Skip to primary content

Focus | Jul 11 2003

To get in, I lied on the form and said that I’m constipated and that I eat a lot of yogurt. My plan, in short, was to nod a lot and agree with whatever anyone said, however idiotic or nonsensical.

The group was scheduled to last ninety minutes, for which I would be paid a hundred and twenty dollars. That works out to eighty dollars an hour, or a dollar thirty-three a minute—not a bad wage for nodding and agreeing; plus the friend who hooked me up said they give you free sandwiches.

When I arrived, there were maybe ten or twelve people in the waiting room, none of whom, I noted with some apprehension, looked even remotely constipated. This made me wonder if maybe everyone had lied. If true, this would be a disaster: someone in the group had to actually know what to say or there’d be nothing for anyone to agree with. Doubtless I was being paranoid to think this, although it’s something at this point that I’ll never know for certain.

As I was filing out my form, a woman in a business suit placed a big pile of sandwiches on the coffee table. I had half a turkey, half a mozzarella and tomato, then another half a turkey. The turkey was excellent: sliced extra thin on pumpernickel with plenty of honey mustard. I took another half and slipped it into my bag.

Just as I did this, the alarm started ringing, and for a split-second I thought it was because I’d been spotted stealing half a sandwich. Looking back that seems ridiculous, an alarm for sandwich thieves, but it’s really what I thought.

Then the sprinklers went off and everyone started yelling things like “Hey” and “Fuck” and “Shit to hell” (someone really yelled that), and then the woman who had brought out the sandwiches ran in and said something about the sprinklers having gone off and that maybe there was a fire in the building. I felt sorry for her: she was in charge and yet all she could think to say was what everyone already knew. In part to help her out, I stood and said that while it was probably nothing, we should all get out of the building immediately. Everyone agreed and started walking toward the elevators, at which point I observed that the stairs were much safer—lord knows, one didn’t want to get stuck in an elevator at a time like this—so the whole group turned and walked around the corner to where the stairs were, which is when I grabbed the remaining sandwiches.