A Tale of Two Jerrys: Garcia and Lewis

“When life looks like easy street, there is danger at your door,” Jerry Garcia sang in my head, as Mr. Pahn said good morning.

Just like that, he called me up to inform me he had decided to end the tele-marketing program, because he just was not booking as much business as he should, and now has plenty of time to make the calls himself. He could no longer pay me $10 per hour for each hour of calling plus $20 per census, but I could call all I wanted on my own, and he would pay me $90 per census. Well shit on that, thought I. I decided once again I had to take things in to my own hands, so off I went to Craig’s List to seek my forturne, yet again.

This time, I used everything I learned from Mr. Pahn and Boss J: it is all a numbers game. I started applying for everything, indiscriminantly, I did not care what, afterall, I had sold perfume to old Mexican men in gas station parking lots. I was one step away from being a whore and/or a debt collector at this point; my ego had dissolved along with my shame.

I got one temp agency on the phone, and they lured me down to their office with their bullshit. Of course, by the time I got down there, the $11 an hour tele-marketing job had turned into a $10 an hour fundraising job. It was for the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s Annual “Lock Up” Program, you know, Jerry’s kids, except no Jerry Lewis, and no telethon, just me on the outbound end of a phone calling up executives and business owners and putting them under arrest “for having a big heart.” A friend of mine did this a couple of years ago, back before the whole world went broke, back when it actually made sense. The MDA puts these “business leaders” under arrest and they have to reach out to their network to raise their bail money.

The temp recruiter, Angie, coached me on how to conduct myself during the interview. I have to be high energy, and positive. Fortunately, I have been trained by Boss J, Mr. Pahn, and Stella Adler’s key disciples, so I know I can probably handle it.

The next day I booked another interview with another temp agency. They wanted me to take a typing test. I had never taken a typing test, or typing. I can type fast because I write fast, but this test was about typing something from a page. Luckily, I have pretty close to a photographic memory, so I just memorized as much as I could and just typed it, all the while hearing my father’s voice in my head.

When I was in high school, he constantly told me that I would never amount to nothing if I did not take a typing class. I was busy taking other classes that I thought would increase my chances of getting a scholarships to colleges far away from them, and I did succeed in that. But I wondered, as I typed, had he gotten the last laugh afterall. Had I in fact, after all of that education, amounted to nothing? Isn’t that one explanation of why someone with my education and corporate background was now taking a typing test at the age of 36 in the ass of nowhere Cerritos?

Ding! Time’s up! Time for me to take me seat at the boardroom with the recruiter, who would reveal my typing speed to me.

“43 words per minute. Not bad. A little above average.”

“Wow!,” I said, “My father used to always tell me I would never amount to anything if I didn’t take typing, but I guess he was wrong!”

As soon as the words came out of my mouth and silently started flagellating myself. “Goddammit, why did you do this yet again, why did you say something negative? You cannot say negative shit in a sales environment, you have to be positive and upbeat at ALL times.” My mind drifted back to my first meeting with Boss J. We were watching a Saturday Night Live rerun with Michael Jordan as a guest star. He wondered aloud how much the Championship rings were worth or insured for, and then a piece of verbal diarhea exploded from my mouth. I felt compelled to share the negative bit of trivia, that when Michael Jordan’s father was murdered, he was wearing a Championship ring. I beat myself up in the same way as soon as it came out of my mouth, but tried to play it off, like I don’t know how this negative thought got in here and came out my mouth; ponies, butterflies, daisies.

Anyway, the recruiter unveiled the wonderful new opportunity for me, that paid as much as $12 an hour. It was fundraising for the MDA. “Do you know how to be a phone actress?,” she asked.

“Oh honey, you have no idea,” I said with my inside voice.

“You have to be up and one from the minute you walk in the door at the MDA. When they ask questions, your hand has to be the first in the air. If you don’t make your quotas, they let you go.”

“What are the bonuses for achieving quotas?” I asked.

“The bonus is you get to keep your job.”

Columbus Day: A Day to Celebrate the Colombians in My Life

And not just the ones from Columbia, South Carolina and Columbia, Missouri….I’m talking about the ones from Colombia, South America, most of whom think Christopher Columbus, or Cristoforo Colombo, or Cristobal Colon raped and pillaged their ancestors…But the fact of the matter is….if you’re from the Americas, at some point you have to be grateful that your European ancestors did make it here and did rape your American ancestors so that you can exist now. It may have sucked for your American ancestors, but it sure worked for your European ones, and for you.

The politics of ethnic cleansing aside, today I celebrate the four most important Colombians in my life: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Shakira, Juanes, and last, but certainly not least, Fernando, who is actually the perfect combination of the first three.....although most people only get to see his Shakira side.....and although I’ll be the first to admit that if they haven’t already made a gay porn version of “Love in the Time of Cholera,” Fernando should definitely play the role of the doctor, and they should definitely call it “Love in the Time of Mariconeria”…..All that said, Fernando is as rich in spirit as Pablo Escobar was in riches of this earth.

He has straightened me out more than once, with his consejos, kindness, and other acoutrement….which I am quite sure would also be found in Shakira’s make up bag. He has a supreme capacity for foregiveness, unless you are a straight guy who cheats on one of the women in his life.

In a recent viewing of “Sex in the City,” the movie, he confided that although he thinks Steve is a cutie patootie, he would never be able to condone the cheating, and hence, Miranda would just have to move to LA, where her gay Latino friends would help her raise her baby in Samantha’s condo next door to Gilles’.

