How to Travel With a Salmon and Other Essays

How to Choose a Remunerative Profession

There are certain jobs that are much in demand and that pay very well, but they require careful preparation.

For example, the job of setting up around the city those signs that indicate the way to the superhighways. Their purpose is to clear traffic from the downtown area—and also from the superhighways, as we promptly realize once we have followed them and ended up, exhausted, on the most dangerous dead-end street in the industrial suburbs. But it is not easy to put the signs in exactly the right places. A simpleton might consider placing them at a spot where the driver is confronted with a complicated choice among several streets, and where there is thus a good chance he will get lost if left unassisted. But, on the contrary, the sign must be affixed only where, since the proper route is obvious and the driver would instinctively choose it, he must be sent off in another direction. To do the job really well the applicant should have some notion of urban planning, psychology, and the theory of games.

Another very desirable job is that of writing the instructions included in, or printed on, the packaging of domestic appliances and electronic instruments. Above all, these instructions must prevent installation. The ideal model is not that of the thick manuals supplied with computers; these also achieve this aim, but at great cost to the manufacturer. The proper model is rather the folded slip of paper accompanying pharmaceuticals, products with the extra feature of having names that, while apparently scientific, have actually been devised to make obvious the nature of the product as if to ensure that its purchase embarrasses the purchaser (Prostatan, Menopausin, Cra-bex). The instructions enclosed in the box, in contrast, succeed with a minimum of words in making incomprehensible the warnings on which our lives depend: "No counterindication, except in cases of unforeseen lethal reaction to product."

For domestic appliances et similia the instructions must expound at length things so self-evident that you are tempted to skip them, thus missing the one truly essential bit of information:

In order to install the PZ40 it is necessary to unwrap the packaging and remove the appliance from the box. The PZ40 can be extracted from its container only after the latter is opened. The container is opened by lifting, in opposite directions, the two flaps of the upper side of the box (see diagram below). Take care, during the process of opening, to keep the container in a vertical position, with the lid facing up, otherwise the PZ40 may fall out during the operation and suffer damage. The lid to be opened is clearly marked with the words THIS SIDE UP. In the event that the lid does not open at the first attempt, the consumer is advised to try a second time. Once the lid is opened, it is advisable to tear off the red strip before removing the inner, aluminum lid; otherwise the container will explode. WARNING: after the PZ40 has been removed, the container can be discarded.

Another job that is not to be dismissed lightly is that of compiling questionnaires, usually during the summer season, for popular weekly magazines. "Between a bottle of Epsom salts and one of twenty-year-old cognac, which would you choose? Would you rather spend your vacation with an eighty-year-old leper or with Demi Moore? Do you prefer being sprinkled with ferocious red ants or sharing a sleeping compartment with Claudia Schiffer? If you have answered '1' to all the above questions, then you are inventive, original, brilliant, but sexually a bit frigid. If all your answers are '2', then you're a rascal."

In the Medicine and Health supplement of a leading daily I came upon a questionnaire about sunbathing, which allowed you to choose among three answers for every question, A, B, and C. The A answers are interesting: "If you expose your skin to the sun, how red does it get? A: Intensely. How often do you suffer from sunburn? A: Every time I go out in the sun. How would you describe your skin forty-eight hours after the erythema? A: Still red. Solution: if you have answered A to most questions, your skin is very sensitive and you are subject to painful sunburn." I am thinking of a questionnaire that would ask: "Have you often fallen out of a window? If yes, have you suffered multiple fractures? After each fall, have you been certified as permanently disabled? If your answers are A, either you're pretty stupid or your aural labyrinth is in bad shape. Don't look out the window when the usual jokester yells up from below urging you to come down and join him."

1991