WHO PUT YOU IN THE CAGE? A COMMENTARY

WHO PUT YOU IN A CAGE?

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© February 10, 2009

“A job should be avoided which is not conducive to your physical, emotional and psychological well being. A climate that is not fun to be in is not a climate in which to work effectively, no matter how much money you are being paid. We sometimes fail to realize that psychological security is as equally important as economic security. When we sacrifice psychological security for economic security, we place ourselves in a cage. Then the question arises, who put you in the cage?”

James R. Fisher, Jr., The Taboo Against Being Your Own Best Friend (1996)

REFERENCE: This discussion relates to the short story “Who Put You In The Cage” included in the essay, “Why Writers Write: Eclectic Reflections and Reminiscence.” The short story appears at the end of this exchange.

* * * * * *

A WRITER WRITES:


Hello Jim,

I think I get the essence of this story. In a Rod Serling-esque manner, there is doubt over whether the writer in the story is being welcomed into heaven or sent into exile. The preface and reference to a cage kind of telegraphs the end.

There are many among us who proudly, or smugly, wage this battle fueled by a belief in the nobility of our willingness to speak truth to power. But, whose truth is it?

Your man in this story rages against the machine, its inhumanity, and its toxicity. The lord of the estate revels in the opulent rewards from running the machine.
The letter writer’s display of insight brings notice.

It is important to recognize the game if you want to play it well. Understanding the unspoken and even hidden rules ultimately leads to one of two reactions. One becomes angered by the duplicity and naively attempts to expose it. Or, one buys into the process and slowly but steadily begins the rung-by-rung climb passing from where there is wood beneath his feet to where the supports are of gold. But, the man is misled in his thinking

Your man is given the option to play on that side of the corporate world. His soul fuels the paranoia that leads to destructive behavior. Rather than accept suppressing his “truth,” which will allow him to maintain it, he opts to express his ongoing distrust overtly to the point of being politely banished. He continues to wail, drowned out by the drone of wealth and the men who desire to keep it.

One moral – you can’t play on both teams.

Or, maybe the more appropriate moral is - Rebellion without sacrifice is noise.

Either of those is too simple. The undertone of the story is hidden by the expressed. It teases the imagination of those who believe they are rebels with a cause, harboring a desire to martyr one’s career for the sake of exposing the duplicity of leadership.

But in the end it’s a sucker bet because, you don’t know the game. Stevie Wonder wrote, “When you believe in things you don’t understand then you suffer”. When you think you’ve bought in and are climbing on the golden rungs, it’s only gilt.

The true manipulators are much higher up. They are masters at creating the scarcity environment that pits the rest of us against each other.

It makes me think of Alfie Kohn, author of "Punishment by Rewards." His premise was based on a compilation of studies performed to statistically show the benefit of monetary incentives and rewards. As none of them could show a link, each was quashed, buried and hidden in dark archives.

The people at the top are driven by the desire to capture all of the “pay-at-risk” that is dangled in front of them. Or, so they believe. They couldn’t accept empirical data that proved most “normal” people are inspired by intrinsic values of fairness, accomplishment for the common good, and self-satisfaction.

The “climbers” (those who opted for your man’s first house) did all they could to refute Kohn’s work. But, the data never proved otherwise. So, they just refuse to believe it. They create bonus (pay at risk) programs, award Plant, Department, Employee of the Year recognition to perpetuate the scarcity mentality that keeps them at the top. Then, of course, they name one of their ilks CEO of the Year. It keeps the fountains safe.

"I find my silent sentinels consoling." That is such rich imagery. That brief passage provides a view deep into the psyche of corporate governance distinct from the technocrats who manage the business. The best technocrats are silent sentinels who protect the wealth and power flowing up from the blood and sweat of the masses. Does that sound too Marxist?

I, as I believe many of your readers to be, am glad you did not opt for the cage.

Peace and wonder,

Michael

* * * * * *

DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

It has been my experience that all of us, inevitably, place ourselves in some kind of a cage. The cage can be of our appetites, pride, biases, or beliefs. It can be the cage of marriage, career, religion, ethnicity, culture, or politics. It can be the cage of anger, vengeance, or some other obsession. I have witnessed these cages and have seen how they limit a person. I will refer to only one here, the cage of corpocracy, which is the theme of the story.

I have described corpocracy widely in my writing as a disease. So, I am not surprised, Michael, that you have been able to extrapolate from the story of its biographical source.

THE SURPRISE (ECONOMIC) ATTACK OF JAPAN, INC.

