Make race car noises when anyone gets on or off.
When arriving at your floor, grunt and strain to yank the doors open, then act embarrassed when they open by themselves.
Stare, grinning, at another passenger for a while, and then announce: "I've got new socks on!"
If anyone brushes against you, recoil and holler "Bad touch!
"Give religious tracts (preferably Jack Chick) to each passenger.
Greet everyone getting on the elevator with a warm handshake and ask them to call you Admiral.
Bet the other passengers you can fit a quarter in your nose.
Ask each new passenger if you can push the button for them.
Draw a square on the floor with chalk and announce to the other passengers that this is your "personal space."
Make explosion noises when anyone presses a button.
Sunday, November 21, 2004
Cop Call Codes II (List Number 6)
10-0 Exercise great caution.
10-1 Reception is poor.
10-2 Reception is good.
10-3 Stop transmitting.
10-4 Message received.
10-5 Relay message.
10-6 Change channel.
10-7 Out of service/unavailable for assignment.
10-7A Out of service at home.
10-7B Out of service - personal.
10-7od Out of service - off duty
10-8 In service/available for assignment.
10-9 Repeat last transmission.
10-10 Off duty.
10-10A Off duty at home.
10-11 Identify this frequency.
10-12 Visitors are present (be discrete).
10-13 Advise weather and road conditions.
10-14 Citizen holding suspect.
10-15 Prisoner in custody.
10-16 Pick up prisoner.
10-17 Request for gasoline.
10-18 Equipment exchange.
10-19 Return/returning to the station.
10-20 Location?
10-21 Telephone:______
10-21a Advise home that I will return at ______.
10-21b Phone your home
10-21r Phone radio dispatch
10-22 Disregard the last assignment.
10-22c Leave area if all secure.
10-23 Standby.
10-24 Request car-to-car transmission.
10-25 Do you have contact with _______?
10-26 Clear.
10-27 Driver's license check.
10-28 Vehicle registration request.
10-29 Check wants/warrants.[vehicle] (PIN,SVS)
10-29a Check wants/warrants [subject] (PIN)
10-29c Check complete [subject]
10-29f The subject is wanted for a felony.
10-29h Caution - severe hazard potential.
10-29r Check wants/record [subject (PIN,CJIC)
10-29m The subject is wanted for a misdemeanor.
10-29v The vehicle is wanted in connection with a crime.
10-30 Does not conform to regulations.
10-32 Drowning.
10-33 Alarm sounding.
10-34 Assist at office.
10-35 Time check.
10-36 Confidential information.
10-37 Identify the operator.
10-39 Can ______ come to the radio?
10-40 Is ______ available for a telephone call?
10-42 Check on the welfare of/at ______.
10-43 Call a doctor.
10-45 What is the condition of the patient?
10-45A Condition of patient is good.
10-45B Condition of patient is serious.
10-45C Condition of patient is critical.
10-45D Patient is deceased.
10-46 Sick person [ambulance enroute]
10-48 Ambulance transfer call
10-49 Proceed to/Enroute to ______.
10-50 Subject under the influence of narcotics/Take a report.
10-51 Subject is drunk.
10-52 Resuscitator is needed.
10-53 Person down.
10-54 Possible dead body.
10-55 Coroner's case.
10-56 Suicide.
10-56A Suicide attempt.
10-57 Firearm discharged.
10-58 Garbage complaint
10-59 Security check./Malicious mischief
10-60 Lock out.
10-61 Miscellaneous public service.
10-62 Meet a citizen.
10-62A Take a report from a citizen.
10-62B Civil standby.
10-63 Prepare to copy.
10-64 Found property.
10-65 Missing person
10-66 Suspicious person.
10-67 Person calling for help.
10-68 Call for police made via telephone.
10-70 Prowler.
10-71 Shooting.
10-72 Knifing.
10-73 How do you receive?
10-79 Bomb threat.
10-80 Explosion.
10-86 Any traffic?
10-87 Meet the officer at ______.
10-88 Fill with the officer/Assume your post.
10-91 Animal.
10-91a Stray.
10-91b Noisy animal.
10-91c Injured animal.
10-91d Dead animal.
10-91e Animal bite.
10-91g Animal pickup.
10-91h Stray horse
10-91j Pickup/collect ______.
10-91L Leash law violation.
10-91V Vicious animal.
10-95 Out of vehicle-pedestrian/ Requesting an I.D./Tech unit.
10-96 Out of vehicle-ped. send backup
10-97 Arrived at the scene.
10-98 Available for assignment.
10-99 Open police garage door.
10-100 Civil disturbance - Mutual aid standby.
10-101 Civil disturbance - Mutual aid request.
10-1 Reception is poor.
10-2 Reception is good.
10-3 Stop transmitting.
10-4 Message received.
10-5 Relay message.
10-6 Change channel.
10-7 Out of service/unavailable for assignment.
10-7A Out of service at home.
10-7B Out of service - personal.
10-7od Out of service - off duty
10-8 In service/available for assignment.
10-9 Repeat last transmission.
10-10 Off duty.
10-10A Off duty at home.
10-11 Identify this frequency.
10-12 Visitors are present (be discrete).
10-13 Advise weather and road conditions.
10-14 Citizen holding suspect.
10-15 Prisoner in custody.
10-16 Pick up prisoner.
10-17 Request for gasoline.
10-18 Equipment exchange.
10-19 Return/returning to the station.
10-20 Location?
10-21 Telephone:______
10-21a Advise home that I will return at ______.
10-21b Phone your home
10-21r Phone radio dispatch
10-22 Disregard the last assignment.
