Stanley Bing - The Big Bing: Black Holes of Time Management, Gaseous Executive Bodies, Exploding Careers, and Other Theories on the Origins of the Business Universe

The Big Bing

Black Holes of Time Management, Gaseous Executive Bodies, Exploding Careers, and Other Theories on the Origins of the Business Universe

Stanley Bing

To Adam Smith and Joseph Stalin,

both of whom have informed my

understanding of corporate culture.

9. This Just In: Stuff That Really Happened

Sometimes I think about my first office job, and what a great distance I have come since then. And, you know, not.

This was about twenty years ago. Wanting to retain my dream of being an actor, I went in search of a part-time job at that intersection of idle humanity, Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue, its buildings honeycombed with buzzing personnel agencies. The first one I hit put me to work in its own telephone-marketing division. From 9 A.M. to 1 P.M. , five days a week, we sold human labor to potential employers, drubbing each client with insistent calls until they agreed to have one of our prescreened and tested temporary or permanent people.

The office was beige-on-beige. In the outer cubicle sat Tony, our supervisor: small, dark, and wiry as a terrier. He was the head and guts of our five-person division. Tony had put each of us through our basic training, leading us painstakingly over the inane sales pitch, exhorting us to work into a rhythm, to go for the kill, to close the sale. After hours of slogging through this mire, I was ready.

Good morning, I would begin in a mellifluous tone, This is Stanley Bing over at Job Cruisers. How are you this morning? At this point, most potential clients would terminate the call. To those who didnt, I then said, I was wondering how I could help you with your personnel needs this morning. Tony considered this particular phraseology crucial. Never ask if you can help them, he stressed, tiny fists clenched emphatically. That gives them an opportunity to say no. When you ask how you can help them, the worst they can say is: You cant.

After a week and 300 or so cold calls into the void, I had yet to make a sale. I was bombing. My cell mate, Sally, her angular profile gripped with the determination of the chase, would chide the recalcitrant client: You have no needs? Really? Somehow I find that a little difficult to believe! And wonder of wonders, some nimrod on the other end of the line would give Sally an order. In my first week, while I was still eating dirt, Sally wrote up fifteen. She also had a lot of amusing telephone fights with her mother. One morning she screamed, Its not true! seven times in a row, and hung up. Several minutes later, this process was repeated, with loud, tortured cries of, Its 1981, Ma!

At the next desk sat Brian, a relentlessly earnest young dude dressed for success. He had been introduced to me as The Limitless One, because he spent his after-work time marketing his personal philosophy. This benign amalgam of mysticism and positive thinking was soon to be a corporation dedicated to The Limitless Idea. Brian brought this cosmic insight to his telemarketing. No need for temps? he would inquire of a reluctant client. Why, that means no growth!... Growth, thats right... G-r-o... Right. You have a nice day, too! He didnt sell much either.

How many Brians have I known? Why are they always so positive?

Other paradigms emerged. I had an enemy, for instance--Amy, who worked the night shift, and with whom I shared a desk. One day, on one of my numerous fifteen-minute breaks, I investigated the contents of its two chaotic drawers, finding, among other useless junk and schmutz, scores of loose vitamin capsules clotted together in the dust and lint. When I departed for the day, I left this agglutinated mass on the desk with a note to Amy saying, What are these? The next morning, my colleagues broke the news to me. Amy was on the warpath. They feared for my safety. Only Brian suggested I had nothing to worry about, although he did give me some advice. Dont mess with these girls, man, he said. Theyre stupid.

I was very nervous all day. At the end of another fruitless shift, here she came, murder in her eye. Man, was she mad. She jerked her head imperiously toward Tonys empty office, and closed the door behind us. How could you not know the top drawer was mine? she screamed at me. Didnt you see my vitamins were in it? I apologized and got out of there. Who needs to get screamed at?

Looking back on it, I guess Amy was my first screamer. The first among many, of course.

Then the day came when Tony, under the stress of being a boss, began to flake out. Suddenly he was decidedly subdued, often staring for long hours into an empty coffee cup. Rudderless, we began to drift. Long stretches of the morning were spent on the acquisition and leisurely consumption of beverages. Then the other shoe dropped. Tony came in with a smile and a snappy sport jacket to announce that he was leaving for greener pastures.

The next week, Dick appeared from downtown headquarters, squeaky clean in his black, three-piece suit and every inch a commander. He gave us a lot of teeth and talked about revising the commission structure to our benefit. A few days later, he announced the revisions. They were not to our benefit. All incentive was gone. Morale plunged. Ive spent years building up my client list, said Sally, her eyes filled with an infinite sadness. I feel like theyve taken away my life. I asked the usually bumptious Brian what we should do. I dont care, he said, completely dispirited for the first time. What difference does it make? The next day, he was gone.

One by one, they departed, my business friends and even my enemy, Amy, all gone. Finally, there was just me and Sally and a bunch of new plebes I didnt even know. And then Sally left. She didnt actually quit. Like the rest of my associates, she just disappeared.

When the end came, it was swift. Dick entered, thunderclouds beetling his brow. As of today, he informed us, the telephone marketing division of Job Cruisers is disbanded. I cant explain your function to the company anymore. He looked a little aggrieved, and then said, kind of plaintively, You guys dont do any business. How can I keep you? He had a point. Without a word, we cleaned out our desks.

In the following pages, you will see, in quite a few different forms, the dynamics of my first amusingly tawdry little job replicated in one way or another, over and over again. There is a simple reason for this. Whatever it is you do for a living, a job is a job. People are people. And if you have to do a job with other people, that job begins to take on a human dimension, with all the annoying, bizarre, and grand displays of which we as a species are capable, both individually and as a group.

Y ou have to walk before you can run. Then later, when youre running, you need more sophisticated guidance, because doing a bunch of important things while running isnt all that easy.

In the beginning, as opposed to now, I really didnt know what I was doing. So the first things I looked at were overall strategies to very simple things that turned out to be a lot harder than they looked. Giving good phone. Taking lunch with distinction. Considering how to tackle the everyday tactical challenges that, taken together, could help define a career.