Black Buck

by Mateo Askaripour

  “So let’s be clear about what we’re not doing. We’re not fucking selling shitty pieces of cardboard and calling it furniture. This isn’t IKEA! We’re not fucking selling greasy, heart-attack-inducing poop on a stick that kills billions of people every day. This isn’t McDonald’s! And we’re sure as hell not fucking selling overpriced, low-quality pieces of burlap sacks assembled in Bangladeshi sweatshops halfway around the world. This is not fucking American Eagle, Hollister, Aéropostale, or any of those lame-ass fucking brands that are making the world a worse place to exist in.

  “We are Sumwun. And what Sumwun does is help people live better. Be better. Coexist better. We give people hope: the hope that tomorrow will be a brighter day, the hope that someone out there understands them, and the hope to continue living with purpose. ‘God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them.’ Hebrews 6:10. Now go stretch and let’s get this Deals Week fucking started. First person who closes a deal gets a thousand dollars. Cash.”

  I thought the whole scene was extreme and straight out of Any Given Sunday, but I’d be lying if I said my heart wasn’t pounding. No way in hell had I bought into their madness, but the energy in the air crackled like static.

  “Stretch time!” Clyde shouted.

  We filed out of the room one by one. As I waited in line, I noticed that everyone wore the same straight face with hard eyes and clenched jaws. They didn’t have war paint, AK-47s, or fighter jets, but they were soldiers all the same.

  And truth be told, they were ready for war.

  * * *

  I followed the sea of people into the “event space.” Purple couches and wooden tables had been pushed to the side of the room, and the hardwood floors looked as if they’d just been polished. I looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows and took in the unobstructed view of the East River. Then I noticed an orchestra-size gong suspended from the ceiling. What the hell is that for?

  The smell of French toast, pancakes, sausage, syrup, and fresh fruit filled the air. Two dozen aluminum trays, heavy with food, sat on a large white marble island toward the back wall. Behind the island, against the far wall, were refrigerators, fruit baskets, moneyless vending machines, cereal dispensers, and taps bearing different labels, like Joyride Coffee Cold Brew, Blue Moon, and Health-Ade Kombucha.

  The nonsales crowd toasted bagels, mixed oatmeal, and sliced bananas, never laying a finger on the trays, almost as if they didn’t even see them. The whole thing was like an adult version of Neverland Ranch.

  “Circle up,” Clyde said. The salespeople got into formation. “And not a word.”

  This is it. The moment of human sacrifice. If I see someone sharpening a knife and licking their lips at me, I’m running. With this decided, I joined the circle a few people away from Clyde.

  “To the right,” Clyde commanded. Everyone reached across their chests with their left arms in one swift motion, holding them in place with their right forearms.

  “To the left,” Clyde said. Everyone was so used to the motions that his instructions were only a formality; the movements and pace ingrained in them like biological code.

  “Smile time,” Clyde said, making the most menacing smile I’d ever seen. His eyes popped out of their sockets, and his mouth stretched so wide I thought he’d tear his lips. But when I surveyed the circle, everyone was smiling like a gang of killer clowns.

  “Why aren’t you smiling, Buck?” Clyde asked through clenched teeth.

  “Oh, sorry,” I said, exposing my teeth like a feral animal.

  Clyde then told us to close our eyes and “breathe it out.” But before I closed my eyes, I noticed that the spectators were watching with increased enthusiasm. Jen from marketing waved at me. Mac from the gym threw up a Black Power fist when our eyes connected. It would’ve been more comforting if Mac was actually Black.

  “Keep your eyes closed,” Clyde ordered. “Today is day one of Deals Week, which means we need to do everything humanly possible to hit our goal ASAP.”

  The room fell silent.

  “We have four hundred and fifty thousand dollars to close this week. I know it sounds like a lot, but we’ve done that with less time before.”

  “Damn right we have!” Frodo shouted.

