SERIAL : 32

INDIAN IN COWBOY COUNTRY
THE HUNT

They saw themselves as being very different from the Brown Baggers, their thrifty colleagues at the outplacement office who brought predictable sack lunches: a sandwich, some chips, and a piece of fruit or a yogurt. However, Satish had a different point of view. The Lunch Bunchers were senior executives, while the Brown Baggers were mid-level managers. He fell somewhere in between, but preferred to hang around with the Lunch Bunch, who treated him like an equal.

Dan was Jewish and had served in the Israeli Air Force as a fighter pilot. He was lanky yet muscular, and the nattily dressed aviator had that-in-your face, go-for-the-jugular attitude of a good “closer”. He was outspoken and easy to read, sharing with Satish that he was a superb salesman but a lousy manager. He preferred to close huge, complex deals and not be bothered with “pissassed” administrative details. “I began closing my salesmen’s deals myself, rather than managing them,” he shared with the group as the reason for his departure from Brumliere.

He had that cavalier attitude that camouflaged his perceptive powers and quick, sharp judgment. He was the most successful of the bunch in his job search because of his networking ability, aided by the strength of his connections. He was aggressive and relentless in his job pursuit, and once he picked up the scent of an opportunity, he honed in on his target with the tenacity of a hound after its prey.       

However, every job he had pursued was a small fish, which he shared with his colleagues at the outplacement center. He coached some of the candidates on how to land these jobs, and the successful ones and their families were ever grateful to him. “Think nothing about it,” he would say when they gave him minor tokens of gratitude. When some were over-effusive in their gratefulness he said, “If you feel so grateful, just send me your first paycheck.” This quickly tempered their appreciation.

Twice-divorced, with a wife and child on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, he joked that his life would not be complete without a wife and child on America’s third coastline along the Gulf of Mexico. Driving the latest model German sports cars was his passion, and he changed his automobiles every year. He had more speeding tickets and dated more women than any person Satish knew.

Sam was a rotund African American who has a soft-spoken, sophisticated demeanor about him. He was always polite and well-groomed, oozing quiet confidence and somewhat introverted. However, when he got on a podium or was center stage, he transformed into a powerful motivational speaker. He had a thundering voice and a rhythmic, alliterative speech pattern that could resonate and move anyone who heard him.

His father was a preacher in a small town in neighboring Louisiana, which explained some of Sam’s commanding presence under the spotlight. But his career was buil1t around accounting and financial engineering, a low-risk, high-reward path that his father had chosen for him and encouraged him to pursue.

He had the etiquette and demeanor of a cultured person and presented himself professionally at all times. He was always immaculately dressed in well-fitted dark suits, white shirts, and designer ties that complemented his perfect haircut, trimmed moustache, and well-shined and relatively new Italian shoes. 

Sam did not leave any of his job-search papers at the outplacement office. He carried a designer briefcase with a security code lock that contained his confidential papers. At the end of the day he carried home a four-inch, three-ring binder that contained all his correspondence.

He was disciplined and methodical in his search. He came in punctually at eight AM and left a little after five PM to be with his wife of twenty years. This childless couple had adopted children from a Fifth Ward neighborhood, and every weekday evening, at a church, they helped primary school kids with their homework.

Darrel had an impeccable New England pedigree and his family would have preferred him to stay in the area, married one of their kindred, and propagated their species. He followed the family track and, after his masters in engineering from MIT, joined a local engineering firm that was developing new drilling technologies for the oil and gas industry.

In the late seventies, the U.S. was in a sustained recession due to OPEC’s machination of oil prices. Challenging engineering jobs that Darrell preferred were amply available only in the exploration and production industry. He compromised with his family that he would not move out of New England and chose to work for Trustmink. But his constant travels to Houston and other centers of oilfield activity exposed him to an adventuresome life that he had never seen in the Gatsby-like, croquet and country club environs of his birth.

During one of his frequent trips to Houston, he met a Mexican American woman and, to the consternation of his family, married her. He fulfilled his family’s perception of being a black sheep when he moved to Houston after a major oilfield services company acquired Trustmink. He went on to become the president of his product division.

