty minutes to a tiny village in the northeast beyond the northeastern-most bit of the city and then walk another thirty minutes through a park (industrial: no trees, no mountains, no fountains). Finally, he would reach a “red-and-green brick compound with a big white-and-pink sign of a denture on the façade, you’ll see”, as the duly female secretarial voice informed him over the phone.

The morning of the interview he was a tad worried. The only things he’d ever sold were cake raffle tickets at his elementary school, and they did not make the amount required to buy the aquarium, anyway. Mrs. Ramirez brought a big transparent salad bowl from her home and the kids kept in it the five goldfish they did manage to buy, but the poor animals died on the first weekend, because of Mrs. Ramirez miscalculation of the time they could survive without their water being changed. When the sniffling started that morning, she joined in for a while, too.

Another point against Julio was, of course, that he knew as much about orthodontics as he did about containment of lipophilic contaminants. What would he say to a customer? “Doctor, would you like to buy some of the tiny metal whatchamacallits you put on your patients’ teeth? You know, the ones you run those wires through to straighten misaligned smiles? We have them in very shiny colors for you!”

No, he reasoned. He had to try and make the interviewer concentrate on his strengths, convince the guy that Julio was a quick study and that the company could use his mastery of Spanish to sell equipment to South American doctors. In spite of economic crises and blights of all kinds, the healthy bites and white dental arches of the masses down there still had to be safeguarded. After all, strong teeth with a good grip were the only thing that kept people from sliding into poverty in Julio’s part of the world, and anyone would be proud to play a role, no matter how small, in such an important endeavor as fighting a crook…ed dentition, right?

Although he thought them, Julio was obviously not going to tell the interviewer those last two sentences, but the previous idea sounded convincing enough for a self-selling attempt. In another attack of lingophilia, he wondered if he wasn’t really starting to have the famous “winner mentality” so sought after in the corporate world, which he was now attempting to join. This whole thing might not be as difficult to chew, after all!

These and other ideas were tumbling in his head as the train took him towards a very orange sun-up. Reflected on the window he could see his blue formal jacket, yellow shirt and even the tiny yellow pentagrams and musical notes printed on the also blue background of his carefully matching tie. Beyond the glass, the train was cutting through old factory territory, a part of the city that had been its industrial hub half a century before. The tracks ran through a corridor at either side of which candidly pornographic graffiti waved at passengers like enthusiasts at a political rally. The back walls of abandoned factories, with their stone-imploded windows and punky barbwire coiffures, lent their structure to support such writings. Some buildings and plots had been rescued by savvy entrepreneurs and turned into ugly but surely profiting scrap metal businesses. These were half buried under tangles of spaghetti-like rods rescued from demolition sites, or invaded by car carcasses piled on top of each other in the mechanical version of a Japanese capsule hotel horribly gone wrong.

Julio’s station was beyond this ring of post-industrial destruction, in the bustling outer layer which the still prosperous companies are always munching their way through. Beyond the railway office there was even a cafe, toting a neon sign, and some apartment buildings; he walked by them before entering the industrial park proper. As he was not in possession of a car, which the urban planners of this area must have assumed is every human being’s natural means of locomotion, Julio had to give up his mulling over interviewing strategies and concentrate on not being run over by pick-up trucks and station wagons.

For two miles his short, pudgy legs walked on non-existent sidewalks, past imposing central offices, secondary branches and manufacturing units of anything the human mind has come up with so far. Because of the risk of becoming road kill, he was very alert and felt that, in a sense, he was making his own way in life. He told himself, once more, that that was the kind of positive mentality he had to hold onto for the interview. The glittering metal and glass structures that flanked his march, boxy and unimaginative as working spaces even in the far far world of Corporearth, lost a little of their intimidating quality.

And then Julio reached Orthotrans Inc., a squat, square building which, with its green and red bricks and the huge plastic smile in front, made him think of a combination giant toad and Jim Carrey in “The Mask”, but with a bad case of measles.

Julio went in through the front door. The aforementioned duly female secretary got up from behind her desk and led him into an adjacent room with a long, dark wooden table, where he was given some forms to fill and a few paragraphs to translate. Again, he considered this to be a positive sign.

Finally, a fifty-something man with blond hair and a strikingly pockmarked face came in and introduced himself as Mr. Burin, Chief of Sales. Julio stood up to greet that other suited human resource.

