At about eleven thirty I heard voices in our parking lot. The window in my second floor office looked out over the roof of a neighborhood bar and grill that housed a pigeon coop belonging to the son of the bar's owner. Not surprisingly the pigeons wouldn't always deposit their droppings on their own roof; in fact my window bore the results of thousands of fly byes. Spring like weather, it was after all late April, allowed me to avoid the speckled view by opening the window and looking down and to the left just in time to see Rev. Hollingsworth and his troops forming in the lot. It was also important that I remembered to close that window.
On my way downstairs I told Janie I'd be gone about an hour but to please write down my messages. Janie was new, new to us and this type of job and seemingly new to this world. I'd hired her only days before with the full knowledge she was getting the job based mostly on her body with some points for her face. Brains and experience were not in the calculation and I was more than willing to take the good with the bad.
"Hello Sean, I think we're all here and ready for action. What do you think?"
I had to hand it to the Rev.; this was easily the best looking group of men he'd ever brought me. A replacement tie here, a safety pin there and we had a fresh platoon of reinforcements. I told Hollingsworth I'd give him a call when it was time to pick up his guys, thanked him and watched him and the very fat Mrs. Hollingsworth get in their church van and family car and head back to the Grace Congregational Church from whence they came. Whenever I saw them together, and that was only when they were transporting some current inhabitants of their shelter to our parking lot, I couldn't take my eyes off of the rolls of fat hanging from Mrs. Hollingsworth's arms. Typically, one would see that fat hang from the upper arm area but the Rev.'s wife, seemingly sweet and dedicated to her husbands causes--and he had many as do all good men of the cloth-- had nearly as much fat hanging from her forearms. Once I wondered what the rest of her looked like under her clothes, but only once.
Representing as many different food companies as we did resulted in us always having tons of samples around, just the kind of payoff Rev. Hollingsworth was happy to exchange for the temporary use of his transient flock and a terrific arrangement as far as I was concerned.
I ushered my new sales representatives into a small meeting room adjacent to the much larger meeting room where my more experienced workers were already gathered. Recognizing only a few faces from the last time we went this route I felt I needed to give them the entire speech very slowly with purposeful redundancy.
"If anyone in the front of the room asks if there are any questions do not raise your hand. Does everyone understand that? No matter what urge you may develop during the presentation to our prospective clients you cannot get up. Does everyone understand?" Some of the men looked rather old. "If you have to take a piss real badly do it in your pants. I will pay you for a new pair. Does everyone understand? You don't raise your hand and you don't get up. Period, ever, for no reason. Does everyone understand?"
A hand went up from a man looking somewhat less worse for wear than his brethren, if somewhat older.
"May I ask what the name of the company you're interviewing for is?" he said with a clear-eyed smile and remarkably good diction. I'd seen guys like him before in every batch of temps from the shelter. Down on their luck after a productive life, here only the result of some circumstance or condition the onset of which struck them hard, fast and true. I'd tried hiring a few of them over the years but always with the same results. Whatever it was that got them into Rev. Hollingsworth's shelter had attached itself to their mind, giving them only the briefest moments of adaptability to the real world.
"It's called Randu Hot Sauce. You'll all have samples to take back with you plus five dollars in cash. Any other questions?"
From a man in the back, too short for me to see completely from where I stood. "Can I go to the men's room now?"
"Yes," I replied, "anyone else who needs to go follow me and this gentlemen." To what appeared to be a plurality of the fifteen men I pointed out our men's room a few feet away and asked them and the empty bladdered group to move to the main meeting room as soon as they were ready.
It was nearing one o'clock, the prescribed time of the sales presentation and we were ready. Fifty-five chairs filled with forty-three men and twelve women. The Scully Retail Sales Force and their temporary--VERY temporary-- reinforcements. Jim had been successful in talking Scully into not showing up; we were ready to explain to Wasserman and his Randu people that our owner regretted the fact that he had to be out of town, meeting on the advisory board of one of our major principles. We figured by the time Wasserman was with us long enough to realize that no company with any sense would put Scully on their board Randu would be half-way to oblivion anyway and he wouldn't bother to change brokers in the middle of It's death knell. If this is sounding as if we were long on experience in these types of situations we were. I liked to think that we were doing something that had to be done, a hospice if you will, for products whose time was nearly up. I must admit it wasn't a concept I liked to dwell on.