10-22c Leave area if all secure.
10-23 Standby.
10-24 Request car-to-car transmission.
10-25 Do you have contact with _______?
10-26 Clear.
10-27 Driver's license check.
10-28 Vehicle registration request.
10-29 Check wants/warrants.[vehicle] (PIN,SVS)
10-29a Check wants/warrants [subject] (PIN)
10-29c Check complete [subject]
10-29f The subject is wanted for a felony.
10-29h Caution - severe hazard potential.
10-29r Check wants/record [subject (PIN,CJIC)
10-29m The subject is wanted for a misdemeanor.
10-29v The vehicle is wanted in connection with a crime.
10-30 Does not conform to regulations.
10-32 Drowning.
10-33 Alarm sounding.
10-34 Assist at office.
10-35 Time check.
10-36 Confidential information.
10-37 Identify the operator.
10-39 Can ______ come to the radio?
10-40 Is ______ available for a telephone call?
10-42 Check on the welfare of/at ______.
10-43 Call a doctor.
10-45 What is the condition of the patient?
10-45A Condition of patient is good.
10-45B Condition of patient is serious.
10-45C Condition of patient is critical.
10-45D Patient is deceased.
10-46 Sick person [ambulance enroute]
10-48 Ambulance transfer call
10-49 Proceed to/Enroute to ______.
10-50 Subject under the influence of narcotics/Take a report.
10-51 Subject is drunk.
10-52 Resuscitator is needed.
10-53 Person down.
10-54 Possible dead body.
10-55 Coroner's case.
10-56 Suicide.
10-56A Suicide attempt.
10-57 Firearm discharged.
10-58 Garbage complaint
10-59 Security check./Malicious mischief
10-60 Lock out.
10-61 Miscellaneous public service.
10-62 Meet a citizen.
10-62A Take a report from a citizen.
10-62B Civil standby.
10-63 Prepare to copy.
10-64 Found property.
10-65 Missing person
10-66 Suspicious person.
10-67 Person calling for help.
10-68 Call for police made via telephone.
10-70 Prowler.
10-71 Shooting.
10-72 Knifing.
10-73 How do you receive?
10-79 Bomb threat.
10-80 Explosion.
10-86 Any traffic?
10-87 Meet the officer at ______.
10-88 Fill with the officer/Assume your post.
10-91 Animal.
10-91a Stray.
10-91b Noisy animal.
10-91c Injured animal.
10-91d Dead animal.
10-91e Animal bite.
10-91g Animal pickup.
10-91h Stray horse
10-91j Pickup/collect ______.
10-91L Leash law violation.
10-91V Vicious animal.
10-95 Out of vehicle-pedestrian/ Requesting an I.D./Tech unit.
10-96 Out of vehicle-ped. send backup
10-97 Arrived at the scene.
10-98 Available for assignment.
10-99 Open police garage door.
10-100 Civil disturbance - Mutual aid standby.
10-101 Civil disturbance - Mutual aid request.
Poem: The M.D.s
Trying to put forever
On hold
Just a little while longer
In return
For a cut of the profits
In the interim.
---o0o---
jack brummet
On hold
Just a little while longer
In return
For a cut of the profits
In the interim.
---o0o---
jack brummet
Katamari Damacy
This new game for PS/2 is in the great tradition of wacky Japanese videogames. It's way outside. It has possibly flimsiest overarching story of any game I have ever played. And yet even that is compelling. The King of All Cosmos wakes up one morning to discover he had apparently partied a bit too long, and somehow lost all of the stars in the sky. The translation of the King's dialog is wonderfully idiomatic and on target. He is completely insane, and spends a lot of his time flinging insults, at you, his son as you are deployed on missions to help recover the missing stars.
The game controls, like all my favorite Japanese games, are extremely simple. In this game there are no combo controls...all you do is use both of the analog joysticks. You roll up a ball of weird objects, all of which affect how the ball rolls. You pick up food, tacks, candy, white-out, legos--all sorts of stuff. And you roll and grow this ball. It sounds pathetic. But it is completely compelling. The game has huge replay value. The mechanics are simple and fun enough that anyone can enjoy the game...not just gamers.
Namco is selling the game for $19.95--an amazing price point for a new game. Games at this price are usually either duds, or have been out for years. Did I mention that the music, too, is oddly compelling? The backgrounds and art are pretty basic...but it totally works!
Believe it or not the publisher's (Namco) website actually did a good job of summarizing the game:
"Play is controlled with the analog sticks only. No buttons to press. No combos to cause distress. Featuring ball-rolling and object-collecting gameplay mechanics of mesmerizing fluidity, reduced to Pac-Man simplicity, through pure absurdity.
Dimensions change drastically as your clump grows from a fraction of an inch to a monstrous freak of nature. Go from rolling along a tabletop to ravaging through city streets, picking up momentum and skyscrapers along the way.
Two-player battle mode lets you compete in a race to grow the biggest ball of stuff. Even the competition can be picked up, if your opponent is unfortunate enough to get in your way.
Enjoy quirky, infectious humor throughout—from the insanely cosmic animations, to the wacky and wonderful musical stylings, to the royally contagious storyline that's undoubtedly like no other. "
The game controls, like all my favorite Japanese games, are extremely simple. In this game there are no combo controls...all you do is use both of the analog joysticks. You roll up a ball of weird objects, all of which affect how the ball rolls. You pick up food, tacks, candy, white-out, legos--all sorts of stuff. And you roll and grow this ball. It sounds pathetic. But it is completely compelling. The game has huge replay value. The mechanics are simple and fun enough that anyone can enjoy the game...not just gamers.