Julio’s handshake was firm and carefully controlled to transmit the right amount of aggressiveness; his smile was open, but not to misinterpretation, he hoped (an ingrained worry of his). The other man seemed friendly enough, but it was obvious that, although the papers Julio had faxed in seemed promising to Burin, he needed to do a more thorough investigation of his personality. If people’s social interactions were the same as those of dogs, the Chief of Sales would have probably been sniffing between Julio’s legs. As it was, they sat down facing each other, and he asked:

--So, do you have a hero, Mr. Peralta? Who is it?

His mind in overdrive, all of Julio’s carefully constructed scenarios began to crumble like Argentina’s middle class. What was this man asking him? What a childish question! Who needs heroes? Who goes around thinking: “let’s see, who’s my hero?” There are, of course, some people and historical or literary characters whose feats one admires; some of them can even function as role models, as far as it concerns a certain philosophy or way of acting, but even that kind of admiration must be carefully monitored. One should never give up one’s ability to reason and be critical; the kind of hero people look up to unquestioningly, with adoration, is a dangerous entity. Heroes are symbols, and we’re way too good at manipulating them to symbolize exactly what we want or need!

All of this was in Julio’s head, but as he was not a fast thinker, he could not order and expound these thoughts right then and there. On the other hand, he didn’t want to “hmmm” and “let’s see” for too long, either, so it occurred to him that, instead of attempting to explain why he didn’t have any heroes, he should just mention someone with some qualities a sales person could admire. So he said:

--Well, I see my grandmother as a very heroic figure in my life.

Although sometimes it took him a while to know his own ideas, Julio was quite good at reading faces and he could tell right away that this was not quite the appropriate answer. So he added, in a hurry:

--You see, she had to bring up eight children practically on her own. She emigrated from Portugal and worked without stop, yet always kept her independence and cheerfulness.

Still no good, the straight line of Mr. Burin’s mouth said. It occurred to Julio that the images people have of grandmothers are generally too sweet and fragile for them to be convincing in the role of heroes for salesmen with forward-looking, winning attitudes. So, even though his grandma was a mountain of inner strength (and of ass kicking flesh, if necessary), he would have to look somewhere else. Things were not going well!

Just when he was starting to despair, the interviewer continued:

--I see. But what about someone a little more famous?

Julio replied, almost immediately:

--Well, let me see… Jesus Christ?

And by the man’s eyes (a-poppin!) Julio knew he really had messed up now, and had to fix it fast if he wanted to be given a chance at the job.

--You know, I admire him not because of all that “offer the other cheek” stuff, but because he had the guts to say and do what he believed in, even knowing he might get in trouble for it.

Which was, in fact, the truth: Julio did admire Jesus Christ for that.

Burin swallowed the explanation. Either that, or no more resources had made themselves available to the Sales Department. Julio didn’t know, nor cared. They chatted a little more, went over the translation, and the job was his. Julio was to spend the next five years of his life, from 7:30 am to 5:00 pm and sometimes beyond, in the belly of the Jim Carrey measly toad, with a telephone headset hugging his temples and a computer screen staring at him even in his dreams. It was fun, sometimes, specially the part where he got to gossip with his co-workers near the coffee machine.

His boss turned out to be a decent, if unimaginative man who very much believed in persistence and a positive attitude. He monitored his charges’ calls and congratulated them when they won a customer to the competition. He found Julio’s work satisfactory, even though the younger man was convinced he got paid too little for his cares. In this respect, Mr. Burin had put in a couple of good words on Julio’s behalf, so there were no hard feelings between the two. Even though they had different political views, they rarely discussed them, and when they did they always stopped before the conversation became too heated.

Because he considered himself a professional man, the Chief of Sales never discussed Julio’s interview with him. Julio knew his answers had seemed strange to the man and, of course, he himself sensed they had been out of place for the situation. Still, he thought there had been something else to the other’s reaction, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Not that it mattered, really, and as time went by, he thought of this less and less. The job would do until his resident permit came in.

Then, on an April morning, as Julio was parking his new used car on the company’s lot, Mr. Burin and his wife invited him to have Passover dinner at their house. He attended with two other co-workers and met the couple’s children and granddaughter.

The next time he thought of his initial job interview was on an early afternoon, a couple of weeks after that very pleasing evening at the Burins. Suddenly, amid the buzzing telephone conversations and sales pitches, a loud splat was heard in the office. Several heads turned to behold Julio, who had slapped his forehead with his open palm.

He was not a fast thinker.