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11
T h e N i n e t y - D a y R u l e
N
ineteen seventy-seven—it was a good year. I was
living in Cleveland, I had a two-bedroom apart-
ment, brand spanking new. I hadn’t quite gotten
the car I wanted, but I was working on it. And I had a job at
the Ford motor plant. They had a high hourly wage there, and
overtime—more money than a man of my stature could dream
of making. But more important, Ford had benefits. Thing is,
you had to be on the job for a while to get them. Oh, you could
get a paycheck, but you could not get the benefits; and as far as
any of the full-time regulars on the line were concerned, you
were not
in
until you had the benefits. Ford’s policy was that
you had to work at least ninety days before they’d cover your
health insurance; this was the plant management saying to me,
we will provide you benefits after you have proven to me you
are worthy—work hard, show up on time, follow your super-
visor’s orders, and get along with your co-workers for ninety
days, and then you can get dental and medical coverage. You
can get your eyes checked, no problem. Your hernia could bust
and we will take care of you. We will take care of your kids’
teeth and eyes, and if you’ve got a woman, she can get glasses
and crowns on her teeth if she needs them, and any more babies
you have with your lady after this, we’re going to take care of
them, too. Your whole family will be covered. We are going to
provide you with a benefit package.
And you know something? All of this made perfect sense to
me. I was being challenged to show everybody at the plant that
I was serious, and ready and able to work hard for both the
salary and the right to have them pay my medical and dental
expenses—and as a man, I needed and wanted to prove that I
was up for the challenge and worthy of the reward. I agreed 100
percent with what the Ford Motor Company was saying to me,
and so I signed on the dotted line. I wanted to be a part of the
Ford family.
The first day I got paid, the supervisor came through and said,
“Here’s your check, appreciate you coming.” The check was
cool, but I wasn’t making an appointment at the doctor’s office
anytime soon. If I got a toothache—hell, if both of my front
teeth were loose and about to fall clean out of my mouth—there
wouldn’t be any dentist appointments for ninety days, because
Ford had already said I had to prove myself to the people who
signed the checks in order to get the extras—the perks.
It was a really simple equation: work hard, prove yourself,
get the benefits.
And guess what? It’s the same way with jobs in the govern-
ment, places like the post office, the DMV—and even in some
corporations. You have got to prove yourself to get the good
stuff, the extras, the benefits.
So if Ford and the government won’t give a man benefits
until he’s been on the job and proven himself, why, ladies, are
you passing out benefits to men before they’ve proven them-
selves worthy? Come on now, you know what the
benefits
are.
I’m not talking about being nice to him, or cooking for him, or
going out to dinner with him, or helping him pick out an outfit,
or bringing him around your mother. Those are things that
happen during the course of a budding relationship—you do
special things for each other because you care. By benefits, in
case you haven’t figured it out, I’m talking about sex. And if
you’re giving your benefits to a guy who’s only been on the job
for a week or two, you’re making a grave mistake.
You don’t know this man—not much about him, anyway.
He doesn’t know you.
He hasn’t proven himself.
And he could walk off the job at any time.
And you’ll have no one but yourself to blame.
Think about it: the first guy you slept with quicker than
ninety days—where is he? I’m willing to bet that you’re prob-
ably not with him. True, there are some people out there some-
where who had sex early in the relationship and are still together
to this very day, but that’s rare. More likely than not, a guy who
gets benefits early in a relationship, without having to put in
work or prove himself, leaves and moves on to a committed
relationship with a woman who puts him through some type of
probationary period to find out more about him. I’m sure that
woman laid out the rules—the requirements—early on, and let
her intended know that he could either rise up to those require-
ments, or just move on.
A directive like that signals to a man that you are not a
plaything—someone to be used and discarded. It tells him that
what you have—your benefits—are special, and that you need
time to get to know him and his ways to decide if he
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