In 1980 when Tom Brokaw of NBCTV presented “Japan Can, Why Can’t We,” I was directing the largest Quality Control Circle (QCC) Program in the United States. This was a new concept for most American enterprises save for the space and aeronautic industries such as Boeing, McDonald Douglas, and Martin Marietta. The most extensive QCC program, however, was at Honeywell Avionics in Clearwater, Florida.

Dr. Francis Xavier Pesuth recruited six other Ph.D.’s to run his extensive Organization Development (OD) interventions, which included Quality Circles. In 1980 QQC’s were already four-years-old in this Honeywell facility of 4,000 with 1,000 engineers, 2,000 other professionals, and 1,000 clean room and assembly workers.

The six OD Ph.D's were Dr. Michael Donovan of Case Western Reserve, adjunct professors Dr. Thomas Brown and Dr. Mick Sheppech, Dr. Blondel Senior a professor at the University of South Florida, and Ed Buck, a management consultant who was completing his doctorate, and yours truly. It fell to me to assume the reigns of the QCC Program, which Donovan mainly organized, when he left to ride the QCC hysteria to a new career as a consultant, forming his own company.

* * * * * *

Whatever you do in life, you bring your geography with you. While with Nalco Chemical Company, I had had a series of articles published and had written a book for the new operation in South Africa, “Sales Training & Technical Development” (1968), which covered technologies of the new company being formed along with strategies for marketing.

Following Nalco, I wrote “Confident Selling” (Prentice-Hall 1970), along with a series of articles in national sales magazines, published some poetry, and had several newspaper editorial articles published on South Africa Apartheid, the Vietnam War, and Watergate.

It was then not so surprising someone would get wind of this at Honeywell, and exploit it to advantage. One of my monographs was delivered at the Institute of Printed Circuits in Dallas, Texas in October 1981 on technical and engineering successes I collected and collated, “Quality Control Circles: Motivation Through Participative Management.”

A director at MIT’s Charles Stark Draper Laboratories read the paper and invited me to Cambridge, Massachusetts to work with CSDL's scientists and engineers who were designing the ring laser gyros being produced in Honeywell Avionics, Clearwater. A book was written for that assignment, “Teaming – Productivity Through Cooperation” (1983). I then spent the better part of a month training this elite MIT group to connect more effectively with their production team a thousand miles away.

* * * * * *

While I was recording these positive aspects of QQC’s and “participative management,” I was increasingly feeling I was the front man for a charade. Engineers didn’t take quality circles seriously, while workers were going along for the ride.

I was in a country club atmosphere with a sweetheart deal with the Department of Defense and NASA in “cost plus” contracts, where the more people committed to a program the juicier the contract. Adding to this clubby climate, I discovered that the engineers attending “continuing education” seminars at exotic places were the same people over and over again. Nor was there necessarily technical relevance to these jaunts with the work at hand. It was called “continuing engineering education” when it was not much more than another holiday.

After directing the QCC Program at Honeywell Avionics for four years (1980 – 1984), the Honeywell people in Defense Contract Administration Services (DCAS) asked me to be the keynote speaker for the 1984 DCAS Forum being held at the Caribbean Gulf Resort on Clearwater Beach on Friday, March 30, 1984. The theme of the conference was “Participative Management.”

By that time, I had collected more than a score of notebooks of unobtrusive observations, which assessed QCC, participative management, total employee involvement, and total quality management, themes which were hatching anew every week. I had become quite jaded with these in actual practice.

We were making only hygiene or cosmetic changes as the hourly workers in QCC had no real power to change anything, coming to consider the downtime cynically as coffee and smoke breaks. I was meeting each week for one hour with some 110 QCC’s, each with 8 to 12 workers. This required scheduling meetings on the first and second shift. It was a daunting task but workers were candid with me about their frustrations.

Professionals were haphazardly introduced to QCC’s, often canceling scheduled meetings, because of this or that emergency. It was evident they felt it an imposition and of little consequence. I started visiting them in their cubicles, only to find many were using Honeywell as a base to pursue parallel careers in real estate, jewelry, cosmetics, stocks & bonds, Amway, among other endeavors, and using the phone and franking privileges for personal non-Honeywell purposes. Amazingly, they made no attempt to hide these activities. In fact, I even found people selling fruits and vegetables inside the door to the five main plants on campus under the noses of security. You could even go to the cafeterias almost any time of day and find people smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee as if it were a café on the Seine.

So when I was asked to be the keynote speaker for DCAS, I said I would do it if I had cart blanche on what I could say. “Fine,” they said, satisfied that another action item had been checked off.