Namco is selling the game for $19.95--an amazing price point for a new game. Games at this price are usually either duds, or have been out for years. Did I mention that the music, too, is oddly compelling? The backgrounds and art are pretty basic...but it totally works!
Believe it or not the publisher's (Namco) website actually did a good job of summarizing the game:
"Play is controlled with the analog sticks only. No buttons to press. No combos to cause distress. Featuring ball-rolling and object-collecting gameplay mechanics of mesmerizing fluidity, reduced to Pac-Man simplicity, through pure absurdity.
Dimensions change drastically as your clump grows from a fraction of an inch to a monstrous freak of nature. Go from rolling along a tabletop to ravaging through city streets, picking up momentum and skyscrapers along the way.
Two-player battle mode lets you compete in a race to grow the biggest ball of stuff. Even the competition can be picked up, if your opponent is unfortunate enough to get in your way.
Enjoy quirky, infectious humor throughout—from the insanely cosmic animations, to the wacky and wonderful musical stylings, to the royally contagious storyline that's undoubtedly like no other. "
Saturday, November 20, 2004
The Phonetic Cop Alphabet.(List Number 5)
A Adam
B Boy
C Charles
D David
E Edward
F Frank
G George
H Henry
I Ida
J John
K King
L Lincoln
M Mary
N Nora
O Ocean
P Paul
Q Queen
R Robert
S Sam
T Tom
U Union
V Victor
W William
X X-ray
Y Yellow
Z Zebra
B Boy
C Charles
D David
E Edward
F Frank
G George
H Henry
I Ida
J John
K King
L Lincoln
M Mary
N Nora
O Ocean
P Paul
Q Queen
R Robert
S Sam
T Tom
U Union
V Victor
W William
X X-ray
Y Yellow
Z Zebra
Another Poem: Charlie Parker
As buzzards, kites and hawks
darkened the skies
a songbird flew among us -
a waxwork Daedalus
who couldn't face up to The Sun.
An actual bird with real wings,
he soared on fire,
beating his drumsticks
until the feathers were gone.
Bird carved himself
and the ornithologists wept.
---o0o---
Jack Brummet
darkened the skies
a songbird flew among us -
a waxwork Daedalus
who couldn't face up to The Sun.
An actual bird with real wings,
he soared on fire,
beating his drumsticks
until the feathers were gone.
Bird carved himself
and the ornithologists wept.
---o0o---
Jack Brummet
A Poem - Acrylic
Stuck under the static sky,
The figure you brushed in
Wants off canvas.
He will not be your Man With Blue Banjo anymore.
He wants to be what he will be,
Not sailing a scumbled sea
Under impasto thunderheads.
He is tired of the dark sun
And wants to lie down and rest.
No news comes from a far country.
The real estate around him--
A confabulation of blue and red stone--
Chills in a rare-harbored ocean.
The black sun was pushed, fell or jumped
To shine back upon itself.
He knows the sun will never go down.
He cannot open his mouth to scream.
The oars will never move.
The island of color
Will always be eight inches away
And the boat
Will always be sinking.
The tattered sails hang in the wind.
The next day refuses to begin.
He clutches that blue banjo
As his ship tilts toward heaven.
---o0o---
Jack Brummet
[published in the magazine Electrum]
The figure you brushed in
Wants off canvas.
He will not be your Man With Blue Banjo anymore.
He wants to be what he will be,
Not sailing a scumbled sea
Under impasto thunderheads.
He is tired of the dark sun
And wants to lie down and rest.
No news comes from a far country.
The real estate around him--
A confabulation of blue and red stone--
Chills in a rare-harbored ocean.
The black sun was pushed, fell or jumped
To shine back upon itself.
He knows the sun will never go down.
He cannot open his mouth to scream.
The oars will never move.
The island of color
Will always be eight inches away
And the boat
Will always be sinking.
The tattered sails hang in the wind.
The next day refuses to begin.
He clutches that blue banjo
As his ship tilts toward heaven.
---o0o---
Jack Brummet
[published in the magazine Electrum]
Friday, November 19, 2004
My Worst Jobs, Part 1 - McGoo
In 1983, I let an old college friend--McGoo--talk me into coming to work for him. I didn't last long. It was one of the most painful and hilarious experiences of my life. We were a magazine for construction professionals with a plan center (where they could view blueprints and create bids for various open-bid projects). Our job: to sell subscriptions and advertising in the magazine.
Jagetafuckinorderyet? McGoo tried for a short period to not allow anyone to leave the boiler room until they had "an order." You were not allowed to take a whiz until you got an order. "For the good of the order" was our watchword. I never quite knew if that meant for us, the brother- and sister-hood of salespeople, or just for the order itself.
Of the five salespeople under McGoo, I was the only one whose salary/draw was not garnished.
Leads
In sales, it's all about the leads (as you know from seeing or reading Glenngarry Glen Ross). Of course, McGoo got the cream of the crop, and only so many would come in per week; the rest were continually recycled.
When you called the marks, you wrote down on the cards how they responded. McGoo would erase what you wrote, and nothing would happen. Then the card would be handed back out on two weeks later on Monday as one of your 20 "free" leads for the week. I would call someone at a construction company and their wife would answer and tell me that her husband had died last week. I would apologize and write on the card—remove from lead pool, customer died. And then the card would be handed out again that week as part of out precious leads (after that you were on your own, which basically meant calling everyone you knew in construction (for me that was approximately no one). Or, you hit the yellow pages which were even more fruitless than the worthless leads Mcgoo handed out. After he cherry-picked any choice ones that happened to fall in there.