I am reminded that Fernando is the most conservative of Mis Gran Hermanas, as he adjusts his bifocals to get a better look at the photos on one of his bootie call websites. “Mija, come look at this guy’s lips,” he exclaims with delight. “Now let’s look at his naked pictures….”

“The African King had nice lips.” I say.

Busily multi-tasking, Fernando looks up from his screen filled with closeups of various guys’ money shots, and peers over his bifocals sighing, “I know Mija, but the bottom line is he cannot provide for you, and therefore he is not appropriate.”

Part of me knows that Fernando has spoken the truth yet again. He periodically sums up huge truths with a one liner. He came to visit me in Brooklyn once, and we looked so out of place there, like two tropical birds next to a little wooden bird house made by a Cub Scout. We made the best of it, but by the end of the evening he made the astute observation, that maybe LA is the perfect median point between the South and New York. It’s sunny and warm, people have time to talk and hang out, but they’re liberal AND friendly. I did not think there could be such a things as a rude liberal that has no time for you until I spent some time in New York City.

All the self help books say you have to love yourself first before you can really love anybody else or they can love you. My late blooming on the path of self-love may explain many things in my life….but I begin to practice it, by seeing myself the way my dog and some of the people in my life see me, the people that don’t hold back. Fernando does not hold back, not with plants, not with animals, not with people. He throws brutal honesty in there for the humans, but increases his level of tact depending on how much he cares about your feelings. I appreciate his tact and caring with me. I can see it upsets him when I do not take care of myself. I now see that not taking care of myself is just as wrong as ripping one of his orchids out of its coconut pod. I reflect on how guilty I would feel if he left me in charge of his plants and I let them die, and apply that to myself.

Fernando believes in living every day as if it were his last, in every way. He leaves no regrets. He leaves nothing unexpressed. He leaves nothing unconquered, or unconquisted. He is a fearless explorer, pushing past the possibility of getting gobbled by sea serpents, or sailing off the edge of the eath, or it ending in 2012, entering foreign lands, and thriving in them, and he is also a native, loving and caring for the plants, animals, and people around him, until he returns to them.

Dialing for Dollars

But enough of love and war, I need to get back to finding new ways to make money, since my perfume career had come to an abrupt halt, and I have yet to start earning money consulting to small businesses or by resurrecting Empire State Chocolate. A return to the insurance career which I started in mid July seemed like the logical choice.

The Lawd/Universe has a sick sense of humor. As I have mentioned many times, I was the girl who could barely sell Girl Scout Cookies. If I invented sushi, I would call it dead raw fish. My sales challenges contributed to the cryonization of Empire State Chocolate. I have overcome and mastered many things in life that came very difficult to me: networking mixers, the Spanish language, driving a stick shift, learning to do so in the mountains of Spain with driving instructors who mostly speak Catalan, which I do not. In some ways I consciously and unconsciously implored the Lawd/Universe to help me develop sales skills, preferably at no cost to me.

In some ways, the Lawd/Universe granted my wish. I began looking for jobs to supplement my income in June. Generating Leads for the Pahn Insurance Agency presented itself as my first and only opportunity. I will not sugar coat it: it is tele-marketing. Mr. Pahn gives me a list of 100 or 200 businesses and I have to called them all and cajole them to not hang up on me, revealhow many people they employ, allow me to tempt them with the prospect of getting a better benefit value for the buck, and then provide me with the name, age, zip code, and dependent information for each employee. Easier said than done, since one in ten is disconnected, about three in ten can barely make payroll, and about three in ten would never spend the money giving their employees health insurance. Of the two in ten who do consider providing health insurance for their employees, at least one of them gets it from their brother-in-law or best friend from high school, and would never consider changing even if it saves them thousands of dollars per year. People do not like to change, even when it behooves them.

The irony of the situation is not lost on me. I work as a 1099 contractor, which means my “employer,” Mr. Pahn does not provide me with any benefits, and I call up struggling business owners and attempt to convince them to provide benefits to their employees, something I could obviously not afford to do myself, when I had employees.

Although I do not particularly like what I do, I genuinely like Mr. Pahn. I learn from him. He has the ultimate sales personality. He tells me to always agree with the customer, something I never would have thought to do. I respect Mr. Pahn for attempting to do things differently for this economy. He says he doesn’t know what’s happening, he said it was easier to make money back in the height of the 70s gas crisis than it is now. He asked me if he thought it would make difference if I bribe people with a $5 Starbucks card if they give me the census data. I told Mr. Pahn that I was no marketing genius, but when I struggled to make payroll, a $5 Starbucks card would not be enough to send me on a health insurance shopping spree for my employees.

Still, we press on. I have worked my way up. When I started off I made $5 per hour, and $10 per census. After I received three censuses, I made $7 per hour, and $13 per census. Finally, after I received eleven censuses, I made $10 per hour, and $20 per census. At least I felt like I was on easy street, but getting there was not easy. People hung up on me and said mean things, which I did not like, although the tutelage of Boss J helped me to get over that.

Then Mr. Pahn changed the rules. From now on, he would only accept censuses for businesses with at least three employees, and we must get at least one census for every ten hours of calling. Since I already have two censuses, that means I can mindlessly call for twenty hours this week and get paid for it no matter what. Is the universe great or what?