  Clyde saluted him. “That’s right, Frodo. But aside from what we need to hit, I want you all to empty your minds and picture yourself a year from now. Where are you? Maybe you’re taking a vacation with your girlfriend in the Caribbean, lying down on the beach, cracking open a fresh lobster. Or you’re hiking Machu Picchu, smelling the ancient Peruvian jungle beneath you as you climb higher, poking your head through dense clouds. What are you wearing?”

  To be honest, as he spoke, I couldn’t stop picturing Soraya and me having hot, sweaty sex and ordering pizza afterward. The good thing was that I wouldn’t have to wait a year for that to happen. I’d just need to make it through the day.

  The floor creaked as people shifted, all of them prophesying piles of hundred-dollar bills and gold ingots falling from the sky.

  “Now come back here, to this building, this floor, and this office. Imagine yourself closing that deal you need, throwing it up on the board to a room of applause. Imagine smashing the crap out of the gong, knowing you didn’t just hit your number, but that you also helped your team hit theirs.”

  I wasn’t sure if we were still supposed to have our eyes closed, so I cracked mine open. Every single person in the circle had their eyes shut and heads bowed; they all were nodding and whispering to themselves. I shit you not, some even had tears streaming down their faces. If there was a Church of Sumwun, Monday morning of Deals Week would have been Sunday Mass.

  With closed eyes, Clyde extended his arm in front of him and pointed at different parts of the circle, directing his energy. He was a privileged son of a bitch, but he actually did believe in what he was saying and what the company stood for. I had to give him that.

  “Every time someone tells you no, hangs up on you, or says ‘maybe next month,’ I want you to dig deep and do everything not to be discouraged. I want you to pick up the phone again and make the next call no matter how much rejection you face and how many nos you hear. Remember, if you are saving them money and time, there should be no reason they don’t sign.”

  Reader: I hope you’re taking notes. Clyde was a maniac, but this is Sales 101. Repeat: if you are saving them money and time, there should be no reason they don’t sign.

  “And if you see someone getting down, pick them up. Hitting this month will mean we’ve hit our number for a full year, which is unheard of. So I want you to open your eyes, scream as loud as you can, clap your hands, and slam your foot so fucking hard that people on the ground floor think there’s an earthquake.”

  Everyone opened their eyes, bodies tense like sprinters awaiting the starting gun’s blast.

  “Every day is deals day on three,” Clyde shouted. “One.”

  There was something on their faces.

  “Two.”

  It took me a second to realize what it was.

  “Three.”

  Rage.

  “EVERY DAY IS DEALS DAY!” they shouted, clapping their hands and slamming their sneakers, heels, boots, and clogs onto the ground so hard that the floor really did shake.

  “Get some food and let’s get to work!” Clyde ordered.

  They descended on the trays of food like vultures. And then I felt a hand on my shoulder. Clyde.

  “Let’s go. You and the other two are training with me today. But I’ll show you to your seat first.”

  “Okay.”

  We arrived at the sales floor, a long rectangular room containing ten rows of desks.

  He pointed to two desks facing each other. “The Duchess and Frodo, you’ll sit there and there.”

  “You,” he said, gripping my shoulder, “will sit here.” He slapped the desk closest to the frosted doors, in the same row as the Duchess’s and Frodo�
��s.

  Moments later, everyone poured onto the floor balancing plates and bowls overflowing with food from the breakfast buffet. Most of them hurried to their desks. But a few of them, the ones whose desks were closest to mine, seemed to be taking their sweet time.

  “Take a seat,” Clyde said. “And get settled in. Then we’ll begin training.”

  When I pulled out my chair, a downpour of paint pummeled me, covering my desk, chair, and body in a white blur. When I looked up, I saw a dripping bucket hanging from the ceiling, apologetically swaying from left to right.

  WHAT THE FUCK?

  The entire floor burst into laughter. Some people snapped photos; others, whose desks were closer to mine, smirked as they wiped off flecks of white paint before sitting down.

  With paint on my clothes, in my hair, and even in my nose, I turned to Clyde. He was smiling.

  “Got you, Buck! Ha-ha! I thought the white would help you fit in better,” he said, smacking my back. “Don’t look so shocked. It’s just a little welcome joke. You’re not mad, right?”