Someone would call the poor widow every Monday morning. One guy told me that if we ever called him again he would come down and break our faces. I wrote that on the card. And I called him a couple weeks later.
The cards came back again and again. Finally, one really brain damaged guy came down with steam coming out of his ears and McGoo had to do some mighty fast dancing (natch', blaming it all on "those fuckin' morons in the boilerroom"). When you wrote TD on a lead, it meant you had been seriously turned down. In theory, the lead would lay fallow for a couple of months. But not under the McGoo system. A turndown was merely a moment of temporary insanity on the part of a recalcitrant customer, coupled with gross salesman incompetence. So you would end up calling the same guy every Monday and he'd tell you "nothing has changed. I still don't want the magazine, creep. Now don't call me again."
Your twenty precious leads would almost always dwindle down to maybe three real. if remote, possibilities. By this time, with a stack of turndowns, you were so desperate to get McGoo off your ass, you didn't try to sell them the real ripoff. . .you sold them the lowball subscription ($100). A lot of the guys were so desperate to salve Mcgoo that they would write up a fake sale. That took the heat off. But a couple weeks later when the cancelled subscription meant there was hell to pay. . .McGoo got his commissions early, so a cancellation meant they would actually dock him too.
Meanwhile, of course, McGoo's stack of leads were from people who sent in the fallout cards saying "Yes, I am interested in subscribing. Please contact me." So by the time we rolled in Monday morning (McGoo having arrived early to shuffle and cherrypick the fresh leads), McGoo would have four or five orders on the boards, and we would be in the hole. I forget what term he used for someone who didn't yet have an order, but it was something like shithead.
A conversation
"Jack get a godamned order on the books. Be a man."
"Christ, I'm trying, Jim."
"That's the difference between me and the rest of you shitheads. You're trying. You're dyin'. I'm doing. While you’re flogging the old salami, I’m soaking my hose in prime Grade A cooch."
Another Conversation "I'm going to lunch, Jim."
"J'get a fucking order yet Jack?"
"No, but I'm hungry."
"Get back on the phone. Hungry salesmen make the best salesmen. No one cares whether shitheads eat or not. Get a fawkin' order and I'll buy you a fuckin' T-bone!"
Bill Ryan
A second generation Irishman, who drove about a 1966 Cadillac convertible. Didn’t go to college. Black sheep of his family. About a week after I started at Construction Data, his salary was garnisheed by some credit card company. One thing Bill needed was that monthly cash infusion to keep things juggled. . .he worked his debtors in some sort of bizarre pyramid scheme. He had a volcanic temper and was endlessly tailed by bill collectors, repo men, and rumpled private detectives. He thought Keelin was way too hot for a non-Irishman.
Pat Sherwin
He made Willy Loman look like a superhuman dynamo. “I had some fucking scores, I tell you Jack. I was salesman of the year twice, got a new Buick once and a trip to Hawaii another time. And here I sit with a sick wife, a fuckin' basket of picked over leads and a fuckin' punk kid tellin' me what to do and insulting me. Life is the green-apple shits, Jack."
My First Day On The Job
I rolled into the office at 8:30. McGoo, was, of course, glad to see me, chatting me up, introducing me around and he was truly happy to have some sort of lit brother working with him. After maybe an hour, he tossed me a pile of stuff to read. I read it in ten minutes.
“OK John, you’re ready to go.”
He handed me a freshly printed stack of lead cards.
“Well, it’s about time to get you on the books today. I want you to close one of these before lunch.”
“Jim, I’d really like to listen to some of the other guys do this for a while. I don’t know what to say to these people.”
“John, you can do it. You’re selling something they want that will make them money, and in return they give you theirs. You can listen to the rest of us all fawking night and it ain’t going to help you a bit. You’ve got to start working those taps and coming up with a magic script. It’s not really all that different from sex. You get them interested, you talk to them, you woo them. And then when things have heated up, you close. An’ you know what? Every time you close it feels every bit as good as when you finally get to stick the old salami in the jellyroll.”
My First Telephone Call
“I’ve told every one of you sonofabitches that I didn’t want your goddamned magazine. EVER! I’ve told you never to call me. AND YOU CALL EVERY FUCKING WEEK.”
“I’m, sorry, Sir, but I was working with some information that said you might be interested in knowing more about Construction Data. Possibly I could send you a free copy of our magazine. Maybe you would like to come down here and tour our plan center facility.”
“I’m going to come down there and tour your heads if I hear from you assholes again.”
“Sorry you feel that way. If you ever do decide. . ." [CLICK].
Turndowns
I started to write notes on the card—saying don’t call this guy back. McGoo grabbed the card from my hand.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“Making notes. “
“You don’t need to write anything on that card, John. Just a note. This was a soft turndown, so you write STD on the card, date it, and put it on the bottom of your stack. We send the leads back in to the main office every Friday night.”
Under the McGoo system, a turndown was merely a moment of temporary insanity. You had to call back fairly soon. . .in McGoo’s theory, if you called back often enough, eventually the mark might think “Hey, these guys are persistent. They must have something good going here.”
McGoo plunged on with my indoctrination.
“So he says no Johnnie. Simply mark it STD. We’ll turn that piece of dog shit sooner or later. He’ll bare his sphincter and beg us to give him a poke. He will crumble and eventually beg for a solid rodgering at top dollar!”
“If he doesn’t come down and cave our heads in first. . .”
