I freewrote The Batch Fixer contemporaneously on April 10, 2006, in twenty minutes while waiting for a flight at Dallas Fort Worth airport. Enjoy!
He’s sitting four chairs to my left. All was quiet when I chose this little island of seats on a ramp away from the C concourse gates. No cell phones in evidence, though I didn’t expect that to continue. What I didn’t know was that in the following 15 minutes, I would hear the word “batch“ spoken by one person more times than I’ve ever heard it in my entire life.
I don’t know where he is from — my knowledge of American accents is poor. He has a problem that I slowly and painfully piece together over a series of phone conversations.
The customer had received a batch – 30 gallons sprayed on — and it was the wrong color. The customer had received a new batch, which was the right color, rejected the new batch because it didn’t match, and returned the new batch to the factory. The factory had called to say that there was nothing wrong with the new batch. Joe had done a wet test, on paper and wood. He’d confirmed that the old batch was incorrect in some way. The salesman, who, by now I had given the name, Harry, had talked to several people, who also talked a lot and found that they didn’t want to replace the old batch because the customer would find out that they’d been sent a color that they had already used which wasn’t correct.
So Joe was going to create a blend of the old and new colors and send it to the customer.
By this time, I have formed a firm opinion of Harry’s organization. People there have officially defined roles. They like to talk and are ready to justify why things happen the way they do and why this isn’t their fault. Poor Harry is the fixer, the guy that has to get a solution for his customer and keep everyone else happy too, especially his boss. As he places his calls with one person after another, I hear different facets of the story. More details for Carmen, requests to the unknown boss for directions, a steady stream of justifications, and next steps for Joe.
Harry is patient and doesn’t lose his cool for a minute. He talks through the layers of bureaucracy and responsibility, his nasal voice constantly overlaying his discussion of the old batch, new batch, wet test, drawdowns on paper and wood, the shorthand of his working life, a code in which he swims, only translating when necessary.
He has left now. The flurry of calls eventually petered out with a sense that the problem had been handled, contained, until tomorrow at least when he will meet with Joe and start another round of negotiations and persistent persuasion.
While this was going on, I felt insulated. I had been reading a book on improv — on adjusting to circumstances in the moment and riffing. And here was Harry, batching it, batch, batch, batch, and my mind skipped and reeled as the flurry of batch punches assaulted my ears, delivered into my brain, flummoxing me into a place of inability to grok my reading.
I could’ve moved, put on my headphones, or inserted my earplugs. I thought of doing this. And yet I stayed with Harry, oddly fascinated. I wondered whether what Harry batched would suddenly be revealed. Would he suddenly break character, crack, stand up and scream, swear under his breath? But he did not. He wheedled his way to a temporary solution and stalked off to his gate, the fixer doing his job — fixing the batch.