Pay Day at Vector Marketing

Preface:



Several years ago, I believe it was 2003, I had the idea to write a screenplay about a young 20 something year old 'man' who gets a job working for CUTCO selling knives. The whole premise of the story was that he was something of an arrogant nere do well who always attributed his failures and shortcomings to other people instead of taking any accountability himself. What he finds working for CUTCO, is that for some reason, he is found to be extremely appealing to married middle aged house wives and that there is a direct correlation between the nature of various 'services' rendered for the matron of the house hold, and how much of the product they actually purchase. He moves quickly up the ladder to become the top selling sales rep in his district and is the featured guest at a conference held in Branson, MO for up and coming employees sponsored by the Ronald Reagan Foundation, which is where the story begins and ends.



I put this notion away in the back of my mind reserved for the index of story/screenplay/novel ideas for a long time until I recently got a call asking if I wanted to come in for an interview. I needed more money, and jumped at the chance. The strange thing is, is that the notion didn't come back to me when I got the call, or even when I went in for the interview. It came in the middle of a meeting on how to sell the products. There was something in the delivery of my boss who was giving the break down on how to make sales that began to echo that imaginary character in the aborted story I had begun so long ago. But it wasn't until yesterday, that I really thought about taking the enterprise seriously,and get down to actually writing something like what I had in mind 7 years ago.



Chapter __: Payday



I had spent a good portion of the day working on various things in my apartment until about 3:45 when I decided to go down to the Vector office (the egg central for Knoxville CUTCO) and pick up my paycheck. I was feeling a little hungry, and juggled the notion of grabbing a quick lunch with the ten bucks I had left from selling some music the day before, but I opted for business over pleasure, and proceeded to the office first. When I got there, the first thing I saw upon entering the floor where the office was, was a young man, around 19, wearing a black baseball cap, a baggy white tee shirt and jeans, sitting in an office chair with a binder, a laptop, a cell phone, and a cell phone charger who appeared to be under siege by a legion of loose office paper surrounding his chair, preventing him from getting up. "This is an omen I thought" as I began making my way closer to the Vector office. At the very end of the hall, there is something of a vestibule, a passage to the stair cases that go down the side of the back of the building where Victoria, a rather heavy set by pretty and affable black girl was sitting. She waved to me with a smile, and I wove back enthusiastically grinning widely, then entered the office. Just as I expected, the waiting room was dotted with a couple of college students sitting in chairs vacantly while the pale din of the secretaries voices pickering over the phone lines to various naive strangers was mingling with the sound of Star 93.1 and the most offensive pop music one could imagine. I began listening to the lyrics in spite of myself, the lyrics were more suggestive than what I was used to, and I assumed that the man in the song was telling a girl at a club how large his penis was, but I digress. A few seconds upon entering the office, Jessica a tall redheaded somewhat nerdy but confident and attractive young woman appeared from the hallway leading to the meeting room, and informed me that Chad would be with me in a minute for my 'pay check meeting'. "Paycheck meeting?" I said, "I thought we just came in to pick it up." "No, you have to do a progress report with Chad first. He'll be out in a minute. You can phone in some calls while you wait." Here we go I thought. "Well, I don't have any leads right now, I just need to enter my orders into the system." "OK, let me get my laptop she said." I was growing increasingly annoyed that they succeeded yet again in roping me into hanging out in the office for yet another undetermined period of time. Jessica appeared with her computer and turned it on. We sat, waiting for it boot up which turned out to be a bit of an ordeal in and of itself.



I ceased paying attention, but was amused that she was feigning annoyance at the slowness of her computer's boot-up time to put me at ease. I was letting the lyrics of who ever it was just drift into and out of my head while I stared critically at the primitive 3D font that spelled out Vector Marketing Corporation on small the vinyl banner meant to break up the horrifying blankness of the dull office wall. I began musing on the font, all its cheesy kitshcy aspects, and then suddenly it dawned on me. This is 2010! This is it! The future! But not the future of Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, or any of the serious fiction writers, not even close! This was the future of Terry Gilliam, Douglas Addams, and Mike Judge. So much like the present, because really it was. I looked at the white techo fetish looking boom box and thought how this one designed object in the room is the only thing that would give away the fact that this is indeed the future. Not the Vector banner, not the girls typing and talking into a dull hum of soothing noise, just that one boom box. This could have easily been 1997, and in some ways, it seemed to me that it still was. The strange mustyness of the hallway, the music, it was all so familiar, so contemporary in a retroactive type way. I imagined going through a time warp right then and there sitting in that bloody chair, and watching as the boom box changed designs over the year until it was 100 year into the future and it didn't even look like a boom box anymore, yet whatever it was was still sitting on that same bloody shelf next to a bloody standing lamp.



