CALL NIGHT:

A TALE TOLD AFTER

A RETAIL BANKER LOST HIS JOB

    The color of the sky? The hell if I knew. My eyes were focused on the numbers, the ratio of sales versus goals, the gaps, the ones I was responsible for. The empty spreadsheet columns piercing my eyes like hot needles. The boss made it clear we weren’t getting out there until we hit our numbers.

    He made it sound easy, the boss. “Just start dialing,” he’d say, “sit in the cube,” a cube not bigger than a bathtub I might add, “and make the calls. Smile when you talk, the customer can hear it. The more people you talk to, the more opportunities you have.  Percentages Charlie, don’t you know about the percentages?” he’d ask me. The guys a walking sales cliché. I wanted to tell him smiling is a lot easier when your job isn’t on the line.

    I could hear Steve, my co-worker, pitching a sale in the cube next to me. He was young, full of energy, and volunteered to stay late whenever possible; basically a complete prick. Always hitting his numbers, always the model example from management, “That Steve, he’s one smooooth operator,” they’d say.

    “One DDA,” Steve yelled as he marked it down on the board.

    “You get your mom to open another checking account for you Stevey?” Brian said. Brian, my other co-worker, was a former cook. He used to work the line, late nights, at Chili’s. But after his wife had twins, deep frying chicken wings wasn’t cutting it. There was more money in selling checking accounts, not to mention better hours.

    “No, I…I…I,” Steve stuttered.

    “Exactly,” Brian said. “Sit down.”

      The boss sat in his office surrounded by glass. He was talking on the phone and you could hear his high pitched laugh sneaking underneath its walls. Probably talking to one of the tellers he wanted to screw, I thought. 

    He liked to refer to himself as “Captain.” Went as far as having paintings of sailboats and other nautical themed shit lining the office walls. Even had one of those anchor tattoos hidden beneath the sleeve of his heavily starched shirt. Someone once told me his dad was a World War II hero; don’t know if I believe it.

    “Where we at,” our boss yelled poking his head out of his office door.

    “Just got one, Captain,” Steve said proudly.

    “Kiss ass,” I heard Brian mumble under his breath.

    “Anyone else got anything?…Six more before we can call it a night.”

  * * *

    The reason call nights aren’t successful is that no one likes the calls. Not the people dialing, not the people receiving. So you sit there, sit there staring at the wall in front of you, staring at the corporate painting of the stagecoach being pulled through the meadow. You study it’s blues and yellows and greens, you notice the thick brush strokes. You try and figure out what’s going on in the conductor’s head, why he’s smiling even though he’s traveling by coach in the middle of nowhere by himself.

When you do pick up the phone you call your own cell. You leave messages to yourself.

Messages about how the products you have can make your life so much better, how they simplify your finances, give you that piece of mind. And oh yeah, even offer a credit card for overdraft protection.

    What you don’t say is how that credit card has a 14% rate and your product is the same as every other banks. You don’t say that the it really doesn’t come with the account, that the only reason you received it, even though you didn’t want it, is because you needed another sale.

You stare at the clock and then you tell yourself not to look at it again for at least ten more minutes. Then when you look at it two minutes later you tell yourself not to look at it for at for at least ten more minutes. Then the realization hits that if you don’t come up with two more DDA’s you’re not going to have a job.

    “Jesus Brian,” I said. “I’m stuck. I’ve exhausted all my leads. I wanna get the hell out of here.”

    “You call your friends?” he asked.

    “You kidding me? They all already have six accounts already.”

    “Six? Man, the most I’ll go is four. You know they monitor that kind of stuff right?”

    “What are they going to do? Fire me?” I said. For some reason Brian thought that was funny.

    “Naw,” he said. “As long as you put $100 in each you should be fine. It registers legit in the system. You marking this down as overtime?” he asked.

    “No, the “Captain” made it quite clear not to.”

    It’s difficult to describe the relationship between Brian and me. When he came on full time I kind of took him under my wing. I taught him all the little tricks I had learned over the years. It was a probably mistake, now that I think about it. His numbers are just as bad as mine and now his job hangs in the grips of the spreadsheets.

    A fly buzzed around my head. A big black scary looking bastard, probably looking to lay its eggs in my ear. “God damn flies,” I said while trying smash it between my palms.

    “Got another one!” said Steve while making another tally mark on the board.

    “For Christ sakes Stevey,” Brian said, “no one gives a shit. Stop marking up the board already. Give it a rest.”

    “If it wasn’t for me we’d be here all night,” Steve said. “And stop calling me Stevey.”

    “Look Charlie,” Brian said to me, “someone thinks he’s a tough guy. What are you going to do Stevey? What are you going to do?”

    “Im…I’m…Gonna…” Steve stuttered.

    “Spit it out,” Brian interrupted. “Need mommy to mommy to come to the rescue again?”  Steve’s eyes became red and swollen, his face flustered. “Look Charlie, Stevey’s tearing up. The tough guys crying.”

     Steve disappeared to the water cooler. Pored himself a Styrofoam cup full and slowly sipped. When finished, he crushed the cup and tossed it into the waste basket.

    “Where we at?” Our boss asked as he walked out of the office.

    “Four DDA’s,” I said as he approached.

    “Two more to go.” he said cupping his hand over his eyes like a visor; the Anchor tattoo now poking out of his rolled up shirt sleeves. “We’re close,” he said. “I can see the shore.”

     I stared at him. My boss, the Captain, just holding the pose like he was stranded at sea; searching for any sign of life. And when he drew his hand back down from his brow I knew it was up to me. Either sink or swim.

  * * *

     The next day, as I drove to work, I knew it would be different now that Brian’s cube would be empty, the numbers having gotten the best of him and I still needed to call my friends to let them know they now had seven accounts each and assumed they wouldn’t be happy with me.

     I sat down in my cube and was greeted by the familiar painting. The same blues, the same greens, the same yellows, and the stagecoach conductor- still frozen- still riding the coach like a bronco, still smiling