About six months earlier, he had refused to lay off any more of his staff and offered to resign instead so that, “You can do your own dirty work.” The conglomerate moved in one of its own hatchet men and gave him a generous package that included one year of outplacement services.

Clyde was the only native Houstonian in the lunch bunch. He was called a banker, but he saw himself as a senior salesman, selling financial instruments to the oil industry. He had spent almost thirty years with the same bank, starting as a part-time employee when he was an undergraduate student at the University of Houston’s accounting program.

His father had been employed by a petrochemical plant, and he grew up with his sisters and brothers in the modest neighbourhood of Pasadena, Texas, immortalized by the film Urban Cowboy.

 His family was originally from West Texas and he had a raw, deeply creased face with a weather-beaten look, a laid-back swagger, and a drawl to prove it.

Despite his triple bypass heart surgery, he loved beer and barbecue. A large belt with a shiny buckle the size of his palm kept his pants from slipping down his portly midriff. He wore cowboy boots with his suit, and an Indian bolo tie.

He enjoyed his work, the camaraderie, and wining and dining with clients. He had been very successful in his career until his bank had been acquired by a New York multinational bank that had determined that he did not fit the profile of their “customer-facing” executives.

The official reason for his departure was that he had retired after thirty years of service, but the exit package he negotiated included outplacement service for a year. At his retirement party, when he received his gold Rolex watch, he smiled wryly and told his audience that he was too young to spend the rest of his life golfing, fishing, and hunting. Instead, he was hoping that a silver fox like him could have a second career with another small Texas bank, and that he looked forward to competing with “them young Yankee pups from New York.”

A devout Baptist, he donated his Rolex watch to his local church auction. He continued to wear his trusted, twenty-year old Timex that, like his heart, took a licking but kept on ticking. His personable, “Aw shucks, I’m just a country boy from West Texas,” deportment made people underestimate him. He exploited this during negotiations of complex oil and gas financing deals.

Satish spent the first ten days, as predicted by Scott, his counselor, completing his self-evaluation tests at an easy pace. The last six months had worn him out, and he enjoyed the unhurried pace in the outplacement world. He could reach the office at about 9.30 AM and leave at 3 Pm, both to beat the horrendous traffic jams that clogged Houston freeways. In between, he took off an hour and a half to be with his Lunch Bunch. The rest of time, he meticulously wrote detailed answer to his test questions.

When he returned home, he sat with Monica and Seeta and watched children’s shows on the local PBS station. After a quick dinner, the trio would amble to the park and back, talking as if they had just discovered each other. After Seeta went to sleep, they would sit with each other and some sitcoms on TV before retiring for the night.

To Monica, it was as if a new Satish was awakening. He was relaxed and calm, and lost the sharp edginess that was building during the last year. This was the first time in their three-year marriage when they were together, doing nothing but quietly enjoying each other’s company. In one week, a soft solace descended on the family-until Satish saw the result of his tests. They rattled him.

While Satish believed that his strengths were his analysis and synthesis skills, the test showed that his strengths lay elsewhere, in a much larger scope than he had imagined-in leadership and execution. His major strength was leading professionals in complex situations, which in his myopic way he had applied to his engineering group.

 Another test revealed that he was on the borderline between introversion and extroversion, though he thought himself to be inhibited. The biggest surprise was that the tests showed him that he was stronger in his intuitive and perceptive powers than in the analytical powers that he admired in himself.

At first, he was disturbed by the results. He shared the findings with Monica, who dissuaded him from dismissing them. During their now frequent walks to the park with their daughter, they talked about the implication of these findings, but there were no obvious directions in his job search. He was confused, but his wife was not.

As their daughter played with her pail and shovel in a sandbox in the park, Monica took her uncertain husband’s hand and held it caringly.

Both said nothing until he said, “It’s like I’ve discovered a whole new person that I never knew.”

“Well, Satish, that’s the person I have known and grown to love. You just saw yourself differently,” she said.