I then wrote a 53-page document (double spaced) titled “Participative Management: An Adversary Point of View.” (I plan on publishing this on my blog on March 30, 2009, which will mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of that speech.)

To say this speech was career changing contradicts its significance. It was prophetic. We never seem to learn from our follies.

Technical publishing made 100 copies of the speech, which disappeared in less than two minutes after it was delivered. More than 300 were in attendance: avionics defense contractor executives from the private sector, admirals and generals and other military officers from the US Army, Navy, and Air Force, and Department of Defense and NASA officers and their support staffs.

As soon as I completed the speech, Otto Coldiron, a chief engineer at Honeywell Avionics, ran up to me and stuck his fingers against my chest and said that I had embarrassed Honeywell and humiliated Carl Vignali, HI’s CEO and General Manager, and should be fired.

I looked at him levelly. “Otto,” I said, “this talk was not about Honeywell, this was about a failing system.” He walked away shaking his head talking to himself with the words drifting towards me, “You haven’t heard the end of this.”

About that same time, Admiral John Donovan came up and asked me to sign his copy of the speech, inviting me to dinner with him that evening. I learned that he was in charge of Naval Ordinance and had some of the same misgivings about QCC’s and participative management, while having high hopes for the possibilities of OD. I left that evening for the weekend buoyed by our conversation.

One of the privileges of working for Dr. Pesuth is that I had creative license to do my OD work without interference. That was to end. He was waiting for me in his office with a document in his hands. Without preamble, he said, “I want you to sign this.”

“What’s up Francis?” I said.

“Please sign it,” he insisted.

“Can I read it first?”

“If you like.”

The document stipulated:

(1) You will not give anymore speeches for the next 18 months;
(2) You will not publish any articles for the next 18 months;
(3) Your compensation will remain frozen at its current rate;
(4) You will receive no merit increases for the next 18 months;
(5) You will turn in your engineering notebooks every Friday for review.

He then told me I was a disappointment, an embarrassment and betrayed his trust. “Francis,” I protested, “I haven’t betrayed you. On the contrary, I have protected the legitimacy of your mission. You’re the most honorable man I’ve ever met.”

That didn’t mollify his anger. “I’d fire you if it were up to me, but Carl (Vignali) wouldn’t here of it.” That surprised me, and gave me hope for the future.

By the third month with a mountain of my engineering notebooks on his desk, he said, “Take these. I don’t know how the hell you find so much to write about, or the time, and still get your work done.” The secret was I stopped for coffee after work every day and wrote for an hour or so.

“I do get it done, don’t I?”

“Yes, how do you do it?” I explained. He raised his hands above his head. “Well, I can’t handle this anymore. Take them!” And I did. “I’ll just have to trust you.” And he did. “By the way,” he added, “everything else stands. We’re not reducing the 18 months by even a day.” And he didn’t.

THE GESTATION PERIOD

Reviewing my returned notebooks, I saw a pattern. “I’ve got the seeds of a book here,” I said to myself. It was the summer of 1984. These were the recurrent patterns:

(1) Management is anachronistic,
(2) Managers are atavistic,
(3) Engineers are out to lunch,
(4) Workers are dissident and disloyal (to self/org),
(5) 75 percent of HI workers are professional, 25 percent not,
(6) 80 percent of work done by 20 percent of workers,
(7) QCC’s have little impact other than the (Elton) Mayo effect,
(8) QCC’s don’t work with professionals (find out why?),
(9) Too many layers of management, too many meetings, too much posturing,
(10) Management styles a farce, order Department of Commerce publications.
(11) Culture seems key – develop a typology.

I was on to something:

(1) Strength of HI is engineers and technicians,
(2) Weakness they want to be managers or program managers,
(3) Dilutes their efficacy,
(4) Management/managers damaging to competitive advantage,
(5) Culture wrong (why wrong?),
(6) Corporation sick getting sicker (why?),
(7) Work devolved to non-doer doers doing non-thing things (explain),
(8) Army of managers supervises the folly (alternative?).

* * * * * *

Overhearing workers talking about the mounting scrap in production, I learned that many mistakes were being made on the line when processes were changed. “People don’t read the changes,” one worker said. Another said, “It’s because they can’t read.”

My first reaction was disbelief, but upon checking with several others this was confirmed. I shared it with Dr. Pesuth. He warned me not to have this blow up in our faces. I got him to sign off on creating an After Hours Continuing Education Program on helping workers get their high school diplomas, expecting it would show up there, which it did. The problem was marginally successful as only women who couldn’t read very well signed up, no men.

