Or, another Rhymer hypothetical, this one suggested by the five seconds of some show starring the young girl from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Our protagonist today is Debbie, a regional sales manager for a famous multinational firm–let’s say UPS. Debbie supervises a team of twenty field sales executives in Arkansas. These reps are the face of UPS for Little Rock. They only deal with businesses who do at least $250 a day’s worth of business with Bigh Brown. Their job is to solve with customer problems as they come up, to anticipate difficulties and keep them from becoming problems, to keep current customers happy and to bring in new business. Part of their job is being personable, charming, funny and respectable; part of it is being smart, clever, precise, and diligent.
Debbie has an opening on her team and is conducting interviews; because of company rules, she is doing so in a team with two colleagues, Brad & Don. The economy being what it is they get a ton of applicants. One of the applicants, Jasmine, has been out of work for about a year; nonetheless, she stands heads & shoulders above the others. She aces the math & computer skills part of the interview. She’s got plenty of experience in the industry, and not only does can she easily answer every technical question that is put to her in her interview, but she knows a few things that Debbie and her fellow interviewers did not know. Moreover, Jasmine’s people skills are stunning. During the interview she catches Debbie in a factual error, but she corrects her so skillfully and subtly that not only does Debbie not feel insulted, but in fact she feels extremely grateful. Jasmine is also quite lovely, which is an asset in any field sales job, though she dresses professionally and comports herself with as much dignity as Princess Grace. She is, in short, damn near ideal.
But after the interview, Brad (who is about thirty, fifteen years younger than Debbie), bursts into laughter. He can’t believe that Jasmine thinks she’ll get this job. Why is that? Well, he thought he recognized her as soon as he saw her, and the second he heard her speak he knew exactly who she was. A few moments’ on Google confirms his suspicious: while in college five years earlier, under a pseudonym, Jasmine starred in a series of porn videos . Debbie declines to look at more than a few seconds of any of them, but that’s enough to be sure that (a) the actress in question is Jasmine, and (b) the videos show her engaged in behavior not only hardcore but also degrading–being insulted, obliged to insult herself, slapped, pissed on, you name it. There’s no animals or children, but that’s the best you can say about it.
Though Jasmine is easily the most qualified candidate, neither Brad nor Don think she should get a callback. Brad says that, if Jasmine were on his team, he’d always be distracted the desire to see if she retains her porn skills; Don, who’s in his early sixties, says that Jasmine does not present the sort of image UPS wants to present. He wouldn’t hire for his team, he says, though he can work with her if he must.
It might seem that Debbie’s outvoted. But in fact, Don and Brad don’t GET votes. The opening is on her team; the other two managers are there to provide different POVs, but the hiring decision is Debbie’s. She has to make a recommendation to her boss, true, but her boss trusts her implicitly (and happens to hate Brad), so whatever she says goes. And Jasmine will not have occasional to see Brad except once a year at the sales conference and
Put yourself in Debbie’s shoes. What do you do?