For My First Job Back in Massachusetts I Was Trained by a Monster in the Insurance Industry...
Previously, Part 21: Without Love, Where Would You Be Now?
Silver Screen Collection. Getty Images.Leaving Jersey and returning to Massachusetts felt good. It was the right decision for us.
We arrived in Sharon late on Friday night, and Susan's parents couldn't have been happier to have us home. After dating Susan for three years, their house had become my home too. The moment we walked through the front door, which they never locked, Susan and I breathed a sigh of relief. They say 'you can't go home again', but they never met my in-laws…
Susan's room was exactly the way she left it, and we got the best night's sleep we had in quite a while. It was good to be home.
We emptied the U-Haul Saturday morning and returned it. Then we had lunch with Gloria and Irv, and started planning our job searches. We knew with her associate's degree in Early Childhood, Susan wouldn't have a problem finding a job. We weren't sure about me.
We decided that with my experience selling clothes in New York and New Jersey, I'd have no problem finding a job in the Woburn clothing market. When I walked into showrooms and talked about my experience, no one seemed too excited, and I couldn't even get an interview.
I saw an ad in the Boston Globe Classifieds for Insurance Sales, and because my recent experience was in sales, I applied out of desperation to State Mutual Life Assurance Company in Needham. I was immediately hired as a trainee. Like the other trainees, I was guaranteed a salary during the five-week training period, but once it ended, we received only commissions. There were four new trainees, including me. Keith, Paul, and Sandy seemed as desperate as I was to secure a job, possibly a career.
Karl owned the franchise, and Johnny was his trainer. Karl was in his mid-fifties, five-foot-seven, and just as wide, with a very large cranium that sported an evil goatee and straight light brown hair combed back, revealing a huge forehead. He looked medieval, or like the son of Satan, and while introducing himself to us, said he was a former CIA agent. When I snickered quietly, Karl reacted by flipping his tie over his shoulder, unbuttoning his shirt, and showing the four of us scars where he'd been stabbed and shot in the line of duty. That definitely got our attention. Hell of a presentation if you ask me. We were all pretty intimidated.
Johnny was one of the weirdest-looking dudes I had ever met. He was in his mid-forties, an inch taller than Karl, thinner, and wore thick black-rimmed glasses that he always removed to clean with his faded white hanky. His skin was pale white, as if he were nocturnal. His wardrobe consisted only of dark black suits he called his 'death certificate suits', and the shoulders of his suit jackets were always covered with dandruff. He had the strangest haircut, too. The top of his head appeared flat, and the way his greasy, lifeless hair landed on his forehead, he resembled Frankenstein. He displayed herky-jerky spastic mannerisms that appeared to be involuntary. He always spread his thumb and index finger across his soft, fleshy jaw, thumb under his chin, and index finger pointing towards his ear. It was a toss-up between him and Karl for the weirdest-looking dude I've ever met. They were both monsters in their own right!
Sandy, Keith, Paul, and I were bug-eyed, and our jaws dropped listening to them speak. The four of us would've turned and run like hell if we didn't need jobs so badly. I think Karl and Johnny knew that we were all pretty desperate.
We trained hard for the first four days, learning everything we could about the insurance industry. Special attention was paid to phone presentations. We were instructed to introduce ourselves as financial advisors and tell unsuspecting people we were calling that they had been chosen to receive free financial advice to help them save money. The bottom line was setting up appointments.
On Friday, day five of the training, Johnny tossed a complete yellow pages on each of our desks and told us to randomly open to a page. Once we were all on a page, he walked by and looked over our shoulders to make sure we were on a good page. Then he told us we were gonna spend the next three hours making cold calls to everyone on the page on the right.
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He stayed for an hour and a half, and then told us that if we wanted to stay in the training program and receive a paycheck, we had to stay until we called the entire page and scheduled at least three appointments.
At one point, after Johnny left, I took a break and went into Karl's office to look at all the books on his wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling, dark wooden bookshelf behind his desk. I wanted to know what the hell he was reading…
All the books were about how to be a successful salesperson or mind control. After I saw them, I ran and got Sandy, Keith, and Paul. They were scared. They started looking around the room for hidden cameras and then hurried back to their desks, afraid of getting caught looking through Karl's things. He was in the CIA and could've booby-trapped the room.
On Monday, Johnny checked our leads and nodded his head awkwardly in approval. Then Karl came in. He started talking about in-home presentations, and sensing he didn't have my complete attention, he stopped his presentation, gave me a cold, hard stare, and asked, "Vinnie, do you want to fight me?"
A very strange ask in a sales meeting. I was 23 and in pretty good shape, so I stared back at him momentarily while the others waited for my reply. And then I said, "If you're gonna fight me, Karl, you betta kill me. Cause if you don't, I'm gonna kill you first…"
The room went silent. Then Karl cracked a wide smile and said, "That's a great answer, Vinnie. The only answer. Now let's get back to work…" He wasn't intimidated, but I could tell he was impressed.
When I got home and told Susan what had happened, she became very concerned. "Be careful, Vin. He's a dangerous man. He'll kill you…"
I laughed. It was just a job…
To be continued…