Don Shultz

Today, forever so brief a magical time,

I found myself lost in wonder,

Awe and amazement

A sense of jubilation excited my soul,

Promising a new start,

Very much like the shedding of autumn leaves

A bird:

I was awaiting a new horizon

I was soaring the skies And

it was a moment to be cherished

Then all of a sudden,

With the tinkle of a melancholy bell,

I painfully awoke, slowly realising the truth:

I was in familiar Douglas Hall And I had an 8:30 class at McGill

Now, I felt like a melting icicle

Unable to stay frozen

Before seeping to the ground

Don Shultz taught at McGill. He was a thin dangling creature nearing eighty. He walked like a withering leaf in autumn, and smelt of death. Anyway, he was ‘entertaining’ – a highly judged determinant of being a good teacher in Canada. For every theory, formula or balancesheet he came up with a thought-provoking parable.

Who could forget the tale evoked when he tried to explain the concept of strategic planning? With a trembling hand he slapped a slide on the projector, making the glass chime against his wedding ring. A sentence emerged on the screen: ‘The relationship between primary objectives and secondary objectives.’

He spoke in his usual nonchalant fashion. “Okay, Okay. Example time.”

The sober lot of students presumed that he would again juxtapose management science with his beloved basketball, but he surprised the congregation by saying, “Anybody been to Hong Kong here? Do we have any folks from Hong Kong here? Hong Kong, Hong Kong anybody?”

He always repeated his words in a hypnotic American accent. A few Chinese raised hands but he ignored them in characteristic manner. It was difficult to make the colour of his beady eyes, but they were certainly gleaming. He started to pace up and down the isle, and he looked terribly mischievous. He had a big thud of a nose, and his balding head shone in Beryl Cream.

Don Shultz was quintessentially a cannonball, and nobody could predict what he would say next. A minute he would be muttering, “Without holding volume constant, a manager is comparing apples to oranges rather than apples to apples,” the other he would start describing his bygone love affair with a buxom girl called Tamara.

Don Shultz started his sermon. “Last year I was a visiting professor at the University of Hong Kong. Yeah, this great university – stood on top a mountain and everything. Yeah, really a nice place.”

Don Shultz was a strange breed. His name suggested an Italian flavour, but most of the time he behaved like a true-blooded Torontonian – the type Quebecois loathe. Yes, Don Shultz was sensitive and he was always bitching on about something...

He continued to recite with cadence: “You had to climb a hundred flight of stairs to get to the University of Hong Kong. They shut the elevators at 9 pm, so if I forgot my bottle upstairs I had to climb a hundred flights of stairs, yeah. Anyway, during the weekends I tried the touristy type of things, you know, sight-seeing.

“Everybody here know, the Pacific Beach Mall? Sure you know, yeah?”

He pointed to a friend of mine who was Chinese (but had no connection with Hong Kong), “Yeah, you know Pacific Beach Mall, everybody there knows Pacific Beach Mall.” My friend tried to protest, but Don Shultz cut him. “Yeah, Pacific Beach Mall, yeah Pacific Beach Mall!”

The spotlight had to be on Don Shultz.

Don Shultz now thought it was the right time to proceed to the podium; hitherto he was pacing up and down the windowless hall. He made a move towards the podium but he was betrayed by his physical presence. His complexion was pink like a mouse, and he was very short, hardly five foot seven.

Don Shultz’s charisma was in his speech. “Yeah Pacific Beach Mall. It’s this huge mall in Hong Kong. I mean absolutely huge – air-conditioned and everything. Oh, yeah. They have a club in there and its amazing. Every night, they actually get up on the bar and start dancing. I mean those girls get on that bar where they actually serve drinks. Yeah, I went there once and the rock music was loud. Anyway, the point is that I was doing all these touristy things there, and one weekend I was tired… and I found some shade under these trees outside Pacific Beach Mall.”

Don Shultz took a moment to pause. He was an old man and deserved a breather or two. He had a chance to look at his students. They were an assemblage from all parts of the world – Jews, Arabs, Pakistanis, Indians, French, German... Don Shultz held the chair for Management Accounting at the McGill School of Management, and he was proud of his achievements. He had worked up the ladder. Don Shultz was not working for the money. He truly loved teaching. He had graduated with great distinction from Hamilton University. I presume that he worked so hard over there that he had not been able to shake off the university life ever since. Really! I am talking about an eighty-year-old man who roamed around wearing layers of sweatshirts, and he was always swaying around with a backpack.