“Ah, you missed it. These guys are more hot air than salesmen. And that’s why we eventually triumph. These guys are construction people, we’re pros. Ok. You’ve plunged in. Now, you gotta start with the lingo."
"They say you called them last month, ok, fine. You tell them you are calling back because they did seem interested and you are in a position this week to offer them significant price breaks on Construction Data, if they are able to act quickly.”
“I can’t say that. . .you know. . .it just doesn’t fall off the tongue. Significant price breaks sound phony.”
“Johnnie, me boy. There is no shame in making money. One thing you’ve got to get over is feeling self-conscious or embarrassed. Feel embarrassed at being a goddamned shithead!"
“But I feel like I’m running some scam on them. It’s hard to do…”
“The only people in this room who should be embarrassed are the people who don’t get an order. Now, I want you to get started again. Would a drink help? I’ve got five bucks. Let’s go across the street, I’ll have a club soda and you can have. . .what do you like to drink?”
So we went for a drink, McGoo, recently hooked up with AA, telling me all the while that I would make the breakthrough.
Some Advice from Mcgoo
“Once you get that first order. . .Johnnie me boy. . . you will become an inhuman selling dynamo.”
“I’m not quite there yet.”
“Johnnie, me boy, you don’t even need to sell this thing. . .it sells its fucking self. You are barely even a salesman! All you have to do is punch in a few numbers and start writing orders. You are going to get on the books big time.”
Back at the office, I glumly stare at my pathetic short stack of leads. OK. Number two.
“Like I said the last time, my husband died last year. I’m 75. Why would I need a five hundred dollar construction magazine?”
So I wrote STD on the card and put it at the bottom of the deck.
“John, my boy, you aren’t taking them all the way. You get their pants down around their ankles, and you don't stick it in! If you need a little hand on these, I’ll be your closer.”
The Business Cards, or, How I became Jack Brummet
The next day, McGoo handed me business cards.
“Jack Brummet. Circulation marketing and feature article writer?”
“I like that, yeah, Jack. John is a pussy name. Jack’s the name of a man's man. These are constuction guys. ”
I became Jack. And I still am.
My First Order
Later that day I closed my first order. I sold one year at the “full boat” price. I was “on the books” and flying high. 1 year= $549. 6 mos= $299. 6 mos=$100.
I was on the books and on top of the boilerroom board, until McGoo closed three in a row to remove me from my perch. I was on my second day. McGoo put the heavy pressure on Bill Ryan.
“Jaysus, Bill, Jack, a total frigging rookie comes in here and closed on a full boat. What have you done for me today?”
Within two hours, Bill had closed two big orders, put his name at the top of the board for the day, and departed work. The two orders were utterly bogus. Bill just signed up a couple of his leads for subscriptions.
"We'd Like To Put An Article About You In Our Publication"
As a fellow lit-brother to McGoo, I was ahead of the other salespeople in one regard. One regard I was never much able to capitalize on: we would write articles for our magazine, if we could get the contractors or suppliers to buy a large subscription or ad schedule. I would write absurd puff pieces on these various dimwits that they could pass around to their friends and family. Alas, my heart was in that even less than in selling overpriced subscriptions and advertisements.
Cancellations and deadbeats
Every two weeks, in came an accounting from the main office of people you sold to who had cancelled. Or who were deadbeats. Your commission was then deducted from your account, and you were in the hole. The Deadbeats, you called yourself.
It was always agony and explosions of anger on cancellation day. And whenever you lost a commission, McGoo lost his sales manager cut too. By the time half these cancellations rolled in, people had forgotten they had faked them in the first place. Bill Ryan specialized in writing up phony orders for corporations. The companies would actually pay the subscription about half the time. It was always a dark on cancellation day--especially for those of us who never made the nut, and were always underwater on our commissions.
Pat Sherwin, probably about 65 or so, was the hardest hit. He had an invalid wife and was just barely holding it all together. When he got cancelled, he was utterly gripped with panic and fear. And McGoo felt that those twin emotions were the best sales motivational tool ever developed. Pat would nearly be crying, having just lost $500 in commissions. McGoo would always offer to buy you a drink and tell you his solution to the problem. The solution was invariably "sell more!"
“Ain’t nothing going to happen here boys, ain’t nothing going to happen until I hear those phones dialing Dialing DIALING!!! I’ve walked in here about five times this morning and no one is on the motherfucking phone. NO ONE IS ON THE PHONE!!! What the fuck do you think? You think the fuckin’ customers are just going to call in and throw money at you? I’ll listen to you The Fuckin' Sales Force complain just as soon as I see they are actually working. I got three orders this morning while you were shaking off your goddamned hangovers!"
"I want every phone nigger in this room to book at least $250 by lunch. The orders are out there. The only question is are you men enough to close them? Or are you going to stand here all day blubbering about a bunch of goddamned cancellations? You could be halfway out of the hole if you just got on the phones. Dial for dollars, boys, starting now.
Jagetafuckinorderyet? McGoo tried for a short period to not allow anyone to leave the boiler room until they had "an order." You were not allowed to take a whiz until you got an order. "For the good of the order" was our watchword. I never quite knew if that meant for us, the brother- and sister-hood of salespeople, or just for the order itself.
Of the five salespeople under McGoo, I was the only one whose salary/draw was not garnished.
Leads
In sales, it's all about the leads (as you know from seeing or reading Glenngarry Glen Ross). Of course, McGoo got the cream of the crop, and only so many would come in per week; the rest were continually recycled.
