Click, click. Click, click.
My heart still pounding, I turned toward the window and watched the lines on
the telephone poles rise and fall
above the rows of buildings.
I had been a copywriter for two years now. A beginning copywriter at a major
publishing
company started at $23,500 -- at least I did, anyway. The salary
was enough to get me out of my parents' house and into
an apartment of my
own. The salary seemed reasonable when I accepted the job, but after a few
paychecks, I had finally
factored in gross vs. net, rent, student loan
payments, car insurance, gas, laundry, my habit of eating out when too tired
to cook, my penchant for buying books over borrowing them, movie ticket
prices, monthly train passes, telephone bills,
newspaper subscriptions,
coffee and cafeteria lunches at work, clothes, art classes ...
Not to mention impulse buys ...
How did that pint of Haagen-Dazs Rum Raisin get in the cart?
Just one more Hershey bar from the candy machine. Ka-chunk.
I better get a second pair of Etonic Stabilizers just in case they go out of stock.
Another draft beer, please.
It didn't take long before I had zero savings and negative disposable income.
"Glenvieeeeeeeeeeeew!" sang
the conductor.
Commuters spilled from the train. I jogged through the depot, checking my watch for the time and then the traffic.
I jay-walked across Glenview Avenue.
A taxi driver laid on his horn as I hurried to Hills, Johnson.
Hills, Johnson was a textbook publishing house, an "industry leader." A Japanese architect designed its headquarters
in the 70s, won all kinds of awards. The complex was a series of square, plain office buildings connected by a labyrinth of
hallways with large windows facing a garden in a central court. The place reminded me of an elementary school.
I arrived at the side entrance at same time as some guy from the editorial department. He waited impatiently as I extracted
the magnetic key card from
my wallet and pressed it against a panel on the wall to trigger the door lock. Nothing happened.
"They're trying to tell you something," said the guy from editorial.
I smiled at him and said, "Yeah, the pink slip must've gotten lost in the mail."
I slid the key card around the panel, and the lock finally released with a click.
This was a typical exchange among employees of Hills, Johnson. A cheery cynicism.
"Have a super day," he said.
"You, too."
2.
I nodded to the security guard and quickly made my way to the marketing
department. As I got to my desk,
I caught my reflection in the computer
screen and noticed my tie wasn't fully tied. A yellow Post-it note just below
the
screen read:
See me.
VH
The note was from my boss, Victor Hellingsworth. His handwriting had this
artistic
flourish, strokes tall and narrow as the man himself. I hung up my
jacket and went to see Victor.
"Come in and
sit down, John," said Victor. He was carefully spraying water
under one leaf of a ficus plant. He turned toward me and
paused, an eyebrow
rising at my loosely knotted tie.
Victor was the creative director for the marketing department of Hills,
Johnson. He was also an Oxford dropout,
a failed novelist, an alcoholic, a
chain smoker, a grammarian, and a surrealist needlepoint artist. Prior to
being
creative director, he had been a high school teacher.
Victor was never without a cup of coffee and a lit cigarette. What made
him likable, I couldn't figure out, because
he was just as easy to hate. He
was aloof to the copywriters and hypercritical of copy that didn't conform to
The
Chicago Manual of Style. He was a man of precision and concentration,
starched shirts and pressed suits. He made his way
in the world not by
the power of his presence, but by cleverness, wit, and the snotty
affectations of speech that
came from too much prep school and an Ivy League
education. He rather hobnob in his office with burned-out designers than
brainstorm with the writers.
Why I was so eager to impress him, I didn't know. He had an intensity
that had its own peculiar vortex. You could feel
his creative energy
crackling in the room. It was almost as if he had an ability to warp time. I'm not kidding. There
were moments you swear time had slowed in his office, the second hand on the clock almost stopping.
He was always reading a book on some obscure subject. At the time, it was
Japanese Noh Theater. He'd build up a healthy
knowledge of the subject and
grow frustrated when he couldn't find a soul to share his current interest.
He once remarked
that people who read books "live in a world all their own."
Roxy, the assistant to the Marketing Director, was the only person privy
to Victor more serious fiction ambitions.
She would occasionally sneak us a
few of his pieces. One described a sunrise he watched from a beach after a
drinking
binge. I remember his description of a butterfly on a piece of
driftwood. It wasn't mawkish at all, but lucid. His sentences
were long, complex, knitted together with such care, they linger in your mind. They seemed to come from a deep place. They
also seemed to recognize a divine presence.
"You're late," Victor said without inflection. He raised an eyebrow at my loosely knotted tie.
"Missed the first train." I didn't care to elaborate.
He paused briefly, enough to warrant my full attention.
"Ever had any sales experience?"
"Sales?" I flashed on the time I had to sell wreaths door-to-door for my Cub
Scout den. Hated it.
"You may be spending the next week on a sales run," Victor said. He leaned across his desk to study my reaction. "Our
new math and science textbooks may
not make the Texas adoption list this year. Do you know what that means?"
"No, I don't," I said, pulling at my tie.
"That means 'marketing blitz.'"
"Marketing blitz?" Football terms were paramount in marketing lingo.
"That's right. All our copywriters are going to be sent into the C-towns."
"C-towns?"
"Small towns in Texas. We have to hit them to make sure we make the adoption list."
Victor swiveled his chair around to his desk file drawer and pulled out a folded map. A cigarette burned in his ashtray,
puffs ascending like Indian distress signals. He unfolded the map and briefly scanned an alphabetical listing of Texas towns,
following the list smoothly with a tobacco-stained finger.
"Blanco, J-9." He looked up at the side of the map for J, then along the bottom for 9. His eyes lit up for a moment at
the tangle of interstates. The roads, like arteries and veins, merged at a central heart: San Antonio.