  Not mad? I couldn’t speak. I wanted to ram my fist through his face, shattering his abnormally straight LEGO castle–looking teeth.

  “Well,” he said, waving his hand around the mess. “Clean this up and meet us in Bhagavad Gita. Training starts in ten.”

  I should’ve known from the Middle Passage to never trust a white man who says, “Take a seat.” It could be your last.

  7

  In addition to being an ancient Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gita was a nondescript meeting room on the thirty-sixth floor of 3 Park Avenue. It featured a brown wooden table with brown chairs, floor-to-ceiling windows, and walls made of dry-erase material. It had the same corporate vibe as the conference room, but stuffier.

  The receptionist, Porschia, procured a white T-shirt and sweatpants for me, but I still had white paint stuck in my hair, eyes, eyebrows, fingernails, and other places I couldn’t see but felt. If this, a little white-boy fraternity hazing, would be the worst of my time at the company, I figured I could manage.

  “Sit,” Clyde ordered us three new hires, as he wrote something on one of the walls.

  He capped his dry-erase marker and moved to the side, exposing what looked like a family tree. Rhett’s name was at the top; dotted and solid lines poked out of it, leading to other names and boxes.

  “What is this?” Clyde asked.

  “An org chart,” I said.

  “One point for Buck. We have Rhett at the top, since he’s the CEO and founder, Chris to the right of him, as cofounder and CTO, and beneath each of them are the teams they own. As you can see,” he said, pointing to his name, “I’m the director of sales.”

  Frodo looked left and right, like he was about to cross a street, and raised his hand.

  “You don’t have to raise your hand, Frodo,” Clyde said. “You’re an adult now.”

  “Oh, right,” Frodo said, slicking his hair back. “I just noticed everyone below Rhett was a VP or C-something except you. Why’s that?”

  Clyde went beet red and balled his writing hand into a fist. “Well, we had a VP of sales, Frodo, but he sucked and got the boot. And as you so astutely pointed out, there’s now a vacancy, which I plan to fill.”

  “When will that happen?” Frodo asked, a goofy, dreamlike smile dancing on his face.

  “As soon as you stop asking stupid questions and start putting numbers on the board. That’s when.”

  Frodo’s smile disappeared.

  “And when can we start doing that?” The Duchess asked, admiring her manicure.

  “Once you earn the right to do so,” Clyde said, writing numbers next to everyone’s name. There was a 108 next to Clyde’s and a 208 next to Rhett’s.

  Frodo raised his hand again. Clyde sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Yes, Frodo?”

  “How come so many people report to Rhett? Seems a bit odd that he, uh, owns all of these different departments.”

  “How many companies have you built, Frodo?”

  “Uh, none, I’m just trying to—”

  “Exactly. None. Zero. Zilch. If you haven’t noticed, Rhett likes control. He likes it because he’s the best at every single function below him. MBA from Harvard, master’s in organizational psychology from USC, number one salesman for every year he worked at Salesforce, director of product at Google for two years, and inventor of seven products marketed and sold on HSN, QVC, and those commercials that air at three in the morning. We’re not supposed to know about those, but I’ll just tell you that one of his products rhymes with ‘slam cow.’”

  Frodo’s eyes widened. “Rhett invented the sham—”

  “Don’t say it!” Clyde said. “Again, we’re not supposed to know. But, yes, he did. Moving on. The sales team,” he said, slapping the chart, “has three parts. Account executives, known as AEs. Account managers, known as AMs. And sorry-ass sales development representatives, known as SDRs, which is what you three are. Who can tell me what an SDR does?”

  The Duchess rolled her eyes. “We call new companies, qualify prospects, and hand them off to the AEs to close.”

  “More or less, yes,” Clyde said, erasing the chart. “But not exactly. SDRs are the lifeblood of the sales team. Without you, there are no deals or branded hoodies, no food or kombucha on tap, or any of that other crap. If you don’t do your jobs, and I mean if you don’t fucking produce, the company ceases to exist. So, beyond qualifying and handing people off to the AEs, your role requires blood, sweat, and tears of enthusiasm that I’m frankly not seeing in any of you right now.”