When you called the marks, you wrote down on the cards how they responded. McGoo would erase what you wrote, and nothing would happen. Then the card would be handed back out on two weeks later on Monday as one of your 20 "free" leads for the week. I would call someone at a construction company and their wife would answer and tell me that her husband had died last week. I would apologize and write on the card—remove from lead pool, customer died. And then the card would be handed out again that week as part of out precious leads (after that you were on your own, which basically meant calling everyone you knew in construction (for me that was approximately no one). Or, you hit the yellow pages which were even more fruitless than the worthless leads Mcgoo handed out. After he cherry-picked any choice ones that happened to fall in there.
Someone would call the poor widow every Monday morning. One guy told me that if we ever called him again he would come down and break our faces. I wrote that on the card. And I called him a couple weeks later.
The cards came back again and again. Finally, one really brain damaged guy came down with steam coming out of his ears and McGoo had to do some mighty fast dancing (natch', blaming it all on "those fuckin' morons in the boilerroom"). When you wrote TD on a lead, it meant you had been seriously turned down. In theory, the lead would lay fallow for a couple of months. But not under the McGoo system. A turndown was merely a moment of temporary insanity on the part of a recalcitrant customer, coupled with gross salesman incompetence. So you would end up calling the same guy every Monday and he'd tell you "nothing has changed. I still don't want the magazine, creep. Now don't call me again."
Your twenty precious leads would almost always dwindle down to maybe three real. if remote, possibilities. By this time, with a stack of turndowns, you were so desperate to get McGoo off your ass, you didn't try to sell them the real ripoff. . .you sold them the lowball subscription ($100). A lot of the guys were so desperate to salve Mcgoo that they would write up a fake sale. That took the heat off. But a couple weeks later when the cancelled subscription meant there was hell to pay. . .McGoo got his commissions early, so a cancellation meant they would actually dock him too.
Meanwhile, of course, McGoo's stack of leads were from people who sent in the fallout cards saying "Yes, I am interested in subscribing. Please contact me." So by the time we rolled in Monday morning (McGoo having arrived early to shuffle and cherrypick the fresh leads), McGoo would have four or five orders on the boards, and we would be in the hole. I forget what term he used for someone who didn't yet have an order, but it was something like shithead.
A conversation
"Jack get a godamned order on the books. Be a man."
"Christ, I'm trying, Jim."
"That's the difference between me and the rest of you shitheads. You're trying. You're dyin'. I'm doing. While you’re flogging the old salami, I’m soaking my hose in prime Grade A cooch."
Another Conversation "I'm going to lunch, Jim."
"J'get a fucking order yet Jack?"
"No, but I'm hungry."
"Get back on the phone. Hungry salesmen make the best salesmen. No one cares whether shitheads eat or not. Get a fawkin' order and I'll buy you a fuckin' T-bone!"
Bill Ryan
A second generation Irishman, who drove about a 1966 Cadillac convertible. Didn’t go to college. Black sheep of his family. About a week after I started at Construction Data, his salary was garnisheed by some credit card company. One thing Bill needed was that monthly cash infusion to keep things juggled. . .he worked his debtors in some sort of bizarre pyramid scheme. He had a volcanic temper and was endlessly tailed by bill collectors, repo men, and rumpled private detectives. He thought Keelin was way too hot for a non-Irishman.
Pat Sherwin
He made Willy Loman look like a superhuman dynamo. “I had some fucking scores, I tell you Jack. I was salesman of the year twice, got a new Buick once and a trip to Hawaii another time. And here I sit with a sick wife, a fuckin' basket of picked over leads and a fuckin' punk kid tellin' me what to do and insulting me. Life is the green-apple shits, Jack."
My First Day On The Job
I rolled into the office at 8:30. McGoo, was, of course, glad to see me, chatting me up, introducing me around and he was truly happy to have some sort of lit brother working with him. After maybe an hour, he tossed me a pile of stuff to read. I read it in ten minutes.
“OK John, you’re ready to go.”
He handed me a freshly printed stack of lead cards.
“Well, it’s about time to get you on the books today. I want you to close one of these before lunch.”
“Jim, I’d really like to listen to some of the other guys do this for a while. I don’t know what to say to these people.”
“John, you can do it. You’re selling something they want that will make them money, and in return they give you theirs. You can listen to the rest of us all fawking night and it ain’t going to help you a bit. You’ve got to start working those taps and coming up with a magic script. It’s not really all that different from sex. You get them interested, you talk to them, you woo them. And then when things have heated up, you close. An’ you know what? Every time you close it feels every bit as good as when you finally get to stick the old salami in the jellyroll.”
My First Telephone Call
“I’ve told every one of you sonofabitches that I didn’t want your goddamned magazine. EVER! I’ve told you never to call me. AND YOU CALL EVERY FUCKING WEEK.”
“I’m, sorry, Sir, but I was working with some information that said you might be interested in knowing more about Construction Data. Possibly I could send you a free copy of our magazine. Maybe you would like to come down here and tour our plan center facility.”
“I’m going to come down there and tour your heads if I hear from you assholes again.”
“Sorry you feel that way. If you ever do decide. . ." [CLICK].
Turndowns
I started to write notes on the card—saying don’t call this guy back. McGoo grabbed the card from my hand.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“Making notes. “
“You don’t need to write anything on that card, John. Just a note. This was a soft turndown, so you write STD on the card, date it, and put it on the bottom of your stack. We send the leads back in to the main office every Friday night.”
Under the McGoo system, a turndown was merely a moment of temporary insanity. You had to call back fairly soon. . .in McGoo’s theory, if you called back often enough, eventually the mark might think “Hey, these guys are persistent. They must have something good going here.”