It was approaching one-thirty when we got the word from Bobby, given sentry duty at a first floor window facing the parking lot, that Wasserman and his people had arrived. I reminded everyone one last time of the importance of being quiet and still throughout the next couple of hours and wiped the sweat on my hands on my slacks. In a moment the Randu crowd, five strong, was in the room shaking hands with Jim and me. Mr. Wasserman, younger looking and more trim than I had expected (now why would I have expected an overweight Wasserman? probably being around Scully too long, but I'll get to that) was a pleasant if not gregarious man who soon announced that we had one hour to 'tell us why we should hire Scully Sales.’ He explained that they were interviewing another broker at four- o-clock that day and that their office was almost an hour away. Jim looked at me for a very brief moment when Wasserman said that, as if to let me know that he knew what I knew. That Wasserman was full of shit. There were no food brokers in the NY area an hour away that would even consider interviewing for a company like Randu. They paid a one and one-half percent commission, in a business where virtually every company paid three percent of dollar sales and up. It was a product that had already lost points of distribution in the supermarkets we serviced and there would be no turnaround for this company. But Wasserman was sharp and experienced enough to know that after sixty minutes, indeed after thirty minutes, you would have all the information needed to allow you to make a reasoned decision on whether or not to rent a sales force begging for your business. And furthermore, the three of us, Jim, Wasserman and me all knew that Randu and Scully Sales was a match. A perfect match.
With the Randu boys sitting in the front row--they had cushions on their folding chairs-- Jim kicked off the abbreviated presentation with a very brief history of Scully Sales. Five minutes on how his college roommate, Jack Scully started the business from his car. A near tearjerker Jim liked to call it. he'd told it so many times that he confided in me that he now had absolutely no idea what was fact or fiction anymore, a damn good thing for a story teller I would think. He neatly segued into what we were doing today, the -- mostly -- food companies we represented, the successes we'd had, and how strong our sales force was. With that, on cue, our five member headquarter--not to be confused with our alleged fifty-five person retail sales force, a sales force that called on the stores themselves-- walked in the back door of the room. They stood there; very uncomfortably--very much as the contestants on that old TV show 'bowling for dollars' did-- and waited for Jim to introduce them. He took a moment to give a few facts --mostly bullshit-- about each of them and asked Wasserman and his boys if they would like to ask any of the now freely and noticeably perspiring men any questions.
"Who calls on A&P?" Harvey Wasserman called out. Jim whispered the man's name in Wasserman's ear. Richard Larson, a journeyman salesmen at best, a guy coasting out his last few years in the business at worst, stepped forward as if he were volunteering to be executed for his religious beliefs. Straight and tall he stood, eyes fixed directly at Wasserman as he nearly shouted, "I do sir!" Standing next to Jim I was able to hear what amounted to a muffled laugh. I looked at Jim and then back, closely at Larson and as I did our salesman standing next to him whispered in his ear. Poor Larson looked down to see a piece of his shirt sticking through his fly. What few hadn't noticed it were now drawn to Larson's groin area and the laughs built quickly as he turned away and adjusted his outfit.
"Sorry about that sir", the now tomato red-faced journeyman salesman stated. He spoke his words looking at Mr. Wasserman but then dropped his head. Many of the people in the room were still laughing but Wasserman must have felt what I was feeling.
"I know you New York guys, anything for a laugh. Good job there, Richard. If you can sell our products at A&P as good as you can set up a laugh we'll be just fine over there." Right then I made a mental note that this Harvey Wasserman guy was all right.
As the director of the Scully Sales retail department I came on next and took us up to Jim's closing. With the very depressed time frame I had only enough time to introduce our six supervisors--one was made up, remember we had fifteen bogus employees in that room-- and give our perspective new principles--a word food brokers most often used when speaking to a manufacturer about ANOTHER company they represented-- a basic overview of our operation. I was about to turn back to Jim when Harvey Wasserman asked me if he could ask a few questions of our retail sales force.
"Of course Mr. Wasserman," as I lost half a breath.
"Does anyone use Randu at home?" Oh shit. I'd told my people, real and fake, NOT to raise their hands no matter what. I thought about saying something like 'it's okay, don't be shy,' but that would sound as if I were asking them to raise their hands even if they didn't use a product which by the way, I later found to be total crap. We all know how amazing it is that so much can run through a mind in a few seconds of panic, but this time nothing much was going on in my head. Then it happened. One of the men raised his hand and then others joined in until at least half of them had their arms extended to the heavens that I felt were now shining down on me. And they were, but not for the reason I had assumed.