* * * * * *

This triggered my memory of engineers padding their comfort zone with exotic conferences from work. I decided to create a Task Force to explore technical education. I circulated an internal memo to all chief engineers, engineering managers, program managers and staff engineers announcing its formation. One veteran engineer, Bill McNabb showed up, who was soon to retire, but no one else. We talked and I confessed my suspicions regarding technical education.

“Write that up as if we had a big discussion of the subject,” he said.

“But there’s just the two of us.”

“You’re the writer; who’s to know.” And I did. Only Bill showed up for the second meeting. He came prepared, however, with some hooks that would spike an engineer’s interest. I laced my next memo with them.

The third meeting Dr. Bill Poe, a chief engineer, came along with seven of his people. McNabb was ecstatic, as Dr. Poe was considered the quintessential engineer on campus. After a brief introduction, I handed Dr. Poe the marker, and asked him to give us some idea of the possible scope of this project. He went to the flip chart and outlined the engineering disciplines that required continuing education:

(1) Computers/Software
(2) Mechanical Engineering
(3) Test Engineering
(4) Systems Engineering
(5) Chemical, Nuclear, Biological Engineering
(6) Electrical Engineering
(7) Systems Effectiveness
(8) Control Systems Engineering
(9) Guidance & Navigation
(10) Mathematics & Engineering
(11) Honeywell Engineering Systems
(12) Engineering Management
(13) Logistics Engineering
(14) Communications & Signal Processing
(15) Product Assurance
(16) Manufacturing Processes
(17) Engineering Analysis
(18) RF, IR, Laser Optics Technology

This was a list beyond the pale of my comprehension, but I could see Bill McNabb nodding his head in agreement. The next meeting more than forty engineers showed up, and we had to go to a conference room. Thereafter, my role in OD was mainly as facilitator, organizing action items for various task force groups to report back the next meeting.

The position of technical coordinator was established to run the program. Tenure would be for one year allowing the engineer to put his or her stamp on the program for that period. All technicians were eligible for participation. Courses were at first conducted “during work hours” by the cadre of Ph.D. engineers, physicists and mathematicians. I wrote a monograph, "Training the Occasional Instructor” for these non-academic professionals.

* * * * *

After about three months, a routine was established which, unfortunately, became meetings for meeting sake. At that point, I wrote another monograph, “Effective Meetings.” Thereafter, we didn’t meet unless there was an agenda and purpose.

Still, I had to agree with Product Assurance Geoff Davis, my co-coordinator when he said, “This thing is about ready to die. It is sad because a lot of these guys are working on technologies developed long after they left school.”

“You’re serious?”

“Oh, yes, everyone of these current programs is state-of-the-arts in engineering, which has all been developed in the last couple or so years, and if you haven’t noticed the guys coming to these meetings are a little long in the tooth.”

“I noticed.”

“Well, eighty percent of our engineers have been fifteen or twenty years out of school if not more, and only twenty percent or less are recent college graduates with the latest tools. It’s too bad we can’t do something about that.”

“I’m not so sure we can’t.”

“Have you got some ideas?”

“Well, technical education was the reason for this Task Force, but I didn’t think of it exactly in these terms. No offense, Geoff, but I’ve got to confirm your claims.”

I went back to Dr. Pesuth remembering I was on “house arrest.” “Francis,” I said, “I would like to talk to the people in personnel and gain access to personnel records of engineers.” Before I could finish, I thought he was going to swallow his tongue. “Francis,” I continued, “I have no ulterior motive. It is for a good reason.”

“Now you’re Machiaveli?” How could I answer? I waited. “Well, I’m certainly glad you came to me before pursuing this lame brain idea. If you hadn’t, I’d of canned your ass.”

“Francis, that still doesn’t answer my question.”

“What do you want to do?” I handed him a piece of paper which I had itemized what I wanted:

(1) Age, education, university attended, engineering specialty,
(2) How long with Honeywell Avionics,
(3) Programs they worked on, for how long, current program, how long,
(4) When technology they are currently working on was first developed,
(5) Compensation throughout Honeywell history,
(6) Promotions, awards, records of achievement, performance appraisals.

Dr. Pesuth was getting red around the ears. "Francis, it is necessary, as I’ve been told most of the technology they're working on was developed after they left school.”

“Of course, it was. We’re at the cutting edge of technology.”

“That’s my point.”

“What’s your point?”