"There. There's Blanco."
We both looked down. He held the finger on the edge of Blanco.
He continued. "The adoption list is like a ballot.
Teachers choose textbook
companies by vote. The winning companies are adopted for the next four
years."
"I see."
He looked at me again and took a long draw of his cigarette and exhaled.
"If we don't make the adoption list, we
will lose sales for the most
important market we've got. An adoption is worth 52 million dollars to our
company. It
appears Houghton Mifflin's texts have the majority of the market
so far."
Smoke billowed around me. "Our strategy is
to make personal contacts with
schools in the smaller towns the ones our competitors won't penetrate. We
feel this
is the ticket to making the state adoption list."
"Penetrate?"
"I'll get Roxy to make up your docket. You and I and some of the other
employees will be flying out on Monday ..."
"But I've never traveled before on business, that is," I interrupted.
" ... You'll be given a company car. Your accommodations and meals will be
taken care of."
"But I've never sold textbooks before. I'm not a salesman."
"You're not really selling them, you're presenting them. Theyll brief you
this afternoon. We're providing you with
a training program immediately."
"But ... "
"Your meeting is at 1:00 P.M. I suggest you straighten your tie."
3.
At 1 P.M. Victor and I headed over to the sales meeting. The meeting room was
filled with perplexed-looking
editors, copywriters, and other personnel. None
of us were used to being sent out in the field all were eager to get in
a
quick training session before being sent halfway across the United States.
At the head of the table was the top salesman,
Hal. A man in his late
fifties, a father of eight, hair white as driftwood, he seemed one beat ahead
of the rest,
a brain working at 500 megahertz, obviously sharpened by the
area he was raised in, one of the more populated, "sped-up"
Eastern states.
His language was quick, colloquial. He rarely paused to enjoy the arrangement
of a good sentence.
He shushed everybody and told us to take our seats.
"OK, this is the new Hills, Johnson math kit," spieled Hal. "This may appear
to be a simple lunch box he knocked on
the gray plastic kit's side with a
knuckle but it contains all the supplements your teachers need. Just tell
the teacher
it will last forever and has multiple uses. In fact, I buried one
of my cats in one just the other day."
There was a wave of nervous laughter.
"And that's not all. Just snap open the latched top, and inside, you get a
treasure trove of support materials.
I'm telling you, these materials are not
only packed with desk work, but teeming with teacher's aids: geometric
shapes,
cardboard rulers, punch-out clocks ... you tell them they don't
have to buy additional supplements again, because THESE
aids will make their
lives easier, yes, easier, alrighty?"
He moved from catch phrase to catch phrase smoothly and mechanically.
"And we know how you, as a teacher, have your
bad days." He knit his brow
compassionately on cue. "So to make your life easier, we've organized
everything with
color-coded tabs: Tab one includes materials for chapter one
in our teacher's edition; tab two includes materials for
chapter two; tab
three ... you get the picture."
Hal eyes darted around the room. I could feel his mind unscrolling like a perforated song reel through a player piano.
"And the thing you want to drill into these teachers is that the math kits
are FREE with Hills, Johnson textbooks.
And if their eyes don't light up with
that, just pull out a supplement, show it to them, and teach them a lesson,
alrighty?"
Hal pulled out a piece of cardboard and tried to punch out a few of the
shapes, ripping one.
"Well, you don't have to put it together in front of them, but you get the idea. Just tell the teacher these come FREE
if Texas adopts us."
Hal continued his banter, banging his fist on the table every time he said the word "FREE."
"Now, I want you to remember this: In Texas, evolution is worded as a
'theory' in our science textbooks. We don't want
the Gauntlets in our hair.
Keep a professional tone, and don't mention it unless a teacher brings it up.
That one
of the reasons we lost the adoption in '81."
I raised a finger to get his attention.
"Who are the Gauntlets?"
He paused and then realized I was new to the textbook adoption game.
"George and Martha Gauntlet. Powerful husband-and-wife
team in Texas.
Fundamentalist Christians. Lobbyists ... "
There was a heavy silence in the room. Hal looked around to make sure he
hadn't offended anyone and then continued.
"OK, I want you to turn to page 13
of the seventh grade science texts at your desks. Alrighty? The publishers
changed
the wording for Texas on this page."
We fumbled through our sample books. Victor didn't move. He didn't even
bother to open his book; his arms were limp
at his sides, eyes glassy with
boredom like he'd seen this all before.
Another fellow, an executive who seemed uncomfortable with having to sell
textbooks, asked, "What if the teacher doesn't
want to see us? What if they
flat out refuse us because we're salespeople?"
"Leave a card, and set up another time to see them, alrighty?"
"OK."
The meeting adjourned. I hurried back to my office. My coffee was cold, but I
took a sip anyway to keep my mind sharp
as I worked my way through the second
page of a math brochure. I scanned down a list of bullet-points:
-Lesson
plans save preparation time.
-Exercises enhance students' critical thinking skills.
-Group work fosters cooperative
learning.
I looked over at Victor glass-encased office and saw that he was in the
middle of a meeting with Jim
Dodds, the brochure designer. It was 1:55; my
deadline was at 2:00. I started to print out one of the pages, but the
printer
jammed. While I was fixing it, hands black from the ink, Victor
yelled at me to get him that brochure. I yelled back that
it wasn't ready
yet. He made a sour expression and told Jim to wait. Back at my desk, I took
another slug of cold
coffee, and attempted to reconcile in one headline that
the texts we were selling to teachers were traditional, but new.
Traditionally new. New but traditional alrighty?
I looked over at Victor. He was manically sucking on a cigarette. He'd
been doing this stuff for over ten years.
I was beginning to understand.
