Filling Custom Orders in an Off the Rack World

The other day, as I was chatting with two of my girlfriends, they suggested that I post a blog entry about about the job at which we all met one another. Though we all left this company many months ago, it somehow still provides fodder for our regular get togethers. It was a unique experience and one for which I am grateful because I met these great friends, and also because it was quite eye-opening as to the discordance between who people say they are and who they actually are--an interesting and relevant topic in this day and age of internet-fueled relationships.

So what was the job?

Well, by way of beefing up humanitarian efforts on my resume, last year I worked for a dating service. During that time, I inevitably had the opportunity to describe my most recent vocational pursuit to many people at various social gatherings. Unlike when I had held what I perceived to be less charitable jobs (travel agent, technical writer, hospitality manager), I would actually look forward to sharing stories involving my latest venture with friends, family, and virtual strangers.

Erroneously, I assumed that people would believe, as I did at the time, that my position not only made for fun and interesting conversation, but was also an altruistic job where I essentially provided community service for the world at large. Indeed, I felt I was making the world a better place, one lunch date at a time. Admittedly, and on a more superficial level, it was also fun to have a plethora of social fodder at my fingertips. Despite the general reluctance to admit it, people are fascinated by that sort of thing, which is clearly evidenced by the alarming success of such inane programs as The Bachelor and Beauty and the Geek.

My actual job title was, improbably enough, “matchmaker.” I worked for a company where clients pay a rather hefty fee for a yearly membership in which they are promised a specific number of dates. I took the position—in fact I avidly campaigned to secure the job—because I thought it sounded both personally rewarding and selfless. I would be helping people find true love! How much more of a positive and valuable service could I ever offer this world? My naïve, Pollyanna attitude, had me believing that this matchmaking gig was the equivalent of providing ample rations to entire populations of people in starving nations.

Initially, I loved the idea of meeting with people, hearing them describe their ideal partners, and swiping their Visa cards (my boss actually liked that part, but I justified the membership fee by believing that these people took their love lives seriously—and were therefore happy to make such a worthwhile investment).

I delighted in spending time each morning going over profiles with my colleagues and matching people with their potential soul-mates. How incredible that I could play a role in assisting people to find lasting happiness, to personally orchestrate true love matches.

I will pause a moment to give you a chance to once again absorb the depths of my naivety and also, perhaps, to barf at my general sappiness.

In any case, the whole enterprise was a sad disappointment. And I am not saying this to bash this particular dating service—it is actually a very successful organization in many cities, and the concept is certainly viable. The service eschews computers and only operates via telephone and in person.

So I would spend considerable time telling each respective party why Tom or Susan was someone we identified as a great match. They would then meet one another at a restaurant where a reservation had already been made (under first names only), the restaurant would split the check, and if they wanted to see one another again they could exchange information during this date. The clients would call us with post-date feedback so that we could see if we were on the right track.

It all sounded like a well-oiled machine, where the service does all the work and the daters just show up, eat some food, and enjoy the potential romance sitting two feet across the table. Frankly, it all sounded a little too good to be true.

And so it was.

The major loophole with this service, as might be implicit given the nature of the task at hand, is that human chemistry is unpredictable. This is an obvious fact; I realize that if someone could figure out how to accurately and regularly predict how or why certain people would be attracted to certain others then widely popular services such as Match.com, and perhaps Dr. Phil himself, would be rendered obsolete entities.

Another problem was that when people pay for a service they have certain expectations of their return on investment. Unlike buying, for example a toaster, buying a membership to a dating service comes with no guarantee that the model and serial number that best suits your life will be available—or that it will ever be in stock in our particular warehouse. I had clients that were unable to accept that this purchase was one with unpredictable results. While I cared about helping people find potential partners, I often felt discouraged by my clients who were treating the procedure as if they were ordering a sandwich.

For example, a man in his late forties might come in with an exact idea of his “perfect” woman. After chatting with him, my notes indicate that he identifies himself as someone who is professionally successful, loves to travel, is outgoing, enjoys political debates, and feels his children are his number one priority.

After gleaning this personal information, we would move onto his hopes for his potential partner. I would expect (again note my naivety), that such criteria might be approximately as follows: someone who is independent, open-minded, committed to personal and professional growth, has a sense of adventure, and recognizes the importance of family. Or something that might hint that this man was actually conscious when he told me his own priorities and that he was, indeed, looking for a relationship with a compatible woman.