“I fear we’re paying more and more for less and less and have been for years.” Then I showed him a book I had been reading. “You’ll see here if you have time to read this we’re not alone in dealing with technical obsolescence.”

“I don’t have time.”

“Well, just look at these graphs here.” The graphs indicated the short life of an engineer’s technology with his income soaring as his competency declined precipitously. “I want to see if there is a statistical correlation with these data.”

“So now you’re a statistician?”

“Of course, Francis, I’m a statistician and psychometrician; it’s part of my training.”

“And a voodoo specialists.”

“Yes, that, too.”

He smiled now, as his rancor dissipated. “Fisher,” he shook his head. “I’ll have to clear anything we do with Dave Larson.” Larson was Director of Human Resources.

“Francis,” I said, “Before you see Dave we ought to meet with Carl (Vignali).” Carl had been Director of Engineering, but was now CEO. “I can outline what I’ve learned in my reading, and with the Task Force. I suspect he’s pretty aware of the problem. If we get his approval, Dave can hardly object.” And that is what we did.

The CEO approved enthusiastically, and I did the research, which created a starker picture than I imagined:

(1) 72 percent of the engineers were over 35, up to 15 years out of college
(2) 50 percent were over 45 years of age
(3) 15 percent were over 55
(4) 28 percent were under 35
(5) 5 percent under 25

Moreover, I learned

(1) 10 percent of engineers lacked a BS degree
(2) 90 percent of engineers held a BS degree
(3) 55 percent of engineers held a BSEE
(4) 15 percent of engineers held a MS or MBA
(5) 2 percent of engineers held a Ph.D.

I was also able to track job performance (performance appraisals), job complexity, salary and salary increases, and average annual salaries over their careers.

These data were presented to the Director of Engineering, Chief Engineers and Program Managers. I was asked how much money was needed to design, implement and maintain the program, and I said $1 million. It was approved in that meeting, thus launching technical education.

I would write a monograph titled ‘Combating Technical Education: The Genesis of a Technical Education Program,” and present it at the World Conference of Continuing Engineering Education in Orlando, Florida, May 9, 1986.

It is often true in OD work there is a modicum of luck. Carl Vignali, went from Director of Engineering to CEO and General Manager of Honeywell Avionics, and then Group Vice President. Dr. Bill Poe went from Chief Engineer to Director of Engineering to CEO and General Manager of Honeywell Avionics after Vignali, later, joining him as a Group Vice President.

Vignali and Poe took with them a dedication to continuing engineering education, and for that, the program through the years has become more sophisticated and comprehensive. Technicians were now earning engineering degree credits taking courses on campus from Honeywell Ph.D.’s in conjunction with the University of South Florida’s School of Engineering, creating a new motivational stream of competence.

SERENDIPITY INTERVENES

As the 18 months of quarantine came to an end, Dr. Francis Xavier Pesuth was gone having been promoted, and Dr. Ed Buck was my new boss. Ed came to Honeywell in 1981 and I was his mentor for more than a year.

Dr. Buck was aware of my personality peccadilloes but equally cognizant of my many OD breakthroughs. His first efforts were to see me made a Senior Fellow with the equivalency in compensation and entitlements of a manager. That fell through, but he was undaunted. He saw an opening for the Director of Human Resources Planning & Development, an OD position, for Honeywell Europe Ltd., and asks if he could submit my name for consideration. I said yes, and I got the job. Once again, I was a corporate executive.

Honeywell Europe, I discovered, was stuck in a culture of post WWII malaise with the new European Economic Community being formed. It was 1986, or forty-one years since the end of the war, but European countries still held animosities towards each other, especially Germany, while Germany was the most economically viable of Honeywell’s European operations as well as the largest.

It was a perfect OD challenge. Affiliates operated like fiefdoms out of the feudal ages, rigid, inflexible and increasingly irrelevant.

Dr. Buck thought I would thrive in that environment. What he did not realize, and I was soon to learn, was that the American European management team that included President Michael Bonsignore, and my boss, John Buck, no relation to Ed, had little appreciation of OD, while they were technocrats of the anachronistic system I abhorred. I no longer had the range or freedom enjoyed earlier, and was constantly at loggerheads with John Buck.

Eventually, I would retire in 1990, but European operations confirmed all the patterns I had at first uncovered at Honeywell Avionics, only to be amplified and exaggerated in support of my hypotheses.

Those ideas had developed into what I was now calling “work without managers, a view from the trenches.” I was looking at the problem not top-down but bottom-up. I could see everything was changing but there was a natural resistance to the inevitable.

