You're known by the company you keep at arm's length
By David Masello, 12/4/05
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ANTHONY SCHULTZ ILLUSTRATION FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE
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View from the Cube/
I know a lot about my co-workers by how they treat the person who delivers our mail. I can make assumptions about their character and whether they are people I would want to befriend outside the office.
Phil, who comes through our offices five times a day to pick up and deliver mail and packages, is an unkempt, overweight man in his mid-40s who has worked at the company for more than 20 years. My best guess is that Phil is a highly functioning autistic adult. I have a perspective on his condition because my teenage nephew is autistic and I have seen him progress from a child unable to look in a person's face into a handsome and conversational 16-year-old able to talk about and draw pictures of Greek mythology and ancient Roman history (among his two obsessions). My nephew's progress is completely the result of my sister-in-law and brother, and their other three children, who have never stopped working to improve his life.
Phil is the only male employee who wears a tie every day, no matter how hot it is outside, and so, ironically, he looks far more professional than my colleagues who are senior editors and art directors and magazine production managers. But Phil's personal hygiene is not always perfect and sometimes our personnel director has to take him into her office and instruct him to brush his teeth and wash his face and hair. And Phil always obeys and arrives at work the next day fresh.
Whenever Phil greets you it's as if he hasn't seen you in weeks. He is so genuinely ebullient that I am startled every time by his manner. He seems never to be in a bad mood or aloof, as so many of my self-indulgent colleagues can be. Monday mornings, I never know if I can say hello to the woman in the next office and receive a response. ''Here we are again,'' she sometimes will mutter, wisps of smoke from her coffee cup enveloping her sunglass-clad face. But no matter how rude or dismissive some of my co-workers can be toward Phil, he is ready to smile at them the next time he sees them.
Phil never fails to remember birthdays and always presents a card and gift - usually a marked-down DVD of a 1930s episode of ''The Little Rascals'' or ''America's Funniest Bloopers.'' For those of us who pay attention to Phil, we're lucky to have a friend like him in the office.
I watched once as Phil delivered a series of packages to a department secretary, a woman in her 60s with three grown children and pictures of grandchildren pushpinned to the walls of her cubicle. Although always chatty with all of us, she made no eye contact with Phil and didn't utter a thanks. When I first started at this magazine job, she said to me once after Phil had rounded the corner with his cart, ''I really can't take being around him.''
Another of my co-workers refuses to speak to Phil at all, glumly accepting the mail he places on her desk. ''I used to say hello to him,'' she explained, ''but I stopped because otherwise he won't leave me alone. The trick is you have to ignore him completely. It's sad, but that's what I had to do to keep my sanity.''
She is referring to Phil's unremitting cheerfulness and eagerness to tell you about the latest movie or play he saw. Phil's brother, so the office rumor goes, is a big-time executive in the entertainment industry. He either takes Phil, or gives him tickets, to Broadway musicals and pop concerts, movie screenings and visiting circuses and spectacles. For the few of us in the office who listen to Phil describe the events he has attended, he always brings us a program. If after several attempts he doesn't find us in our office, he leaves the program on our desk or atop the computer keyboard, later dropping by to make sure we found the program and then to tell us about his experiences. Every performance he sees gets a rave review. ''Don't forget to bring your tissues,'' he'll often say about a sad plot line. ''I cried buckets.''
Although a co-workers's personality can altar dramatically outside work, I am not surprised by those I work with who are always kind to Phil. For instance, there is a recently divorced woman I have heard another woman say ''has the look of desperation about her. There's something sad or tragic about her.'' I don't know about that melodramatic character conclusion, but every time she passes Phil in the hallway, she pats his shoulder. And then there is our young, dashingly handsome editorial assistant who spent a year in a Peruvian village helping residents dig an irrigation system and who now coaches a Little League team of players from one of the city's fiercest housing projects. He, too, is handed a program.
I only include myself in that noble group because I know and love my nephew and have become used to being around someone with a disability.
Whenever I return to my hometown, I've seen how my friendless nephew is treated by peers. Once, when I took him to the beach on a summer afternoon, he saw a gathering of fellow teenagers from the high school, the in-crowd - athletic boys and pretty girls flirting with each other near the ice-cream truck. When he saw them, he said, ''Look, those are my friends.'' And as he started to walk toward them, one of the boys in the group yelled ''Bye'' yards before my nephew reached him. But my nephew persevered and was soon in the center of the crowd. I remember still the faces of the few kids who said hello to him and were kind.
I'm often the first person in the office every morning and when I hear the squeak of Phil's mail cart in the corridor, sometimes I pick up my phone and pretend to be having an animated conversation just because I don't have the patience to listen to him.
Most of my colleagues are sophisticated, professional people. But that is no guarantee of empathy or the ability to show simple kindness.
In addition to giving prospective employees an editing test or reviewing their art portfolios, perhaps the company should require them to sit with Phil, talk to him. How they respond to him will likely tell us all that we need to know.
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