  Tears of enthusiasm? It was nine in the morning and I was already exhausted. Exhausted from trying to get to the office on time, from the stress of the morning meeting, and from smelling like Bob Ross’s studio. I didn’t even notice I was nodding off until . . .

  “Stand up!” Clyde shouted, centimeters from my face. “You want to sleep? On day one of training? Not on my fucking watch. Tell me what Sumwun is. Now.”

  I had googled the company over the weekend and finally found out what it did, or at least what I thought it did. “Sumwun is a platform that connects individuals with what are known as ‘assistants’ from around the world to discuss their various issues, life problems, and challenges in an effort to—”

  “ANG!” Clyde shouted. “That sucked. Take a seat. You obviously don’t know how to spit. The Duchess. Go.”

  She stood, straightening out her wide leather belt, and said, “Through live video sessions, two-way texting, and visual reporting, Sumwun gives individuals the support to overcome their issues and achieve their goals.”

  “ANG!” Clyde yelled. The Duchess cut him with her eyes. “Sit!”

  Frodo shot up, and said, “Sumwun is, uh. Sumwun is about, uh, giving people the power to, um—”

  “Sit the fuck down,” Clyde said, shaking his head. “All of you sound like robots regurgitating what’s on the website. No, you sound like retarded robots, like you didn’t make the cut and should have had your plugs pulled.” He went back to the wall, and the three of us sat there awkwardly as Clyde wrote out the entire pitch, reading each word aloud as he did.

  “There are more than seven billion people on earth, meaning there are at least seven billion people with their own struggles, challenges, and ways of living. Seven billion people, like you, who wake up, go to work, spend time with family, eat, love, and sleep awaiting a new day. But as the population grows, the stresses, difficulties, and anxieties that people face grow with it. Long gone are the days when traditional, one-size-fits-all therapy worked. In fact, it has never worked, but no one has had an alternative, so people have ended up paying insane prices to speak with so-called therapists, and wasted thousands of dollars on self-help books that have helped no one except the authors who pocketed the cash. Or they’ve ended up suffering silently, eventually harming themselves or others.

  “Realizing this, we created Sumwun to empower individuals to receive assistance that is personalized, tailored, and c
ustomized for their needs, all while removing the stigma around seeking help. By offering a growing team of over two thousand assistants from around the world, who have different ways of life, subscribe to different beliefs, and apply different methods of therapy, we guarantee that you and those closest to you will find someone who is able to speak to your own challenges in a way that is geared toward finding a solution, rather than someone who will profit off of your pain by keeping you on as a patient.

  “With individual and corporate clients in more than 150 countries, Sumwun ensures that you will always have someone to talk to whenever you need someone to talk to.

  “That,” Clyde said, slamming his hands on the table, causing us all, even the Duchess, to flinch, “is what we do here. Now I want you all to stand up and say it out loud until you believe it. Because if you can’t say those words with confidence, enthusiasm, and vigor, you might as well walk the hell out right now. I’ll be back in one hour. I said stand up!”

  We stood up. He walked toward the door, paused, and said over his shoulder, “Oh yeah, no one’s allowed to leave, or even sit, until I come back. If you do, you’re fired. And if you think I’m bluffing, take a seat or open the door and see what happens.”

  The three of us jumped to our feet and began walking around the room like monks in prayer. Shit.

  * * *

  It was harder to say those words with real chutzpah than it was to memorize them, especially with a full bladder and a neo-Neanderthal next to me stumbling over the same word for ninety minutes at this point. Every time he got to it, Frodo pronounced “population” as pope-ulation. I just took a breath and tried to focus on the script.

  “‘Realizing this, we created Sumwun to empower individuals—’”

  Frodo stopped pacing and looked at me. “It’s encourage individuals, not empower individuals, Buck.”

  “It’s empower, Frodo. The word is right there on the board where it’s been for the last ninety minutes. And don’t call me Buck, man. My name is Darren.”