Although I could do little, I could write about it. From that point forward, my notebooks grew supported by primary and secondary sources with constant trips to the American branch of the Brussels, Belgium library.

The evenings I was on Brussels at home with my wife, Beautiful Betty, I would walk around the room dictating and she would be keeping up with me on our computer. Not only that, BB proved to be an excellent researcher, data collector, and collator. I left Europe with a complete manuscript with graphs, statistics, case histories, and a compilation of my empirical work covering 600 single space pages.

It was pared down from 600 to 350 pages and published. I was not prepared for its reception. It was reviewed as an angry, powerful, prophetic book, receiving a spot on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” The Wall Street Journal, Industry Week, and Business Book Review Journal, which named it “one of the four best business books of the year.”

After receiving scores of calls after NPR’s review, and an invitation to speak in Brazil, and request from Ingram for more books than I had, everything died after the fourth week. I had published the book with the imprimatur of The Delta Group Florida, a company I had formed with no knowledge of the publishing industry. To this day, I loathe the business end of book publishing including public appearances.

Consequently, most people reading this have never heard of WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS (1990), or its more elaborate presentation SIX SILENT KILLERS (1998). I am not surprised or disturbed. As I’ve said before, I am first a chemist. My stoichiometric equations are no longer of molecules or radicals in ionized solutions, but of the conflicts and confrontations of characters in the cauldron of work and life.

There is moral authority to Nature, as matter can neither be created nor destroyed but only transposed from one state to another. It is the same with work and life. Institutions die and out of their ashes the new Sphinx arises.

We are in such a transitional period, ending 600 years of Sensate Culture moving tentatively into a new 600 year Ideational Culture. In transition, we encounter the inevitable moral collapse displayed in chicanery, duplicity, corruption, malfeasance and denial.

These displays are sometimes quite infantile. To illustrate, as Director of Human Resources Planning & Development for Honeywell Europe, I was asked by my boss, John Buck, to organize and conduct a European campaign to have the various affiliates, offices, and factories nominate their preferred candidate to be honored as “Manager of the Year.” Specific criteria were provided for making their selection.

From the more than 18,000 employees in 13 countries and municipalities came scores of nominees. My people were busy going through these nominees when the campaign ended, only to have my boss conclude none of those nominated “deserved” the distinction.

He had the late Dr. Helmut Hoss, President of Germany’s Honeywell Operations belatedly nominated for the award. Dr. Hoss, a man of distinction and whom I admired, had not been nominated during the official campaign. No problem! He received the award at the Annual Honeywell Europe Meeting, thus making the whole process a sham.

This behavior was symptomatic of my transition out of the corporation, which I must confess I used as my laboratory, and back to the writer’s life. And so it has been for the past twenty years, writing and recording my insights and laying out patterns for change agents to consider as they go forward.

* * * * * *

The essay, “Who Put You In The Cage?” is metaphor for all this, which you have correctly discerned. I now follow this essay with that story for those who have not yet seen it and for which your comments, Michael, have been directed.

* * * * *

WHO PUT YOU IN THE CAGE?


I once wrote a novel, which was never published. What follows is a scene in that novel, which appears as a story within a story. It is taken out of context here, but essentially carries the sense of this reflective and reminiscent piece here.

* * * * * *

There was this man in the corporation who could see things most clearly. He wrote about them, spoke about them, and even published them. He did this innocently, naively, even sending copies to those in authority positions in the corporation to familiarize them with the dark side of corporate life he had uncovered. He hoped they would acknowledge and act on this darkness to bring light into operations. Although they failed to respond to his entreaties, he continued to write, speak and publish.

Then one day one of the corporation’s principal stockholders dropped by his cubical, and invited him to visit him at his estate on the seacoast. He had heard of this place, which was described as 20,000 acres of paradise high on a promontory overlooking the bay with ragged cliffs dropping a thousand feet into the sea, breathtaking he was sure. So, he was at first stunned, then flattered, but finally suspicious. “Why me?”

“Why not you?” the cherubic gentleman said, “Why you are the most prolific man I’ve ever read. I wonder when you sleep.”

The gentleman said this as he tapped his huge cigar on a tiny cup sized container that was ludicrously laced in diamonds. The gentleman was so kind and so insistent that the writer eventually agreed to a brief visit.

Once through the ornate gates, and into the estate, he couldn’t take his eyes off the manicured lawns that seemingly stretched forever, stately fountains with sculptured sentinels saluted them as they past. He had never seen so many species of flowers, and all in bloom, and the trees that seemed to climb to heaven. Then it occurred to him that they were climbing, too, as the landscape was tilted upward to meet the sky, and then suddenly a mansion came into view white as snow and arched in triumph like a cathedral nestled naturally among the trees. He thought heaven must be like this.

