BY GIL GEVINS
Most of the sales managers I have known over the years have been what Mexicans call "special." Ronnie O'Meara was no exception.
A tall oafish man, Ronnie had a head of wild prematurely grey hair which grew in six or seven gravity-defying directions at once. He was manic to the point of being dangerous and, had his photograph ever been published in a newspaper, beneath it would have appeared the caption: A legend in his own mind.
Everyone assumed that Ronnie was on drugs; unfortunately for him, he was not.
On one less than memorable occasion Ronnie had attempted to "help" me to close a deal, a surreal experience if ever there was one.
I was sitting with a couple from Iowa trying vainly to convince them that the twenty thousand dollars they had scrimped and saved for their son's college tuition would be better spent on a vacation club membership in Mexico. They were naturally suspicious people who had never before been outside of the United States. Simply winning their trust had taken me well over two hours of hard work.
Then Ronnie came bouncing up to our table, all wound up like a rubber band, and said without preamble, "Listen, folks. Everything this man has told you is a complete lie. But from now on you're going to hear nothing but the truth."
Ronnie wore around his neck a massive gold chain with which at that moment I would have gladly strangled him. My clients, their faith in humanity most likely damaged beyond all hope of repair, began to squirm in their seats.
"Go get me some coffee," Ronnie said with disgust as he dragged me to my feet and took possession of my chair.
Five minutes later, after having demolished a small trash basket, I was feeling somewhat better. From the back of the large salesroom I could see Ronnie leaning into the table, deep into his pitch while my former clients looked frantically all about them, as if for the nearest exit.
Several months later, just before he decided to return to Hawaii where "you can order a cup of friggin coffee without a goddamn dictionary for crying out loud," Ronnie delivered a truly memorable motivational speach to a roomfull of bewildered sales people.
Standing before us with his legs spread and a huge styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand Ronnie stared at everyone for a full minute before saying, "Ants don't sweat."
Ronnie then took three enormous gulps of coffee, making his Adam's apple bounce up and down like a ping pong ball.
"The other day I was over at John and Mary's house," he finally went on.
John and Mary, most of us realized, were not real people, but rather an imaginary couple who played the role of the clients in Ronnie's favorite sales manual: "The Eye of the Tiger" by Vick Vixby.
"And I saw," Ronnie said, striding back and forth, spilling coffee everywhere, "the most amazing thing."
Ronnie paused for dramatic effect for what seemed like an hour, glaring at each of us in turn with the burning intensity of a medieval saint.
"But I'll tell you something," he finally said, lowering his voice to a conspiritorial whisper. "Most people wouldn't have thought it was so amazing. Most people, in fact, wouldn't even have noticed what I saw."
"Unless," mumbled my neighbor, an ex-surfer with one too many wipe-outs under his belt, "they were on the same thing you was."
"There in John and Mary's front yard," Ronnie rolled on, "was a small mountain. A miniature mountain about three feet high. That's strange, I thought to myself, I could've sworn that little mountain wasn't here a week ago when I stopped by to return John and Mary the fifty dollars I had borrowed. What was even more strange was that the baby mountain was shaped exactly like a volcano. A volcano. I could've been back on Maui."
Ronnie paused again to take another swallow of coffee and to stare up and off into space. We were all reasonably sure that Ronnie was supposed to be back on Maui in what was left of his mind staring up at a volcano.
"'What's this?' I asked John and Mary. 'What's this little volcano in your yard and how did it get there?' 'Oh,' John and Mary said, 'that's just the ants.'"
"Just the ants," Ronnie said bemused. "Just the ants," he repeated matter-of-factly. "Just the ants!" he thundered, waking up two closers in the back of the room.
Fortunately Ronnie's super-jumbo styrofoam cup was by now almost empty, because Ronnie always accompanied the raising of his voice with a violent gesture. As it was, he managed to spray the first row with brown drops and dislodge his shirt tails from the tight confines of his black and white striped Bermuda shorts.
