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I pointed at the current slide.
“My requirements are simple. Everyone will do their best. I don’t care where you’ve come from, I don’t care what you know, or what you’ve done, or what a couple of cruddy pieces of paper claim you’re worth.I judge on what I find, and I find effort and determination to be worth a thousand university degrees.Don’t try and coast through this programme, because I’ll know it, I’ve already seen it a thousand times over. You have a problem, you bringit up and we work through it, other than that, I expect your all when you’re on my team, and for the next six months we’re a team. Understood?”
Eighteen heads nodded, while Verity’s looked at her Gucci watch.
“Miss Faverley, is that understood?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, Carl, I get it.”
But she didn’t. She didn’t fucking get it, because spoiled little bitches like Verity Faverley have never had to work for anything. She’s the youngest. The pampered princess in the ivory tower. Her mother’s little china doll.
A brat.
“We’ll be starting from the ground up, no exceptions. Everyone is on equal footing here,following the same path as the hundreds before you. You’ll start in the call centre, developing your customer service skills, your communication skills, your professionalism and your product knowledge. You’ll be learning to sell without visual cues, without a smart suit, without a company car, or flashy business cards, or a title under your belt. And then, when you’re ready,ifyou’re ready, you’ll get a shot at higher level account management, maybe a placement in one of the field sales divisions. Maybe you could even transfer tomarketing. The world is your oyster, and we hope most of you,mostof you, will stay.” I smiled at the rag-tag collection of newbies before me. “Any questions?”
A few tentative hands went up, and I addressed their queries one by one. All the regular.Whenwill we have to make live calls? What products will we be working on? I don’t know much about the technology yet, is that a problem?
Verity had not a single one.
I gave them a smile and watchedthem settle, breathing out a sigh as they began to relax into day one of their new life. And then I threw them a curveball. I docked my phone on the speaker stand at the front, scrolled through songs until I found theRockytheme. This moment would singe itself into their memory, the disbelief and the shock and the humour. Maybe sometimes the horror. This moment would begin the breakdown of their reservations, pushing them through their self-consciousness. Initiation by fire, and it had purpose here.
“Everyone sings.Everyone,” I said. “I’d better hear you, or you’ll be out on your ear on day one.” I scanned the faces, registering the first flashes of horror. I don’t know quite why it is that singing in public petrifies people so universally, but Christ it does. “Everyone will do their very best. Stand up, please.”
Nineteen people got to their feet, some shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, some grinning, some already blushing. All of them ready to give it a go, except one.
“Music is an anchor, and sales is a performance based career. Find your songs, the ones that lift you up, make you feel like you can take on the world and everyone in it. Find them and use them, often. This is mine.”
I pressed Play.
And then I led from the front, and that always surprises them most of all.
I can’t sing, not really, but I love music and I love to move. I listen to music wherever I go. On long drives to meetings, through hard workouts on the rowing machine, preparing for an important negotiation, crunching the numbers at month end. I love music and I love to dance, and I put both of those into practice in front of a room of new recruits, and they smiled and laughed a little, and slowly their voices grew louder, their expressions more open as they joined in with the tune. A roomful of people bellowed out the Rocky theme, and some of them found their groove and even did a little fist pump, and that one guy at the back stepped up to the plate and became that one guy who always throws himself right in, and he jogged on the spot and punched the air in front of him, and I liked him. I really liked him. He’d be one to watch.
I stepped between the chairs, listening to every single person, making sure all of them were singing strong, and then finally I stepped over to Verity on the end of the front row. Her face was deadpan, not even a hint of a note. I chivvied her along, a hand on the shoulder, my voice in her ear, but she did nothing, just stared at me like I was some idiotic piece of shit. My expression turned, grew stern, my gestures becoming more urgent until she rolled her eyes at me.
I stopped singing.
“Come on,” I said. “Give it a go.”
“No way,” she said. “It’s stupid.”
People around her quietened, their ears pricked.
“It’s not stupid, Verity. Stupid is trying to form relationships on the phone with a stick up your ass and inflexibility of communication.”
“It’sstupid,” she repeated. “I’m not going to make an absolute tit out of myself, not foryou.”
“You’re already making an absolute tit out of yourself, Miss Faverley, I’m just asking you tosing.”
Her eyes widened and turned sour. “Fuck you, Carl. I’m not singing. No way.”
I tipped my head to the side. “Then get out.”
She folded her arms. “Sorry?”
“I said, get out.” I returned to the front and turned off the music. “You’re dismissed, Verity, you can leave.”
“But, I…”