Several people actually made the mistake of seeing Don Shultz during his office hours. These were people failing in quizzes and were in need of genuine help. A student would say, ”Sir, I am really disheartened by my performance. Could you please give me some guidance? I am working awfully hard, and I have done all the readings in the course pack. Could you please give some advice before the midterm? What should be my frame of mind? What should I be focusing on?”

Don Shultz would listen to such appeals in amusement. He only looked grandfatherly in appearance, and he avoided helping anybody. He was downright rude and mean to his students. “Your opportunities to distinguish yourself are being provided in examinations consistent with other students and not at your inclination. You know my syllabus, so follow it.”

Don Shultz was a jealous student during his office hours, rather than grown-up mature professor. It was as if he was competing against his own students rather than helping them. Don Shultz had that Hamilton University student frame of mind. He oft recalled his hay days: he was an “A” getting student, and loved the thrill and excitement of writing a final. He dressed in sneakers and a sweatshirt, and drank coffee out of a flask while actually walking to class. Yes, he was an A-1 Hamilton product!

Anyway, all of us except the hermits knew that Shultz was not worth going to see during office hours. But all said, Shultz was a very good classroom teacher, and we all attended his sermons about the Canadian way of living.

“Yeah so I was sitting under the shade. You know, Honk Kong people are very big on domestics. They have Indonesian maids. Yeah, but they really take good care of them. Yeah, no complaints, they really take good care of them. They even close Pacific Beach Mall so that all the Indonesians can get together on the weekend. Yeah they divert all the traffic for them, so they the maids can get together. Yeah, they really take good care of them."

Don Shultz was not Irish. One cannot throw a pebble in the confines of McGill without hitting an Irishman. So all of us were at least spared from hearing the ‘aye’ after every sensible and nonsensical sentence. ‘Yeah’ sounded somewhat less painful as a substitute to an international student...

“Anyway, so I was tired after sight-seeing and I found a bench and some shade under this tree. I put down my backpack and just sat there for a while. Very soon a women came up and offered me chicken – tasty chicken. Yeah you know friend in orient spices. So this woman offers me some chicken. Then another woman offers me some chicken. Then another woman offers me some chicken. All these women...”

It was clear that Don Shultz was making considerable effort to speak out. I thought that if he gesticulated further, he might be provoking the condition of his health. It was difficult to imagine Don Shultz as a husband or a father. He kept saying in class that he had a ten-year old daughter. Perhaps he was a different man altogether at home. But he was always roaming around the university. I wondered how much time he actually spent with his daughter.

“Meanwhile these Indonesian women are looking at me in a strange manner. I mean they are staring at me. Yeah, then I see women, hand in hand sort of practicing walking down the isle. Yeah, I thought it was the custom or something. Meanwhile more women came to give me chicken. The chicken was d-e-l-i-c-i-o-u-s. I mean absolutely f-a-b-u-l-o-u-s. I mean I never had such tasty chicken before. Anyway, I got up finally, and 'yah see' I almost hit my head on a board right on top of me… and the board said: “The Honk Kong Bureau of Marriage Service.”

He laughed feverishly. His lips were non-existent, the little teeth he had were stained with coffee.

“So, you see, secondary objectives are there for the end of achieving certain primary objectives. Their primary objective was to marry me. And there feeding me the chicken was the secondary objective. So secondary objectives are not important in their own right. Rather they are important because planners believe that that if the organization achieves in meeting these secondary objectives, it will succeed in meeting its primary objectives.”

Don Shultz was a good professor, and he had taught an invaluable lesson in Game Theory. He removed his slide from the projector. And was the first one to disappear out of the class when the bell rang.



"Don Shultz" is a paradoy on the life of a professor at McGill University. It is international in scope with reference to North America, the Far East and Pakistan! I hope that you might find it to be worthwhile, in the sense the old poet meant when he wrote:

"For circumcised wit

And the cleanly carriage of it."