With his white shirt tails hanging out and over his ample gut Ronnie looked a lot like a pregnant polar bear who has just stuck his paw into a light socket.
"So I began to observe," Ronnie said, quieting down again. "And what I observed were a whole lot of ants - thousands, maybe even millions of ants. And these ants, these tiny little creatures, what were they doing? I'll tell you what they were doing: each and every one of them was doing exactly the same thing. I know, because I sat there watching them for three hours."
Everyone knew that Ronnie was definitely making this part up. Short of receiving a massive blow to the head there was no way Ronnie could sit anywhere for three hours, let alone in a garden watching ants.
"On top of that miniature volcano," Ronnie rampaged on, "was a miniature crater - just like Haleakala back on Maui. And inside that crater was a teeny-weeny hole. And that hole was just like a two-lane tunnel I used to drive through when I was managing the Poconos Ski Club in Pennsylvania. One lane was for going inside the hole, and one lane was for going out of the hole. Entrance and exit. Egress and egret."
"I think an egret's a bird, Ron," one of the wise-guys in the back row called out.
"Yeah, but what's an egress?" his partner wanted to know.
Ronnie took advantage of this silly interruption to pour himself a full cup of coffee, causing everyone in the first three rows to visably cringe.
"Now all of the ants," Ronnie roiled anew, "going into the hole were empty-handed. But every single ant exiting the hole was carrying a single grain of sand (which would be like me or you carrying a Volkswagen). And when the ant carrying the grain of sand reached the rim of the crater, he dropped it over the side. And down, down, down it tumbled along the slope of the miniature mountain, making that miniature mountain just one grain of sand bigger."
Long pause. Three gulps.
"Immediately," Ron resumed, "I mean absolutely at once, without even a second's hesitation, that ant turned around and went back into the hole to go get himself another grain of sand.
"And on and on it went. In and out. In and out. Grain by grain. Grain by grain. The mountain on the outside got bigger and taller; the ants' house on the inside got deeper and better. Because that's what those ants were doing: home improvement - making their common world a better place in which to live.
"And I'll tell you something. It was awful hot in John and Mary's front yard. But the ants never stopped to take a single break. Never complained. Never wished out-loud that they were someplace else, doing something different. They just kept on working, hour after hour, day after day, with nobody to pat them on the back. No one to offer them cash bonuses for exceeding their monthly goals. No one to give them special developer's discounts or bonus vacation incentives, or free trips for two to Mazatlan. No one there to say, 'good job, take the afternoon off.' No sir, those ants just kept doing their jobs, uttering nary a complaint, even though they knew in their heart of hearts that their job would never ever be done."
Ronnie's pause had an air of finality this time. He stood there gulping from his eighteen ounce styrofoam cup, soaked from head to toe despite the air-conditioning. Then he stood there some more, staring at us, and we sat there staring right back.
At that moment every person in the room was feeling excactly the same thing: a strong urge to pee, whether we had to or not. Just watching Ronnie drink all that coffee...
Finally, Trudy, one of our rookie sales people, someone so new to the business that she still suffered from the delusion that this was the kind of thing one was supposed to take seriously, raised her hand.
Ronnie inclined his dripping jungle of hair in her direction, gratitude written all over his face.
"I don't understand, Ron," Trudy said. "What's the point?"
Ronnie's head snapped back as if he'd received a physical blow.
"What's the point?" he repeated in amazement. "What's the point?"
"Yes," Trudy trudged intrepidly on, "what's the point? I don't get it."
"The point," Ronnie said ever so softly, "is quite simple. The point is something any child should be able to understand. The point is this: ants don't sweat!" he screamed.
Everyone in the front row ducked. But fortunately for all concerned, Ronnie had once again run out of coffee.
Author Gil Gevins' latest book "Puerto Vallarta on a Donkey a Day" is on sale at The Book Store, V. Carranza 334a at Insurgentes in The Zona Romantica, Puerto Vallarta. Call 223-9437.
Leafcutter ants hard at work here in the tropics, cutting leaf. As you can easily see, they are not sweating.