"There we go, finally!" Jessica exclaimed. I chuckled at her desktop and told her I liked it. A sleepy wizard with a sleepy dog cat dragon looking thing wearing a wizard hat asleep at his feet. I'll spare you the details of the tedium involved in documenting my sales because it was just that. What really irritateded me though, was that Chad came into the room, and told me that there was an error with my address in the system. "Oh for the love of god!" I thought. "I've already been here 20 minutes, and I'm no closer to getting paid than I was last week." He told me how much my check would be for though "Sixty Bucks" he said directly. I must have looked surprised and disappointed because he asked me if that was more or less than I thought it would be. Then he explained that it was only for the first 4 appointments and I felt a little better. I then followed him into the meeting room at his request and looked around for a place to sit, opting instead to just meander over to the shelf where the 40 year old CUTCO demo knives were kept. The handles looked like reconfigured bowling ball material to mimic wood grain. But the High Carbon Surgical stainless steel was just as sharp, just as shiny as it was in 1970. The handle was the same design too. Dual-lock ambidextrous to maximize natural hand strength. I imagined that same future forward time warp was happening in the waiting room taking over the rest of the office, and those same knives on a different shelf every few years, in the same brochure configuration, just a sharp, just as shiny as they were in 1970, as they were today.



"Spence, Come in here for a minute" Chad said. "Okay, so how we doin?" He asked with something of a look between desperation, desire and appeasement on his face. It was a strange pleading look, but not an unfamiliar one either. "Fine I said." He gives me deference in a strange kind of way, something in his expression says that he wants my approval. He has it. I like Chad, he's a good guy, a confident guy, a bro kinda guy, a bit like me. We talk a bit, go over my references, and the entire intimidating cross examining process which is a little more intimidating than the prospect of being gummed by a curious infant, not nearly as bad as being interrogated by a suspicious shift manager. I had a few errors that didn't match up with the system. But I got nothing to hide. It's just hard to retroactively fill out a form documenting the people you talked to in the past week or so about knives.



It's just to remind you that behind every beaurocratic corner in this place, is a little trap, a little pop up goblin gotcha moment. I'm pretty clever about it, and I'm a decent actor, so it goes smoothly. It goes back to what I was saying about being gummed by an infant. All the people here are younger than me I suspect. At least there's definitely no one here over 30, or probably 28 for that matter. I kept wanting to equate the experience to a scene from the 'Tria'l, or some kind of Kafkaesque short story, but it's not really like that. It's too banal, too comfy. There's nothing really threatening about it. I'm here to get a check, and these people are all here to make sure it happens, to make sure that other people get checks too. I can't call it dystopian, or perverse, that would be self indulgent and disingenuous. It's just-the contemporary corporate designed future of 2010. Cutco's had this on lock down since the '50's. I could easily know all these people from High School. We could just as easily still BE in high school doing some kind of long form endless civics or econ experiment/project. Not as threatening as the Yale experiment because we're getting paid, but just as nefarious because it just keeps going and no one is there to stop the madness and inform us that we can get back to our normal lives. Victoria came into the room, looking a bit preturbed and asked me when this was going to be over to which I replied, to some self satisfaction, "It's never over."



After my meeting with Chad, I was cornered by Jessica yet again. 'She's perfect for this job.' This is the girl I would have had a crush on in 8th grade. Just barely in my league. That's probably why Chad chose her for the Job. She's too good to be 'the girl next door', that's gross. She's just perfect. I don't want to say no to her. I just want her to keep talking to me in that self imposed naive inflection of which she must be grossly aware. Everyone's 8th grade crush, I thought. "Have you done your phone reference meeting yet she said?" "No." "Do I have to?" She's unphased by the kurtness of my retort. "Yeah. Can you come in tomorrow, or later on tonight?" She says. "Well, can I just do it right now?" I ask, not wanting to come back unless I absolutely had to. "Yeah sure." she said "It only takes about 10 minutes. Hold on I'll be right back." I sat back down, eager to be close to leaving. A shaggy headed 20 something came in wearing shorts a dirty tee shirt and an obviously not yet fulfilled sense of self satisfaction. I felt relieved to see someone came in who vaguely resembled a hipster. He unplugged the boom box right away, and I was thankful (again) for the oppressive silence that suddenly occurred. He looked at me and said, "I like that" "What these?" I said. "Yeah, I don't think I've seen them that long before." Too bad he's a he I thought briefly. "Thanks." I tried to say something witty, but nothing came out. I guess he might as well have been a she at that moment. Jessica came back, leaning slightly into the waiting room, chest first. "Okay, Spencer. Come here." I got up promptly and followed her to the outside hallway. "Okay. Here's what you're going to do. Go the long way down the hall, and go out the right side exit. Stephanie's in her car. It'll be the second one on the left in the lot. You'll just do the training in the car with her." 'How strange' I thought, 'but oddly appropriate.' So, I made my way again down the hall, accompanied by a strange sense of liberation.



