Common sense is a “basic ability to perceive, understand and judge things that are common to nearly all people and can be reasonably expected of nearly all people without the need for debate.” Want to bet?
Years ago, when I applied for a job at the University Employment Office, I knew that jobs were at a premium. My husband, W.S. was a graduate student, and I desperately needed a job to supplement his meager salary as a graduate assistant. My common sense told me that employment satisfaction meant, “Take what you can get and smile.” However, my good instincts betrayed me, when I flunked the office skills test, and the employment counselor didn’t flinch.
Instead, she suggested I was admirably suited for one of the higher paying jobs being offered, and she mentioned that the head of the Sociology Department was looking for an administrative assistant. Sociology is the science of social relations. How bad could that be?
Enthusiastically, I asked her to make the appointment. Whereupon she grabbed my arm, speed-dialed the phone and shouted into the receiver, “She’ll be right over.” As the door closed behind me, she mumbled, “If it doesn’t work out, there may be an opening on the cafeteria line,” but I knew this job was going to be mine. I needed the money!
When I arrived at work for the interview, the inner office door was closed. I sat at what I supposed was my desk, and found all the drawers empty except for a note which read, “If a tree falls on you in the forest, you know you’ve been standing in the same spot too long.” Then I heard a bellow from the inner office, “Come in here and bring your pad.”
Since I didn’t have a pad, I dumped my lunch into one of the drawers, quickly smoothed out the brown paper bag, grabbed a pen out of my purse, and dashed into the inner office, where I saw a red-faced troll whose baldhead rested directly on his shoulders. I stood there speechless as he slowly shifted a toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other without using his hands.
“The first rule,” croaked the troll is that you don’t enter my office without knocking. Write that down!” I wrote, “Knock” on my paper bag. He had lots of rules. “Make coffee before I arrive.” I wrote, “Perk before jerk.” “Only pile papers on the front of my desk.” I wrote, “Suffers from rear piles.” Then he told me that I was allowed only one 10-minute break and 20 minutes for lunch. I wrote, “Fantasy Land.” At that, I had to rip the bag apart to write on the other side, since a baloney and cheese sandwich requires a rather small bag. I wrote, “Keep supplies in your desk.”
It only took one 10-minute break in the Break Lounge to get the scuttlebutt from the other secretaries in the building. I learned that my boss had skewered too many secretaries on the spit of anti-social relations, and, out of favor with the Employment Office, the Troll had been informed that I was his last chance. The word was out. No woman in her right mind would work for him! Common sense told me that we were a perfect match!
So for a year, secure in the knowledge that he couldn’t fire me, I brewed his coffee, knocked on his door, took 20 minute breaks, an hour for lunch, and watched him cringe as day after day he submitted his research to my limited typing skills.
Esther Blumenfeld (“Common sense is seeing things as they are; and doing things as they ought to be.” Harriet Beecher Stowe)
CROSSING WITH THE BLUE LIGHT, Blumenfeld c. 2006