McGoo plunged on with my indoctrination.
“So he says no Johnnie. Simply mark it STD. We’ll turn that piece of dog shit sooner or later. He’ll bare his sphincter and beg us to give him a poke. He will crumble and eventually beg for a solid rodgering at top dollar!”
“If he doesn’t come down and cave our heads in first. . .”
“Ah, you missed it. These guys are more hot air than salesmen. And that’s why we eventually triumph. These guys are construction people, we’re pros. Ok. You’ve plunged in. Now, you gotta start with the lingo."
"They say you called them last month, ok, fine. You tell them you are calling back because they did seem interested and you are in a position this week to offer them significant price breaks on Construction Data, if they are able to act quickly.”
“I can’t say that. . .you know. . .it just doesn’t fall off the tongue. Significant price breaks sound phony.”
“Johnnie, me boy. There is no shame in making money. One thing you’ve got to get over is feeling self-conscious or embarrassed. Feel embarrassed at being a goddamned shithead!"
“But I feel like I’m running some scam on them. It’s hard to do…”
“The only people in this room who should be embarrassed are the people who don’t get an order. Now, I want you to get started again. Would a drink help? I’ve got five bucks. Let’s go across the street, I’ll have a club soda and you can have. . .what do you like to drink?”
So we went for a drink, McGoo, recently hooked up with AA, telling me all the while that I would make the breakthrough.
Some Advice from Mcgoo
“Once you get that first order. . .Johnnie me boy. . . you will become an inhuman selling dynamo.”
“I’m not quite there yet.”
“Johnnie, me boy, you don’t even need to sell this thing. . .it sells its fucking self. You are barely even a salesman! All you have to do is punch in a few numbers and start writing orders. You are going to get on the books big time.”
Back at the office, I glumly stare at my pathetic short stack of leads. OK. Number two.
“Like I said the last time, my husband died last year. I’m 75. Why would I need a five hundred dollar construction magazine?”
So I wrote STD on the card and put it at the bottom of the deck.
“John, my boy, you aren’t taking them all the way. You get their pants down around their ankles, and you don't stick it in! If you need a little hand on these, I’ll be your closer.”
The Business Cards, or, How I became Jack Brummet
The next day, McGoo handed me business cards.
“Jack Brummet. Circulation marketing and feature article writer?”
“I like that, yeah, Jack. John is a pussy name. Jack’s the name of a man's man. These are constuction guys. ”
I became Jack. And I still am.
My First Order
Later that day I closed my first order. I sold one year at the “full boat” price. I was “on the books” and flying high. 1 year= $549. 6 mos= $299. 6 mos=$100.
I was on the books and on top of the boilerroom board, until McGoo closed three in a row to remove me from my perch. I was on my second day. McGoo put the heavy pressure on Bill Ryan.
“Jaysus, Bill, Jack, a total frigging rookie comes in here and closed on a full boat. What have you done for me today?”
Within two hours, Bill had closed two big orders, put his name at the top of the board for the day, and departed work. The two orders were utterly bogus. Bill just signed up a couple of his leads for subscriptions.
"We'd Like To Put An Article About You In Our Publication"
As a fellow lit-brother to McGoo, I was ahead of the other salespeople in one regard. One regard I was never much able to capitalize on: we would write articles for our magazine, if we could get the contractors or suppliers to buy a large subscription or ad schedule. I would write absurd puff pieces on these various dimwits that they could pass around to their friends and family. Alas, my heart was in that even less than in selling overpriced subscriptions and advertisements.
Cancellations and deadbeats
Every two weeks, in came an accounting from the main office of people you sold to who had cancelled. Or who were deadbeats. Your commission was then deducted from your account, and you were in the hole. The Deadbeats, you called yourself.
It was always agony and explosions of anger on cancellation day. And whenever you lost a commission, McGoo lost his sales manager cut too. By the time half these cancellations rolled in, people had forgotten they had faked them in the first place. Bill Ryan specialized in writing up phony orders for corporations. The companies would actually pay the subscription about half the time. It was always a dark on cancellation day--especially for those of us who never made the nut, and were always underwater on our commissions.
Pat Sherwin, probably about 65 or so, was the hardest hit. He had an invalid wife and was just barely holding it all together. When he got cancelled, he was utterly gripped with panic and fear. And McGoo felt that those twin emotions were the best sales motivational tool ever developed. Pat would nearly be crying, having just lost $500 in commissions. McGoo would always offer to buy you a drink and tell you his solution to the problem. The solution was invariably "sell more!"
“Ain’t nothing going to happen here boys, ain’t nothing going to happen until I hear those phones dialing Dialing DIALING!!! I’ve walked in here about five times this morning and no one is on the motherfucking phone. NO ONE IS ON THE PHONE!!! What the fuck do you think? You think the fuckin’ customers are just going to call in and throw money at you? I’ll listen to you The Fuckin' Sales Force complain just as soon as I see they are actually working. I got three orders this morning while you were shaking off your goddamned hangovers!"
"I want every phone nigger in this room to book at least $250 by lunch. The orders are out there. The only question is are you men enough to close them? Or are you going to stand here all day blubbering about a bunch of goddamned cancellations? You could be halfway out of the hole if you just got on the phones. Dial for dollars, boys, starting now.
Archive.org rocks!
"The Internet Archive is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public."
