In the beginning though, things were more complicated. When I
first started working for Bosco, my shift began at 5PM and finished 4 hours
later, Sunday through Thursday. It was
normal to book one appointment per hour, which was exactly the rate that Bosco
was looking for. He figured that if his
salespeople could get between 8-10 appointments set per day, they would average
2-3 new sales each week. Bosco had me “teamed” with another telemarketer, a women
named Angie. I don’t know what the hell
she would say to those guys on the phone each night, but she booked more
appointments than I did, by a good 4:1 margin.
My desk and telephone were right next to the office laser printer, so
that every time either of us booked an appointment, a report was generated and
printed right there and then so that when Bosco came in the next morning, all
he had to do was scoop the reports from the previous evening up out of the tray
to see how we’d done. That damned printer
powered up and printed out Angie’s appointment reports so fast and so often
that I got pretty damned discouraged during the first couple of weeks I worked
there.
One night, after I’d been working there for about two weeks,
I lost it. I’d been dialing through a
particularly fruitless batch of leads and had only booked one appointment in
the previous 3 hours. Angie had 7 and as
I put the phone down after being told by a very nice woman that her husband
worked third shift and was still sleeping, I powered down my desktop computer
and packed it in. Angie leaned towards
me in her chair, her hand over the telephone mouthpiece.
“Where are you going?” she whispered.
I smiled as I put my jacket on and replied, “Out to get
drunk. Want me to bring you a cocktail
‘to go’?”
Angie scowled and returned to her call. I walked outside and headed to my car. It was April, but that sure as hell didn’t
mean it was spring-like outside. Vermont
doesn’t experience the second quarter of the year quite like anywhere else in
the country. In fact, when you consider
that between the sub-zero lows in January and the 90+ degree highs in July, the
state probably sees the greatest flux in temperature of anyplace in the
hemisphere. Where else are you going to
live through a 100-130 degree swing in a six-month stretch? It was foggy outside. It was also cold. I happen to like cold weather, which was why
I still lived in Vermont, even though a lot of the people I’d gone to high
school and to the University of Vermont with had left the state to build their
careers and to raise their families. I
was 37 years old, single, living in a rented cabin at the end of dirt road, and
working part-time as a telemarketer for the state’s reigning hair replacement
mogul. About all I had going for me at
that moment was that my car was paid for and that it had a new battery. Oh yeah, and the fact that I didn’t mind the
cold weather. The battery did its job
and I drove out of the parking lot and headed south toward Interstate 89. I drove over the bridge that spans the
Connecticut River and into New Hampshire, taking the first exit, eventually
stopping in front of the 7 Barrel Brewery in West Lebanon.
The Brewery had opened only a few days before, but already it
had attracted a very big following. It
was the brainchild of Vermont master brewer Greg Noonan, the author of several
great books on beer and ale brewing and the owner of the Vermont Pub and
Brewery in Burlington. Noonan was a
pioneer. He had opened the first brewpub
in Vermont in 1988 and the 7 Barrel Brewery was his first bid to expand, just 6
years later. The community in the Upper
Connecticut Valley took to it too. When
I got there, the place was jammed. Even
so, I managed to squeeze into a seat at the bar and ordered a porter. It was dark, malty and delicious. I had been brewing my own beer for about a
year by then and so I had begun to fancy myself as a bit of a connoisseur, or
“beer snob” as some of my friends had begun to derisively refer to me. I took a long, thoughtful swallow of the
porter.
In back of the bar, there were 7 large metal vats, each
labeled with a hand written sign that displayed the type of ale or beer that
was being fermented in it. Or so it
seemed. The real business took place
outside the back dining area, where the brew master made the mash, added the
hops and eventually pitched the yeast.
The sweet malt smell permeated everything and it was one of the reasons
why I’d fallen in love with the place the first time I’d driven by. The steam rose off the top of the brewing pot
and you could see that from the road.
But it was the scent of the malt that really drew me in. You could smell that from the road as
well. It reminded me of what my cabin
smelled like when I brewed at home.
Brewing at home is actually pretty easy, so long as you keep
your kitchen and brewing tools clean.
You do the same things that a commercial brewer does, except on a far
more manageable scale. The first step is
to create a mash by cooking up the cracked grains of malted barley in a pot of
water. You don’t actually boil it, as
that would kill off the enzymes you’re trying to build. It’s how those enzymes interact with the
yeast that you add later that dictates so much of how your brew will turn out. After you strain out the grains, you add the
hops and whatever flavoring grains you need.
For a dark ale, like a porter or a stout, you might add black patent
malt, or chocolate malt, as well as the very sweet flavored crystal malt. I
remember that there was a little girl who lived across the road from my cabin
who used to wander by from time to time, to see if I was brewing. I would give her a handful of the crystal
malt, which she would eat, much the same way a baseball player chews on
sunflower seeds. She absolutely loved
the flavor! Her father would come by to pick
her up when she did this and the two adults would share the fruits of my
labors, while the little girl snatched another handful or two of the malt. Cooking the brew was the most fun then. Once the stuff had a chance to ferment,
basically all you had to do was bottle it and wait for it to age a bit. Don’t
forget, the bi-product, or waste produced by a healthy yeast population is
alcohol. The more successful those
little yeasty beasties are in reproducing, the more alcohol they make. This is to their detriment as the alcohol is
toxic to them. Eventually, most of the
yeast dies and so you separate it from the rest of the beer with a siphon, give
the brew a small boost of sugar to reactivate whatever living yeast is left so
that it can help to carbonate your brew and into the bottles it all goes.
But at the 7 Barrels Brewery, I could enjoy all the smells of
the process without having to deal with the mess. The place was loud, which I liked. I find that the quiet of any empty tavern is
oppressive. People tend to whisper and
in doing so they actually attract more attention to themselves. In a crowded room, you can’t hear a thing
anyone is saying because they’re all talking at once. This also means that no one will notice you,
if you’ve just come in to grab a few beers and to contemplate why you have
turned out to be such a failure at your new job. I took another drink from my glass and let my
mind wander back to the mess I’d left at work.
I knew how to sell. At least I
was pretty sure I did. Were the leads
Bosco gave me just crap, or was I making some major error in how I was working
them? Or had I perhaps taken a sales job
in an industry where I had no business being?
The next episode of SlipNot will be published on April 21st.
If you'd like to read SlipNot in its entirety, GO
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