A manservant resplendent in white stood at the door to greet them. He smiled graciously, but without a word, took his overnight bag, nodded to the gentleman and departed. A host of servants were busy preparing dinner, all dressed in uniforms of white with such intensity that it reminded him of a carpet of falling snow viewed through a noonday sun. Everyone was smiling and bowing as if he were royalty.

Fine dining was not his experience but he followed the gentlemen’s lead, and said to himself, I could get used to this. Seemingly reading his mind, the gentleman said,

“How would you like to live here? I have a beautiful cottage picked out for you overlooking the sea. It is yours as well as all the amenities of the estate.”

“But I have no money!”

“None needed. This is a gift for your diligence and conscientious service to the corporation.”

“But the corporation has not listened to me; it has done nothing with what I’ve said.”

“True, but it is all under advisement.”

“No one has ever told me that.”

“Trust me as a loyal stockholder, your works have not gone unnoticed.”

The writer smiled. “They haven’t?”

The gentleman didn’t answer but offered the writer a cigar. “I don’t smoke.”

“I noticed at dinner you also don’t drink, not even wine?”

“No.”

“The wine was from my 19th century cellar, what a pity!"

“Where am I staying? I’m a bit tired from the long trip.”

“Of course, how calloused of me. You are staying here tonight and tomorrow I have a surprise.”

The surprise was a beautiful cottage with a complete library, computer and all the writing aids that he had only seen in books. It was as if the gentleman had read his mind and materialized his deepest longings. “What do you think? Do you like it?”

The writer was completely confused. “What is this? I mean, why are you showing me this?”

“It is all yours, every bit of it, as far as the eye can see is yours.”

“This beautiful house, too?”

“Indeed.”

The writer rushed over to the computer and puts in his code and, voila! All his files, all his writings appeared, “But how could, can this be? I’ve never given my code to anyone.”

The gentleman drew on his cigar. “It must be a miracle.”

Days passed and the novelty of the place started to wear. He couldn’t get out of his mind that someone knew his code. He begun to look for listening devices, for bugs in his phone, lamps, curtains, drapery, books, blindly rips them to pieces. He stripped away the carpet and looked for wiring in the floorboard. He tore through the walls. Nothing. Then he went into the garden and dug it up destroying exotic plants, shrubs and the immaculate turf. He scaled the roof and removed shingles. Nothing. He hadn’t slept or eaten in 18 hours.

Morning came and he looked at his beautiful cottage, its rich furnishings, which he had ripped apart, its elegant paintings, which he has cut to pieces, its finely plastered and papered walls, which now lay naked and scarred with wires snaking to the floor, everything was in shreds.

As he surveyed the ruin, the gentleman appeared out of nowhere. The writer bowed his head in shame and humiliation. “I don’t know what to say, what got into me.”

“There’s no need to say anything.”

“But I’ve ruin this place.”

“It can all be restored have no doubt.”

“But?”

“No buts about it.” The gentleman put his arm around the writer. “Why don’t you join me for dinner this evening. I have a special surprise for you.”

“After what I’ve done?” The gentleman said nothing but walked away in a cape of cigar smoke.

That evening the gentleman drove over to the writer’s home, then they both strolled across the rising turf until the mansion appears on the horizon as if a beatific vision with the fading sun framing it in radiant burgundy. “That is awesome,” said the writer, “truly awesome.” The gentleman whispered, “Indeed.”

As they walked up the long driveway, the writer noticed a large flatbed truck with black tarpaulin covering a massive object. Once they reach the truck, the writer lifted one of the tarp's flaps and saw what threw a shock into him. “This looks like a cage.”

“It could be considered as such,” said the gentleman.

“But what is it doing here?”

“Let us leave that for after dinner. A crew will be setting it up while we enjoy our meal.” The writer now noticed a crew of at least thirty men in coveralls standing near a giant rig, and four trucks with no labeling but which appeared to be furniture haulers or moving vans.

After dinner, they retired into the study where the gentleman had an aperitif and the writer a coffee. If I didn’t know better, he thought, I’d think the gentleman was stalling, first for having such an early dinner, and then this boring ritual of after dinner formalities. He could never understand rich people and their constant dalliance. Take this gentleman. With all his composure, he has nothing to say about art, music, literature, or science, only business, and nothing is more boring to me than business. “I’m ready for a bit of exercise,” the gentleman said finally, lighting his fourth cigar in the writer’s presence, “how about you?”