What a truly amazing site. Public domain movies (great industrials and propaganda). A massive live music archive. You have a band? You can put your live shows there. The archive, to give one example, is a great source of live Grateful Dead shows from 1966-1995. For The Grateful Dead alone, they have 2,774 shows online, or roughly 6,000+ hours of live Dead music. You can download a two-three hour show in seven minutes. There are shows by Little Feat, Cracker, Bela Fleck and many other people and bands.
Want to hear the Kennedy-Nixon debates? They're all there. Hear Lindbergh, and FDR, and the secret tapes of LBJ and Robert McNamara discussing the war in SE Asia.
The archive also includes the entire Prelinger Archives (by Rick Prelinger in NYC). From 1983 to 2003, it grew to a collection of over 48,000 "ephemeral" (advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur) films. It includes a lot of wonderful instructional films about dating, weird industrials, duck and cover movies, and on and on. Check out the movies Breakfast Pals, Are You Popular, Your Name Here, or The Shy Guy, starring the fellow who played Samantha's husband on Bewitched...
This is an amazing web site. You could waste a lot of time here. /jack
What a truly amazing site. Public domain movies (great industrials and propaganda). A massive live music archive. You have a band? You can put your live shows there. The archive, to give one example, is a great source of live Grateful Dead shows from 1966-1995. For The Grateful Dead alone, they have 2,774 shows online, or roughly 6,000+ hours of live Dead music. You can download a two-three hour show in seven minutes. There are shows by Little Feat, Cracker, Bela Fleck and many other people and bands.
Want to hear the Kennedy-Nixon debates? They're all there. Hear Lindbergh, and FDR, and the secret tapes of LBJ and Robert McNamara discussing the war in SE Asia.
The archive also includes the entire Prelinger Archives (by Rick Prelinger in NYC). From 1983 to 2003, it grew to a collection of over 48,000 "ephemeral" (advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur) films. It includes a lot of wonderful instructional films about dating, weird industrials, duck and cover movies, and on and on. Check out the movies Breakfast Pals, Are You Popular, Your Name Here, or The Shy Guy, starring the fellow who played Samantha's husband on Bewitched...
This is an amazing web site. You could waste a lot of time here. /jack
Elvis Presley's Shopping List (List Number 4)
The following are the items Elvis Presley required to be on hand at Graceland at all times. I wonder if they used the same list to stock his green rooms too?
fresh, lean, unfrozen ground meat
one case regular Pepsi
one case orange drinks
rolls (hot rolls - Brown 'n' Serve)
cans of biscuits (at least six)
hamburger buns
pickles
potatoes and onions
assorted fresh fruits
cans of sauerkraut
wieners
at least three bottles of milk and 1/2 & 1/2 cream
thin, lean bacon
mustard
peanut butter
fresh, hand-squeezed cold orange juice
banana pudding (to be made each night)
ingredients for meat loaf and sauce
brownies (to be made each night)
ice cream - vanilla and chocolate
shredded coconut
fudge cookies
gum (Spearmint, Doublemint, Juicy Fruit - three each)
cigars (El Producto Diamond Tips; El Producto Altas)
cigarettes
Dristan
Super Anahist
Contac
Sucrets (antibiotic red box)
Feenamint gum
matches (four to five books)
Thursday, November 18, 2004
The 300 Most Common Words (List Number 3)
As you can probably tell, I like lists and enumerations. I have had this one kicking around for years. It actually tells a lot about us. For better or worse.
the of and a to in is you that it he for was on are as with his they at be this from I have or by one had not but what all were when we there can an your which their said if do will each about how up out them then she many some so these would other into has more her two like him see time could no make than first been its who now people my made over did down only way find use may water long little very after words called just where most know get through back much before go good new write our used me man too any day same right look think also around another came come work three word must because does part even place well such here take why things help put years different away again off went old number great tell men say small every found still between name should Mr home big give air line set own under read last never us left end along while might next sound below saw something thought both few those always looked show large often together asked house don't world going want school important until one form food keep children feet land side without boy once animals life enough took sometimes four head above kind began almost live page got earth need far hand high year mother light parts country father let night following two picture being study second eyes soon times story boys since white days ever paper hard near sentence better best across during today others however sure means knew it's try told young miles sun ways thing whole hear example heard several change answer room sea against top turned three learn point city play toward five using himself usually
Source: The American Heritage Word Frequency Book by John B. Carroll, Peter Davies, and Barry Richman (Houghton Mifflin, 1971, ISBN 0-395-13570-2).
the of and a to in is you that it he for was on are as with his they at be this from I have or by one had not but what all were when we there can an your which their said if do will each about how up out them then she many some so these would other into has more her two like him see time could no make than first been its who now people my made over did down only way find use may water long little very after words called just where most know get through back much before go good new write our used me man too any day same right look think also around another came come work three word must because does part even place well such here take why things help put years different away again off went old number great tell men say small every found still between name should Mr home big give air line set own under read last never us left end along while might next sound below saw something thought both few those always looked show large often together asked house don't world going want school important until one form food keep children feet land side without boy once animals life enough took sometimes four head above kind began almost live page got earth need far hand high year mother light parts country father let night following two picture being study second eyes soon times story boys since white days ever paper hard near sentence better best across during today others however sure means knew it's try told young miles sun ways thing whole hear example heard several change answer room sea against top turned three learn point city play toward five using himself usually
Source: The American Heritage Word Frequency Book by John B. Carroll, Peter Davies, and Barry Richman (Houghton Mifflin, 1971, ISBN 0-395-13570-2).
poem: The Marriage
Two tattered mannequins
Prop each other up
In the Salvation Army Store window
---o0o---
Prop each other up
In the Salvation Army Store window
---o0o---
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