SUBTEXT"My attitude?" Tom was genuinely confused. "What have I
done?" He looked at me. "Have I done anything wrong?"
Linda elaborated. "Like calling me the best girl you ever had:
I'm not! I'm almost forty and I have three kids. I'm not a girl!
You just don't see me. I'm not a person to you. I'm a piece of
furniture until you want something, then you treat me as if I
were fifteen years old!"
Turning to me, Tom said helplessly, "What am I going to do?
I can't get along without her."
I looked at both of them. "I tell you what I think you should
do. I think you should try a game of role reversal for a couple of
days." When they both looked puzzled, I explained. "Not work.
Tom, you sure couldn't do Linda's work even if she could do
yours, but why don't you try reversing the way you treat each
other?"
Grasping at straws, Tom agreed at once. Linda was dubious at
first, but caught on quickly. As the days passed, she called her
boss by his first name, praised him to her associates—"That boy
is a good worker"—ordered him about as casually as he had ordered
her, and accepted the coffee he brought her without bothering to
thank him.
In turn, Tom went all out. He called her Mrs. Bloom, asked
her if she'd please do this or that, and in general, treated her as
an assistant treats a boss.
"It opened both our eyes," Linda told me a week later as we
rode down in the elevator. "I'm staying on now, and I can see
how a boss can sometimes forget about an assistant's humanity.
As long as Tom remembers that I need respect, too, I think things
will work out."
"I think the little game you suggested helped me become sensitive
to Linda as a human being," Tom told me over lunch. "It wasn't