StanleyP answered back immediately.
StanleyP
I am regularly consulted by sitting monarchs, regents, prime ministers, and benevolent dictators. Celebrities have me on speed dial.
AnaBGR
Not sure I can afford your consultation fee.
StanleyP
We can work out a payment plan. What troubles you?
AnaBGR
Would you accept a job that helped your career if you had to sell out on the reasons you got into the field in the first place?
StanleyP
I take it the world of Supreme Etsy Overlord is more fraught than you first thought. Ah, the naïveté of the untested.
AnaBGR
I’m serious. What would you do if, for example, the only opportunity you had to get a good job was to do work that didn’t interest you and might cause harm to people like you? And don’t tell me I’m being dramatic.
StanleyP
I like dramatic people. They make me feel so grounded.
AnaBGR
Not helping.
StanleyP
Here’s what I think: in business, you always have to think about costs and benefits. What are the benefits you would gain versus the upfront costs of taking this opportunity? Answer two questions: (1) Will your employer continue on this path, with or without you? And (2) Is there a chance that your participation means the job could be steered in a better direction?
AnaBGR
Yes, and maybe.
StanleyP
Then the cost of leaving is having no input into any of the gains of staying. And losing any chance you have of being heard.
I put my phone away. I had been hoping StanleyP would advise me to run for the hills. Instead he was making me reconsider, and I didn’t like it.
MY “RADIO PARTNER” FOUND MEon the front steps outside the station. He took a seat a few feet away and stared down at his shiny black loafers. I guess he had taken a page out of Marisa’s playbook and was starting to dress for success too.
“Marisa thinks this is a way to keep both of us employed after the internship is over. She thinks the idea has real potential,” he said quietly.
I didn’t even look at him. “This isn’t the story I want to tell.”
Thomas sighed. “Do you want to get stuck being the most junior employee at every broadcaster you ever work for? Because you and I, we don’t have contacts in this industry. There’s no one we can call for help, who can give us any advantage. We’re pioneers, paving the way for the kids coming up behind us, and that means we’re entirely on our own. You know we’re already swimming against the desi-parent, socially acceptable career current by not studying something traditional like medicine, engineering, accounting, or law. We need to use whatever we can to get ahead. And if that means leveraging our cultureand faith to tell the stories we know better than anyone else, that’s a win on two levels. This is your duty, your dharma.”
I winced at his use ofdharma, his reference to fate, a concept we both believed in. “I need to take a walk. Don’t follow me.”
I went to the back of the building, upwind of the Dumpsters, where the smokers used to congregate before someone complained and they were pushed a hundred metres further back. A plain red-brick facade that faced another brick facade. I called it my Thinking Wall.