"Thanks ladies and gentlemen, just wanted to see how many of you would lie to help your company land an account. Good for you Jim, and maybe good for us. If they can't be loyal to you how in hell could I expect them to be loyal to us? That's all I've got." With that he turned and made a motion to Jim to wrap things up.
One of the best moments I'd experienced in eight years of working for Scully lasted less than thirty seconds. At the end of the round of applause spontaneously given to Wasserman everyone sat down except one man. He remained standing. I recognized him as a member of Rev. Hollingsworth's flock, the one who had asked the name of the company we were interviewing for. I'd have to say he was following my rule against raising his hand as he was just standing there. Wasserman didn't notice immediately but Jim did.
"Sean, one of your men seems to have a question." Jim hadn't lasted in the business, lasted working for a oddball like Scully without being sharp, without being quick sharp. He didn't know the guy's name of course but he was able to throw the situation my way without Wasserman figuring that out. Now, what I would do would be my problem. I know Jim loves me but he loves himself just a little bit more.
"Yes, do you have a question for Mr. Wasserman?" Smooth enough I thought.
"Well, I was just wondering what Randu's general plans were to turn their franchise around?"
Oh shit rattled around my head several times. I expected the worst and wasn't disappointed.
"That's a fair question, ah I didn't get your name sir."
"David, Mr. Wasserman, David Boardman."
"David, we certainly do have a plan to turn our business around and I would have spent some time going over it but we were a bit pressed, running late you know. But I have a question for you. Your use of the word franchise and the way you speak, you have a very impressive delivery if I may say so. How long have you been with Scully, what do you do exactly?"
I remember that breathing was becoming a real problem for me.
"I'm rather new here Mr. Wasserman, I'll be calling on supermarkets I suspect."
"Well, sounds like you hit the jackpot Sean." Oh yeah, lucky me. I was trying to come up with a way to end this when Wasserman decided to ask another question.
"Where have you worked before David?"
"Well, I was with General Foods in the sixties and seventies, spent some time with Progresso Foods and my last stop before here was with Marsh Foods."
"Were you a salesman for Marsh, David?"
"No sir, I was director of research and development. Actually, another man and myself split the duties. I headed up the research side. That's what I was getting at when I posed the question to you. It's been intimated today that Randu's sales have slipped and I was wondering if you and your people have identified the problem area, demographics-wise."
I was careful not to look in Jim's direction and didn't even consider looking at Wasserman. In fact, looking back I can't picture what the hell I was looking at, though it should have been a quick synopsis of my entire life. If we blew this account after talking Scully into not being there he would have had to blame someone and it wouldn't have been Jim. Jack Scully would take Jim Lohan into the John with him to get his opinion on how much toilet paper he should use to wipe his skinny ass. he'd pray to God that Jim's estimate would be on the low side but he would take the advice. Jim's gotten Jack out of so many fucked up situations -- nearly all caused by Jack, I may add -- that even a selfish, self-centered drunk that he most certainly is clearly feels totally indebted. So as second in command Scully would make me the fall guy. And with our past history--I'll get to that-- even Jim wouldn't be able to save me this time, he's saved me as often as is humanly possible for one man to save another--and I'll get to that. But just because Jim wouldn't have been able to save me with Scully didn't mean he couldn't get me out of this one.
"Harvey (Jim had such a good feel for stuff like this, like
knowing when to take Wasserman up on his offer to have us call
him Harvey) now I know why David's voice if not face has been in
a way familiar to me. Sean's told me so much about him, that news
announcer voice, how he retired from Marsh and couldn't find
enough to keep him busy around the house and somehow, through a
friend of a friend we wound up being fortunate enough to be able
to bring a man like David into our organization. Great question
David. Unless anyone else has something REALLY important to add I
think we need to let Mr. Wasserman and his people get out of
here. Our thanks to all of you for coming, I'll walk Mr.
Wasserman out, Sean I know you have some things to talk to these
folks about." So that's how Jim saved my ass for about the
seventy-ninth time and that's why Jim is Jim and I'm me.
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Material Copyright © 1998-2003 by Jim Bearden