My Summer at PG&E

Imagine a Roman galley, staffed by slaves (and whipped by management) doing the same thing day after day--ostensibly making headway but without the benefit of a view, a map, or shore leave.

Then remove all hope, and notice that the slaves aren't chained in place but are imprisoned by the fear of doing anything other than pulling their oars. Welcome to the Accounts Payable department, Pacfic Gas and Electric, 1984. I was 19, and my cousin--manager of the department--hired me for the summer to file paperwork.

Our supervisor was a former air traffic controller. He'd been fired by Reagan, and was so consumed by bitterness that I envisioned the President personally stripping the buttons from his dress shirt before drop-kicking him to the parking lot. He expected his staff to perform like airplanes: listen to instructions, respond immediately, and expect that the slightest deviation would result in hundreds of innocent deaths. And he made the point, so easily missed, that the death of even one innocent was unacceptable. (This, I felt, was both unfair and a tremendous amount of pressure.)

The filers, on the other hand, were an interesting and unique group. I was a college student studying cinematography. The amiable middle-aged fellow working alongside me had been a highly paid construction engineer in Iran before one too many university classes in America resulted in his banishment as an enemy of Islam. A petit, young and very well-mannered woman across the aisle laid claim to membership in the Ethiopian royal family, being fortunate enough to escape when her country was liberated by freedom fighters who specialized in freeing their fellow citizens from their lives.

And then there were two gentlemen my own age who spoke, in torrid prose, about their utterly fascinating and barely believable sex lives. They waxed forth on such diverse subjects as how to find a condom that fit properly (apparently this was a problem, although no verification was forthcoming) to how lucky they were to occasionally bypass the need for a one altogether. One of these fellows told very complex stories about how he and two friends paid regular social visits to a local porn star, who was more than happy to entertain two of them at once. The third she froze out, just for laughs.

The Ethiopian princess was often stunned into silence. (Reproductive anatomy, in the royal world, was apparently taught on a "need to know" basis.) The Iranian engineer was a bit more vocal, commenting on the physical impossibility of what was being described and expressing doubt as to whether the structures involved were actually up to the task.

Our supervisor regularly attempted verbal damage control, striding powerfully into our work area and demanding that we cease all conversation immediately. He implied that we were disturbing the other employees, but his demeanor told us that he was more likely threatened by any talk of sexual positions beyond those described in his personal copy of the King James Bible. (And even then, some of the juicier pages were probably missing.) His orders only stirred more conversation, and upon his departure our two sexual wunderkinds would discuss, in gradually increasing volume, exactly how much of their exploits the supervisor understood. Our longstanding theory was that, if his poor beleaguered wife ever asked him to participate in the reproductive process, he'd simply split in two, with both parts turning to her and uttering a single word in unison: "Satisfied?"

Such a lively group stood out from the average Accounts Payable employee, whose life could be completely destroyed by the discovery of a new piece of furniture in the office. Once a delivery cart was parked for an hour near the entrance to the coffee area, and it was days before the morning shift hit their stride again. We prayed for more delivery carts, preferably each stocked with a suicidal clown, a small set of carving knives, and a bag of rock salt. Stress disability claims would clear the entire floor, leaving us to entertain ourselves as we saw fit.

Between loud discussions of sexual promiscuity I found myself filling time by listening to talk radio. I wasn't particularly interested in anything that was said; I just appreciated that the topics changed every hour because nothing around me did. Even the stories of sexual misconduct became old after a while. There were only so many positions from which a third male could be excluded, and after three weeks I'd tallied an impressive mental list of all of them.

Toward the end of my stay I found myself pondering how much damage I could do by deliberately misfiling invoices. Wouldn't it be fun, I thought, to bill supplies destined for the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant to an obscure power station in Redding? How long before an upper-level accountant ran the numbers and discovered that a lawsuit-besotted nuclear reactor, built on a fault line, was actually more cost-effective than a small natural gas-powered electrical plant in rural California that used entirely too much uranium?

The summer ran out before I had the chance to bring down the entire company, although they've done very well on their own.