Connie Bruck presents a portrait of Ron Buckle in the October 8 New Yorker , which, like most good biography, places the man in his world, and seeing him in that world what might be repellent becomes, at least, understandable.
The man started working in his family's grocery store, became a union member and when he became owner of a chain of grocery stores he dealt with unions sympathetically, and he even named each of the planes in his private fleet after the union he had joined as a youth.
On the other hand, the people who work in those stores put a lot of themselves into the small part of the operation they run--whether it is the meat cutting or the produce section, they prepare the stuff and they deal with the customers.
It reminded me of a story a friend told me about the first job he ever had, in the produce department of Giant Food, in suburban Washington, DC. One day a middle aged man wandered through, picking up peaches and squeezing them, putting them back and my friend looked at him, waiting for him to take a bite out of one or maybe slip a few into his pocket. The man noticed him and asked, "How are the peaches today?" And my friend said, "I don't know. What do you mean?" And the man introduced himself: He was Israel Cohen, and he owned the chain of Giant Food stores and he said, "Well, if you work in produce, you should take a bite out of each peach, each pear, so when a customer asks, you know something." My friend stammered, "I thought if I was caught eating the fruit, they'd fire me." No, Cohen told him, that is part of the job, knowing your product. Cohen floated through all his stores and a few weeks later he appeared again and asked again and my friend told him the peaches were a little unripe but the pears were sensational. Cohen beamed and asked him his name and kept coming back and eventually offered to pay his way through the University of Maryland, if he would commit to working for Giant for 4 years after his graduation.
Ron Burkle bought chains of grocery stores and the stores and the details of what makes a food store good, I suspect, had little interest for him. He was interested in the big picture. He moved from grocery stores to the movie industry, where he dealt with other men who had little or no feeling for what makes a movie work or wonderful, but they packaged the financing for movies and bought and sold packages of movies, movies which haven't even been made yet. What interested them was the financing, the money, how to drive the best bargain so even if the movie is a flop, they make money, or at least do not lose any, and someone else absorbs the financial blow.
Which brings me to my new favorite current PBS television series, Call the Midwife , which has introduced Chummy, an awkward behemoth of a woman, who comes from money and the upper classes, but for unstated reasons has decided to work as a nurse midwife in the impoverished East End of London in the 1950's. As you see her conquer her fear and deliver a breech baby, all her awkwardness dissipates, and you can see the thrill she experiences in her hard won skill in midwifery, what that skill means to the family of the baby, and to the community. She is in the trenches. She is sampling the fruit. She is unconcerned by the financing of the institution which pays her salary. She loves her job more than anything.
She is McNulty, who loves his job, loves bringing in a really significant case; she is Major Dick Winters, who wants Easy Company to do its job well, but sees no sense in sacrificing a single good man if it is not required to the overall mission; she is the engineer who builds the bridge, the steel worker on the girder, the tug boat captain bringing the ship up the river past the shoals.
Doctors, for half a century, found themselves in the enviable position of doing their jobs in the trenches, enjoying the rewards of practicing one patient at a time. Then a type of doctor who no longer saw individual patients but who drew a salary in the millions emerged, and he organized deals and flew around in private jets and he lost touch with what it is that really matters...in life.
I suppose we need the guy at the top, although why he should be rewarded so extravagantly is beyond me. But, if you could wish for your child a life doing deals or delivering babies, or doing surgery, one patient at a time, which would you choose?
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