“Yes,” the writer said wishing to escape the cloying aroma of the cigar for fresh air. They walked into the garden while the gentleman explained why the bronze sentinels were standing at attention around each fountain. “It is perhaps whimsical of me, but I find my silent sentinels consoling, don’t you know?” The writer said nothing.

Thinking they were walking aimlessly, the writer was at first confused when he thought he saw on the horizon the outline of the tip of a giant helmet. It was no mistake. It was a helmet that grew more prominent and visible as they approached. “My God,” he said, “it is magnificent!” Shining in the early evening light was this remarkable helmet about fourteen feet high with gleaming bars in the fading sun like the discarded helmet of a giant Praetorian Guard.

The gentleman asked, “What do you think of it?”

The writer’s heart was racing. He didn’t know what to think. It was fascinating beyond belief. The hair on the back of his head quivered to attention. He found himself walking into the helmet, a space of twenty by fifteen feet, but with all the amenities that were so precious to him including his computer, his library which reached high above his head on three walls, and all the incidentals with which he identified his person.

The helmet was a cage furnished with a comfortable bed, reading lamp, a sofa, reclining chair, desk, kitchen table and chair, a television, computer, a printer, and an armoire. It also had a shower and commode, heater and air conditioner, and state-of-the-arts sound system with a complete collection of his symphonic records and favorite operas, along with a library of CDs and DVDs that he had always dreamed of having but could never afford. Thousands of books were organized just as he had had them organized in his modest home back on the continent.

How could they know? The thought left his head as soon as it arrived. He noticed on the fourth wall a small window that gave him a limited view of the sea, but that didn’t matter. He wasn’t much into nature anyway. His world was that of ideas. He found his chest swelling with excitement like a psychosexual thrill, and was embarrassed at the thought. What is happening to me? “I like this place,” he blurted out, “is this mine?”

“If you would have it be.”

“Could I live here?”

“If you like.”

“Let me think about it.” So they left with the door wide open.

The next morning as the sun was coming up the writer rushed to the mansion, climbed up the stairs to the gentleman’s bedroom, and pounded on the door. The sleepy gentleman looked at his clock. It was 5:30 a.m. He put on his robe, opened the door and saw the wild-eyed writer practically foaming at the mouth in excitement. “I want to live there. I want to live in my new home.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely!”

“Excuse me while I dress,” said the gentleman. “Have you had breakfast?”

“No, but I could have breakfast there, could I not?”

“Indeed, I’ll make arrangements.”

So, the kitchen staff served breakfast there in elegant fashion bringing in a separate chair for the gentleman. When breakfast was completed, and the gentleman was about to leave the writer’s new home, he said, “There are certain rules to this residence.”

“Like what?”

“You will be able to write to your heart’s content, but not to publish a word. You will be able to listen to any kind of music you desire, but watch only select television mainly old movies even pornographic if you like and no one will interrupt your pleasure. You have the most sophisticated computer and software, but no access to the Internet. There is one other condition,” the gentleman paused. “Once we close this door, you shall remain here the rest of your life, is that clear?”

“Yes, yes, yes, now leave me alone.”

“Are you quite certain?”

“Of course I’m sure. I’ve been unhappy all of my life wherever I’ve been, men have never listened to me and I’m fed up with them, and life, so why not, I’m dead already anyway, okay? So, close the door and get on about your business.”

“You’re sure this is what you want?”

Impatiently, his voice a strident cry, the writer said, “How can I make myself any clearer?” He pushed the gentleman out and as he did so, he said, “I want to rest, read my books, write a little, and enjoy my new life. Please,” he pleaded as he closed the door.

Within a fortnight, he told the manservant when he brought his breakfast that he had had a change of heart. He would like to return to his first home on the estate, and if that was not possible, to his old position at the corporation. The manservant did not speak, but dropped his eyes in understanding as he left the cage.

Thereafter, meals were no longer brought by anyone but slid through a mechanized slot that the writer had not realized was there before. As the days turned into months, and the wind whistled through the trees and passed over the rocky cliffs to the sea, his wailing blended with the wind into a chilling harmony of inanimate sighs, until one day it stopped. On that same day, the wind stopped, too, as if it understood that life’s torment was over for the writer.

The flatbed truck returned, removed the cage into its sanctuary at far side of this oasis, waiting its next candidate, which the corporation said had not yet been selected as there were several candidates being considered.

* * * * * *