TRAINING NOIR

The theme at my last supervisor training session was role-playing. Well, I guess that was the process more than the theme. The theme was empathy (or something like that).

I find role-playing annoying. It makes me feel awkward and self-conscious and phony. And 99 percent of the time it seems pointless because I feel like I already possess the empathy that the role-playing situation is supposed to generate.

For example, in one exercise, we were supposed to pretend we were a supervisor who had to tell an employee that he had body odor and bad breath. My first instinct in that situation would be to grin and bear it, to weigh the benefit of telling against the cost of not telling. I mean, I actually have a co-worker who regularly stands about six inches from me and emits a tsunami of garlic stench while he explains his work. It's a genuine effort to keep the sides of my nostrils from curling back, to not turn my head and wave my arms in open disgust. I'm telling you, bad breath can't get any worse than his, and yet it has never crossed my mind to actually say something to him. Surely my discomfort at having to smell him for a few minutes could not possibly trump the pain and humiliation he would feel by being told that he stinks. Such a confrontation would surely, and needlessly, taint our relationship forever.

But in the role-playing game you have to say something, so of course you say something like, "Gee, I know this is embarrassing, and I don't want you to be embarrassed, but it's come to my attention that you might have a bit of a hygiene issue, and maybe it's something you can't help or maybe you're just not aware of it, but I want to help you and, you know, I'd really want someone to tell me if I were in your shoes, even though it's hard to hear and ..."

You get the picture.

So this sort of thing went on all day, to the point where you want to just shout: "Dude, I got two words for you: Brush your Goddamn teeth! And take a fucking shower while you're at it. Capiche?"

In the middle of the afternoon, we got a respite from our acting jobs. The Chief Encouraging Officer's cook/secretary stomped up from the basement, rudely interrupted the CEO and demanded to know why some paperwork wasn't ready. She was visibly angry and shaking — this woman who had seemed so mild mannered and self-possessed in our brief chats in the kitchen as she doled out chicken casserole and meatloaf. You could tell some ongoing problem between them had come to a head, that the underling had had enough. The CEO looked nervous and disturbed. She told the cook she'd attend to the matter as soon as she was done with class. The cook got an "Oh yeah, I've heard that bullshit a thousand times" look on her face and stormed out of the room, leaving a wake of sourness and disbelief.

Ah-ha! I thought. The veneer of touchy-feely crapola has been rudely peeled back to reveal the true sturm und drang of our CEO's cuddly self-help empire. The empress has no clothes!

But then the empress, instead of crumbling into a heap of shame and despair, asked us to get out a piece of paper and "document" what had just happened. I greedily snatched up my pen and scrawled "INSUBORDINATION!" before it dawned on me that it was a set-up! The cook wasn't really mad. The CEO wasn't really embarrassed. They were role-playing! Excited by my perceptiveness, I eagerly informed my co-worker, who was busily documenting. "Psst! It was an act!" And, to my surprise, he said, "No duh. It was obvious as soon as the cook opened her mouth." "It was?" I asked. My co-worker rolled his eyes and went back to his exercise.

Dammit! Tricked again! It reminded me of the time I dutifully recorded in my Greek archeology class notes that the mother of Cleobis and Biton could tell them apart only by the differing swirls of their pubic hair. I regurgitated that scintillating info on a test, only to be told later by my boyfriend that the instructor was simply making a joke.

But this is not a joke. Listen to this! While we were discussing the ugly incident between the cook and the CEO, someone mentioned that the cook seemed so angry that he thought she might pull out a gun. The CEO said, "A gun?" Followed by, "Do you know Lorna? You guys know Lorna's history, don't you?" she said, referring to the cook, who was now back in her cozy kitchen.

We shook our heads.

Then the CEO revealed that Lorna — the woman who had been making our coffee and lunch and cookies every day, Lorna in the pastel mom clothes and apron — was not the rural housewife-type we had all assumed she was, but was in fact a famous murderess who had just been paroled.

SHUT UP!

I turned to my co-worker and whispered, "Is this a set-up, too?"

And, darkly, he said, "No, I don't think so."

"That really is Lorna __________? The woman who had the affair with the minister and callously murdered their spouses? The one the movie was based on?"

Indeed.

Then our CEO realized that she had inadvertently opened up a can of worms, so she had to say some more. She was so used to everyone in their small town knowing that it didn't occur to her that we out-of-towners would be ignorant. She told us how she met Lorna while working in the prison, that she was the model prisoner, that no one was more deserving of a second chance, so she gave her a job for work release, and when she finally succeeded, after decades in prison and five tries with the parole board, in winning her freedom, she got a full-time job as our CEO's cook.

I spent the rest of the afternoon ignoring the training session and pondering our cook — the convicted-murderer-turned-caterer, as my friend has described her — who spoke so charmingly and served food so graciously. Wow. I had to constantly keep my jaw from dropping in amazement. You just never know whom you are dealing with, do you? You interact with people every day and you just never know. Even some people you think you know really well, they have something you just don't know, something you would never guess: a crime, a bizarre sex thing, an act of heroism, an amazing talent.

And people whom you write off as phonies or shallow little beings, can blindside you with sincerity and depth. Our CEO, for instance, seems to embrace a certain New-Agey evangelical faux-Christian worldview that has as much to do with accumulating personal wealth as with anything remotely related to Christianity. Then you find out that she did something that many would regard as the very essence of the Christian spirit: She looked beyond someone's bad deed and gave them a hand up. She went to bat for another human being — at some risk to herself, living in a small, judgmental town — and had the courage to be a model of forgiveness and redemption.

This is the most valuable lesson she's taught us so far, the most valuable role she has played — one that didn't appear on any of her Christian-flavored, feel-good handouts — and I don't think she even realizes it.