by Don Hall

"Good morning, Mrs. Nygard. This is Don with Amoco Multicard. Do you have sixty seconds to chat with me about an extraordinary offer I have reserved just for you today?"

"What? Amoco? Oh, I don't need another credit card."

"I agree! Who needs another credit card? That's why the offer today. The Multicard is not a credit card. It's not a debit card. It's the functionality of a host of incredibly valuable services all wrapped up into one card you can carry. Does your husband have a Swiss Army knife?"

"Well, my husband passed away two years ago."

"My condolences, Mrs. Nygard. Can I call you Pam? Is that OK?"

"Uh...sure."

"Great! Your husband, god rest his soul, surely had a Swiss Army knife. The Multicard is like the Swiss Army knife of credit and debit cards. Pam, I'm sure you have a busy day, which is why I grabbed you early, but if you could give me one solid minute of your busy morning, I'd love to tell you about the many features we offer. Does that sound like a plan?"

After two years of classes at the Quaker College, surrounded by true believers in Christ, living in the green pea house, performing in original (Christian) musicals and Wichita Shakespeare in the Park, I jumped ship. No longer content with cleaning restaurants while the entire city slept, I needed a change.

The atmosphere at Friends University had become too confusing. By day, praying before classes, music theory courses that spent as much time on Bach's faith in God as he had in chord structure, followed by Christian girls who would give it up at the mere suggestion of sex as long as no one knew about it and the same university politics one would find anywhere without the banner of faux morality was a mess. I quit the job, applied, and was rewarded with a full-ride scholarship to play my horn in the marching band, jazz band, and symphony down south. I moved to Arkansas to become a Razorback.

I didn't need a job in Fayetteville. My room and board, classes, books, and food were all covered by the scholarship. That summer, however, found me living back at home in Wichita with no cash for which to fuel my increased desire to get wasted and date. Thus my introduction to pre-internet cold call sales.

This was years before the internet and spam emails and the like so it all boiled down to cold calling in a giant room of half cubicles, landline phones, and a folio filled with scripts. I came in and was ushered into a conference room. It was time for the day-long training. I was to be paid a half day's dough to train and then hop on the phone the next day.

I noticed in the training an odd but predictable dichotomy. The training was designed to sell me on the idea that what I was doing was specifically not high pressure sales. In bold writing it told me that “CUSTOMERS are not cold statistics. They are human beings with feelings and emotions like our own. CUSTOMERS are people who bring us their wants. It is our job to fill those wants. CUSTOMERS require trust, are respected, cared for, and delighted.” I liked this. It felt right and ethical.

On the other side of the training was the script. The trainer was adamant that I follow the script verbatim. The hard sell from his angle culminated in a semi-rant about people who thought they were smarter than the system and his assurance that, no, I was not smarter than the script. If I held true to the exact wording, I would succeed.

There were the five commitments required from each customer. There were the six key principles to keep at the front of every interaction (my favorite being “Control direction, timing, and conditions of each conversation”).

The script with its pages of rebuttals and forced language (“NAME — from what you’ve told me, you do know that you spend almost 40 percent of your gas needs on interest charges and you'll need to change those terms soon—whether you want to or not—right?”) was dripping with manipulation.

Who were we calling? Someone who signed up for information or took a survey and now were in the system would get a call and be strong-armed into getting the card (with all the padded-on fees and inflated interests rates with which these sorts of cards are loaded up). The script was filled with pages of rebuttals—the built-in responses to any objection someone might have for denying the rep a sale.

”I appreciate that. However…”

Every objection was appreciated and we never said But. However was the go-to vernacular. No matter what their objection might be, the goal was to steer them back to the pitch. Sales were rarely focused on the positives of the product. Rather, drilling down on the negatives of their lives the product could improve was the dance.

I was relentless. I never took No for an answer. I was really good at it.

"The Multicard is not a credit card. It's not a debit card. It's the functionality of a host of incredibly valuable services all wrapped up into one card you can carry. Do you have a Swiss Army knife?"

"I don't need another credit card. Sorry."

"I appreciate that. Believe me. Cut 'em all up, right? However, with the Multicard you're eliminating the need for any of the others. Trash them all and reduce the clutter down to one incredible card that has the added features of discounts on gas purchases, cash back for purchases made at selected fast food places—say, are you like me and can't get enough of those McDonald's french fries?"

"French..."

"There just something about McDonald's fries that eclipse every other french fry out there, right? McDonald's has partnered with the Multicard and you can buy a mountain of those incredible fries for 35% off the regular price. You could get that 35% discount every time you get a fry craving."

I was a star. I could bank a sale after hearing the words "I'm not interested" seven times on one phone call. The floor manager would write my name and hourly sales up on the white board at the front of room and bark out "C'mon, team! Hall is killing it! Get ruthless and match his numbers."

I was so good that a month into my summer, I was promoted to floor manager, running around, checking other rep's phone calls and motivating them to close those sales. The people on the other end of the calls were simply numbers to tally on a white board in the front of the room. They were mostly lonely and wanted to talk to someone. They were easy pickings.

At first, it was thrilling. I was setting company records every day. I was bringing home some bank. I got bonuses and my natural over-achiever mentality was fed.

One of the girls on the calling floor, Tonya, took a shine to me. We went out. We had sex out of the gate. We were digging each other. One night, after the pheromone soup started to fade a bit in the background, Tonya wanted to ask a genuine question that had plagued her.

"How do you avoid feeling shitty about selling these cards to so many older folks who don't need them?" she asked.

"Huh? That's the gig. We don't sell those cards, we don't make any money."

"But doesn't it bother you any? I kind of feel like crap after a shift. I keep thinking about all of these poor people who can't afford these things and that we just hammer them over and over until they sign up for the card to be polite. I dunno. It seems... unethical or something."

"I guess I hadn't thought about it."

"Yeah. It feels like a game. The numbers on the white board, the constant cheerleading. During the shift, I get all that. It's kinda fun, even. But after, I think about the people I talked into signing up and remember they're people, you know?"

Truthfully, I'd only seen Tonya as a quick summer piece of ass up until that point. The problem she awoke was real, though. This felt like a game of numbers but behind those numbers were living and breathing humans not willingly participating in the game. It was manipulation on a person-to-person scale that I suddenly realized was staining my soul or something.

It was grotesque and awful and I was really fucking good at it. I spent the weekend thinking about this state of affairs. On one hand, the cash was good and the nearly constant state of affirmation was intoxicating. On the other, I was exactly the kind of sales asshole I hated getting a call from.

I quit the next day.

Being really good at something truly heinous was simply not my goal as a person. There are plenty of people who can sell stuff. There is certainly a segment of them who go to any length, any form of manipulation and intimidation, to make that precious coin. I decided I wanted nothing to do with that.

Tonya dumped me a week later. She stayed on at the phone bank and started dating a different supervisor.