'This is Kafkaesque', I thought, 'but not at all, at the same time. It's a kind of Bizzarro world of lurking gruesome horror and surreality, because I'm getting paid for all this inconvenience instead of punished.' I passed the young man in the hat and shirt by the entry to the hallway again, he didn't appear to have moved at all. I attributed it to the army of paper scattered about his feet. I walked down the stairs, self aware. I let fantasy take over. Or tried to. I looked around like a camera. Like I had a camera with me. Blinking for the jump cuts. Panning, moving with a swagger closer to the parking lot and my exit. I winced in the sun and heat, soaked in the humidity, move with confidence to the appointed area.



I only saw one car on the left side of the parking lot though. And there was surely enough, a person in it. All I could make out of it though, was that the door was slightly ajar, and a tan colored somewhat effeminate hand was emerging from it. It didn't seem like it could be her car though. I couldn't imagine a woman that well dressed and composed, genteel in that East Tennessee manner, driving a white sedan that appeared to be so pedestrian. I pressed on, not knowing who was behind it. As I approached, I tried to keep out of the occupant's line of sight and get a glimpse of the face. 'Now it begins, I thought'. This is a very surreal feeling here in this parking lot. I would have liked to have had an out of body experience at that point, follow myself across the lot, and then come back to first person as I approached this ugly weird car and its ugly weird driver. This is something else. Not Kafka, not Lynch, but close. It's something of the self imposed parking lot paranoia I imposed on myself in Eau Claire. If you're REALLY looking for the sinister thing behind the dumpster though, you have to be totally out of control to experience it. I thought about the anecdote in an essay about surrealism that I was reading about Alberto Giaccommetti and Andre Breton walking around a flea market where Giaccommetti found the spoon he needed to model his sculpture after. How perfect and impersonal it's design was, how Breton reflected on his discovery later as a manifestation of his subconscious mind leading him first to meet Breton, then the decision to go to the flea market, and ultimately to that spoon, and then later for Breton to write, and me to read 80 years later, in this, the year of our lord Two Thousand and Ten. This might be something of the same thing. I might see something terrifying in this parking lot yet, but not today. Right now, I'm getting "A Training Session" in Stephanie's car-if I can find it.



I walked the whole way around the building and, then back in on the same side, scanning every car except my own. I jaunted back up the stairs, passed poor seiged black hat, and saw poor black Victoria sitting in the same chair at the end of the hallway. I walked back into the office, and saw Jessica immediately, then I approached. "I didn't see her out there." I said. "here, let me go get Chad." who conveniently appeared from around the corner, right on cue. "He said he couldn't find her." Said Jessica. Another mini catastrophe. So the three of us went back to his office again. "She went to go to her car to charge her phone." He informed me. He dialed the number. No answer. We could all here her dispassionately cordial voice coming through the speaker phone appologizing for her absence. 'Well looks like I'm stuck again.' I thought. But I wasn't gonna go back and sit in the waiting room again, and they knew that, so Jessica led me out of the office and down the stairs. I was so enamoured by the whole situation, that I grinned widely and began chuckling silently inspite of myself. I was on. Switch to camera two, follow them down. We passed Victoria who saw how bemused I was. I imagine she thought the two us were going to go do something naughty together. 'Why else would he be smiling like that?' As we approached the landing, Stephanie appeared from around the corner, and there was relief!



"We were just looking for you!" I said.



"Yeah" Jessica chimed in finishing my statement "He needs to do the cold-call training."



"I told you to send anyone that needed me down to my car she said."



"I went" I replied, but I didn't see you.



"Well, I took off about five minutes ago and came back.



"That solves everything!" I said. "That's about when I went to look for you."



"Well, here" she said, and handed me a couple wrinkled forms one of which had "Jeff Gamboa's Magical 1997 Approach" in a primitive Helvetica type-face printed across the top of it. We stood in the hall and role played. She read to me, I responded, and that was it. "Well that was painless I said." "Yeah, it's not that bad she replied." I suddenly remembered I was hungry in a wave of churning desire. "Well I think I'm gonna go get some lunch now." Stephanie looked at me in that focused, vacant, inquisitive manner and with an apparent air of authority responded "Lunch? It's closer to Dinner time now."



grumble.



So, I began making my way out of the office for the last time that day, relieved that I had yard work to do that was keeping me from going on the Nashville trip the next day. I passed the guy in the cap, and the papers, and the desperation he did not yet know, and said I said "good luck!" Then I got in my car, crossed the parking lot off to Charro's with my last 10 bucks, totally unaware that a stranger was going to pick up the tab for my Burrito dinner.