Take the Next Road on your Left (6)

I was pleased with the hiatus. As a man of discipline the last few hours I’d felt like a neurotic in the middle of a disaster scenario.
Firstly I needed to recall exactly what had happened. Sure, I’d been disturbed, momentarily, by the implausible actions of the Sat-Nav, but I hadn’t left the road – that much was proved. She definitely ran out in front – she hit me. Despite the distraction the collision was inevitable. I’d been informed she wasn’t dead but as reassuring as that was she may be hurt badly or worse disabled. I’d have to live with that – even though innocent, I’d be saddled with guiltless guilt; the kind that foisted its irrationality on all but the most acute dullard.
Secondly I should phone Hardman. By now he’d be fully aware of the reason behind my non-appearance at the conference, certainly after the phone call from Crew Cut, but I doubted whether my interrogator had elucidated my blamelessness in the matter. There was little I could do regarding my victim, but I must get hold of Hardman.
He was new. Headhunted in from a more successful competitor of ours, he had one agenda – to propel his new employer to the head of the pack.
The branch manager organised a local meeting for the area reps a month ago to break the news. The focus was going to be on measured performance aligned to a greater proportion of closing rates. Too many sales had petered out behind the two week cancellation period allotted to the clients.
“If they cancel you don’t lose one sale you lose three!” barked the powerful vocal chords of Hardman on the promotional DVD playing out on the office 42” plasma screen.
“Firstly, the sale itself; secondly the chance to revisit the client and resell to them because (huge pause) they won’t let you back through the door and lastly any opportunity for future sales”
I spied bottoms shuffling and a series of legs crossed and uncrossed like a parade of seated Tiller Girls with St Vitus Dance. But my sphincter wasn’t itching uncomfortably. My record was imperious.
You’ve got to have direction. You set yourself goals and targets. Then you work out how you achieve them. Too many people come into this business with their heads up their rectums. They think the first door they knock will welcome them with open arms and buy everything they’ve got to sell. They soon become lost, meandering souls wondering what to do next.
They leave, eventually, either broke or discouraged, and revert back, if they can, to dead-end jobs or careers more circulatory than Spaghetti Junction.
Not me. The last time one of my sales defaulted I knew I’d never get another appointment. I couldn’t sleep. I was one mother-fucker of a salesman and consequently attracted a harem of loser whores who were just waiting for me to screw up. So I got myself a strategy.
The guy living next door to me was an aspiring actor or, in other words, starving. I offered him the means to pay his next month’s rent and wrote him out a little scene, based on an actual case study, albeit requiring a performance more suited to radio than the silver screen. It was a risk but relatively inexpensive considering the price waiting to be extracted from the blood lust baying of the hounds of failure hell.
I made him make the call from my house, in case extra coaching was required.
“Hello Mr Bow, I’m from General Insurance Transaction Services and…”
“Go away” Mean Mr Bow ripped into my protégé.
“I know it’s a sad day for you but I only want five minutes” Nice I thought.
“Sad, what the hell would I be sad for?”
“The disqualification”
“I haven’t entered any competitions”
“Hardly Mr Bow, but are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m alright – you’re the one that sounds like a nutcase”
“It’s the thirty thousand” the budding Olivier cut to the chase interpreting correctly my overt scissor mime.
“Thir…thirty thousand - thirty thousand what?”
I touched my nose. I knew the guy was an old ‘blether’ as my mother would say and this was too juicy a piece of bait not to snap at.
“The insurance for your wife”
“What insurance?”
“Didn’t you speak with one of my staff yesterday?”
“No”
“This is Mr Clarence Bow of 32 Glenrosa Avenue?”
“You bleeding idiot; I’m Clifford Bow. You’re talking to the wrong man”
“Oh my God I’m so sorry. I’ll have to gear myself up for this phone call again”
“Well, don’t worry about it, we’re all human”
I could see panic in the boy’s eyes – shit, we’re losing him.
“You’re not a relative are you?” Good work, very spontaneous.
“No, I don’t think so” said Bow
“Thank God. It’s just that the situation is so tragic I’d hate to be offending the wrong people”
There was a pause and my young protégé’s eyes narrowed.
“What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?”
The boy gave me the thumbs up. The hook was in.
So he related the sad tale of the real-life Mr Winsome who lost his wife in tragic circumstances a week after he cancelled her life insurance policy because he thought it a waste of money. He explained how the company were sympathetic but was unable to make an exception in his case because it would set a precedent that may damage the company’s finances and reputation.
He unravelled a tragedy of a man left alone with four young children to fend for without the benefit of Grand-Parental assistance; who had pleaded with the company in a heartfelt letter of his ignorance in underestimating his wife’s worth now that he had to fork out some £5000 a year in childcare costs alone, never mind the prospect of illness and the sleepless nights he’d experience and still having to hold down his job so he could afford something approaching the lifestyle he enjoyed before his wife’s aneurism.
I was impressed with the young actor and, after he’d finished, paid him up and hoped to see him plying his trade on the telly some day. I never did but the following day after Clifford Bow had slept with the nightmare scenario of the fictitious Clarence Bow invading his dreams, I got my man and my sale and, of course, his thanks.
Oh boy was I good. I surely was a clever, scheming, devious cunt.