Instead, more often than not, I would hear something like the following: She must be between 22 and 28 years old, between “5’4” and 5’6” feet tall, curvy, yet slender, blond, blue-eyed, and have beautiful feet.” If you are in need of translation, basically the bozo was looking for a young, thin girl with fake boobs whose utter Barbie doll perfection would extend even to her extremities. Note that he said nothing about her actually character, personality, or interests.

Invariably, after such conversations, I would look at the portly nearing middle-aged man sitting across from me and I would be reminded of George Costanza on Seinfeld when he proclaims that he likes a thick head of hair on the women he dates.

George Costanza, as you may remember, was bald.

Now when I considered this list of non-negotiable criteria for a would-be life-partner, here is what I mentally pictured: The same man is standing at a deli counter at a gourmet sandwich shop. He places his order as follows: “I want roast beef on house-made foccacia with extra mayonnaise, cheese, and all the fixings. Do not forget the hot peppers. Leave out the calories and cholesterol. Make it delicious because I am paying for this sandy after all.” Huh. And would you like a side of fat free fries with that fantasy?

Such a “mail order” type client would be just the sort who would call me to complain after every date: “I TOLD you what I wanted and this girl had ugly feet.” Indeed. “Let me see, Sir, why have you not gone out with anyone that exactly matches your criteria? Oh, well, as it turns out we DO have women who fit the description you so carefully mapped out for me. Oddly, the descriptions given to me by THOSE young women were not for a balding rotund man in his late forties.”

Go figure.

And I do not mean to dig at the men only. Women were just as bad. Women would often order up something like this: “Looks are not important to me. But I only date men over six feet tall, absolutely no facial hair, no one balding, no one overweight, no ex-wives—or any serious exes at all. NO BAGGAGE.”

Honestly, who has no baggage? Not this duck, for one.

People are just not realistic.

Moreover, their priorities are quite wonky. The dilemma came up again and again that people felt they were physically “too good” for the people with whom they were being sent out. I understand pride and dignity, but I do not understand why so many people felt they ought to be going out with Brad and Angelina clones. Is it our celebrity culture? Did they live in mirror-less homes? Did they realize that looks are not, in fact, the most important criteria in building a life with someone?

Of course, physical attraction is certainly an integral component to long-lasting love and of course there are certain “types” to whom people are naturally more attracted to than others. Although I must say it makes me deeply suspicious when 45 year-old men insist that they only ever “click” with women 25 or younger.

So job had me wondering just how skewed were the priorities of the population with which I was dealing, and how did this epidemic come about? Was the problem that people did not actually want love, but rather wanted to feel superficially validated by a partner embodying specific physical, paint-by-number, attributes?

Ultimately, I left the company because the whole situation depressed me. I also felt the moral compass of the higher-ups had been seriously tampered with. True, it was also wearing to be constantly yelled at over the phone because people felt rejected and needed to take it out on someone. I could have lived with that though—of course people felt discouraged because finding love is hard. I absolutely empathize with that actuality. The main problem I saw with the situation was that finding a good book is also hard, but most people understand that making selections based solely on the covers will likely lead to disappointment. This analogy somehow did not register.

Here is the golden nugget of the day: people are not comprised of ingredients available at your local deli. You cannot always mix and match to have what you feel is the perfect combination. Or if you can, you might find out that it is not as “perfect” as you imagined. Or you will get bored. Or one day they are out of avocado and you feel disproportionately gypped.

I loved the idea of my job as a matchmaker, and I naively did not expect the position to be so full of complications, backlash, and irrationality. In retrospect, I may have been suffering from the same mismanagement of expectations as my clients were. Who was I to think that I could conjure up love for people when love is such an elusive and unpredictable gift?

I was excited to share my job with others because it made me feel validated to be orchestrating the impossible—perhaps the same way my clients felt they could earn validation through a made-to-order person on their arms. But the job was not the community service position I had imagined it to be, and while we did have a certain amount of success with a small percentage of our members, I found that the vast majority of the people with whom I was dealing were not buying what I was selling, so to speak.

Ultimately, I could not squash the Pollyanna at my core; I could not allow people to objectify others in the name of temporary and unsatisfying happiness. If I learned anything from this venture it is that we are all flawed, we all have baggage, and, most importantly—no matter how wonderful and amazing it may sound—a sandwich with no fat or calories is ultimately a sandwich with no substance.