I had spent the last several weeks on the back of my bike, what I was looking for I couldn’t say, but I was in the mood to reconnect to old friends. I had last talked to Darryl 6 years ago when we went to a community college in the landlocked state. I remember those years as being an endless series of minimalls and the same fast food resturants, with no culture to speak of. Darryl seemed content as we both were getting a general IT certificate. He made a decent go at a job, and I spent some time at a gig which didn’t really go anywhere, so I hit the road.
To my surprise, Darryl was still at his old apartment. I remember it being totally unremarkable. And I remember it being kind of shabby, which made it feel sad, like nobody cared about it and would only put the minimum effort into making the place not terrible. It was a place where you’d never meet your next door neighbor despite living next to one another for years. We would hang out once in a while, and I kept telling him he had to get out of there, it felt like the walls of the place would deflect and resist any attempt to make life interesting.
As the winding roads on the outskirts of the city turned to 4 and then 6 lane roads, the monotony of the endless series of stoplights began to get to me. The constant starting and stopping, the wait for the light to turn as cars lined up, then it turns green and you finally groan through the intersection. I would look ahead and watch the light turn to Red as soon as I approached. It was rare to come up to a green light and sail through, so as I got closer and closer to Darryl’s old apartment I got more and more aggrived.
I felt out of place on my motorcycle, surrounded by useless lifted trucks and ballooning SUVs and Crossovers. I would look inside and nearly every driver was staring at their phone. I was thankful that they seemed to give me more space than any other car, perhaps the apperance of a motorbike was enough to spook them a little.
Finally I rounded the old corner and turned into Darryls apartment, as I did many times 6 years ago. The apartment complex was mostly unchanged. I noticed that the pool had been covered and turned into a vollyball court, but it was always slightly too hot to do anything outside, so I wondered who would even use such a thing. Even the old white sedan was still parked where it was 6 years ago, covered in even more dirt somehow. I was beginning to wonder what kind of appeal this place had.
We greeted each other with pleasentries. Darryl had slightly more grey hairs than last time. The apartment was the same as I remember it, but he got a new couch, and I remarked on this. He had a slightly bigger tv, and I also remarked on this. I went over my various adventures on the bike, my trip to europe, and Darryl nodded with polite interest. I began to ask about his life.
“Well” he said “pretty much been at the call center”
“What?” I asked “Not even a raise or promotion?”
“Well yes I do get a regular raise, to keep up with the cost of living, but it’s fairly easy”
Darryl had found work at some kind of call center, the kind where people try to swindle money out of little old ladies with endless calls about expiring warrenties or signing them up for a worthless vitamin subscription. He said it was fairly easy. The real money maker was something he called “Account management” where people would call to cancel something they had signed up for. They could delay the cancellation by a glitch in the subscription software where it would appear to be cancelled but automatically renew. They’d get angry calls back but it was good for retention, so he said. It would take several calls before the ticket could be escalated to the main branch office, where someone could actually cancel the account, but they’d be upsold the entire time. I always thought it was a very scummy way to make a living, but all Darryl had to do was maintain the aging servers and hoped the glitch that held the entire operation together was never fixed.
“I can get you a job there, you know” Darryl said as I sat on his couch, perhaps I was the only person to sit on this couch, he was always on his computer and the TV had a layer of dust which hinted at a lack of use.
“are you happy doing this?” I asked
“what do you mean, happy?” Darryl said
“I mean, this place is so boring, you’re working for a scummy company, I have always gotten the sense that you want something more out of life” I said
“I’m content” Darryl said “what would I even do? Go on adventures like you do? Some people are content to just be. It’s almost zen like” he said
“Zen like?” I asked
“Well there’s nothing to worry about” Darryl said “you have a roof over your head, a steady job, I can come home and unwind”
“Do you ever get out much” I asked
“Out?” He said balking “Where would I go? I guess there’s a sports bar nearby but it’s a 20 minute walk, and I’m not into sports. I can’t go into the city, it’s too dangerous, too many shootings and robbings”
I sighed
“Here it’s safe, nothing happens, you just get in your car and go place to place, maybe treat yourself to some junk food” he said
“I get the sense that nothing has happened to you in the past 6 years” I replied
“I prefer it’ Darryl said “I used to be ambitious and have dreams, and then I got with the program, I mean what have you done in the past 6 years? I’m on management track, I can … “ he trailed off or I zoned out while he was explaining it.
Later that afternoon we went to another apartment in the complex, it was closer to the Darryl introduced me to Chad. Chad was a little older than both of us, dressed always in slacks and a button up shirt and tie, as if at any moment he would have to turn into a manager of some kind. His apartment was as spartan as Darryl’s and we sat around the countertop on uncomfortable tall chairs.
“You have to follow the Silverback System, it’s a management system that’s totally based in science and biology. It was developed by researches who studied the gorillas of africa. If you want to be a success you have to follow it” Chad went on and on about this nonsense
But eventually the discussion came to their grand plans of joining their company’s inner circle. TekSolutions was a call center with multiple offices in the area, and were mainly contracted to cold call customers and get them to sign up for subscriptions to things they didn’t need, or the ubiquitous car warrenty expiraton scams, things like that. When someone wanted to cancel their subscription they had to go through Chad and Darryl’s call center, and so the workers there would be tasked with keeping customers enrolled. Chad called himself a “Senior Account Retention Engineer” on his buisiness card. The secret, Chad told me, was that they had discovered a glitch in the software that would lock out account holders from being able to call the account cancelation line. They can’t get transferred without giving their account number or information, and once they have that if they have the flag on the account, then they get disconnected when they transfer to the account cancelation office. They get locked out of calling for 30 days even if they call back, and it takes three times to call back to clear the flag. So only the most persistant people seem to get through to actually cancel their account.
“So you must not be very busy then” I said
“No we’re slammed most of the time” Chad said “At capacity. But Darryl here has something figured out”
“Yeah” Darryl replied “The software uses some config files to set flags, so my plan is to update the configs so that the flag that the account gets when the glitch happens, that way we can lock them out for longer, like 5 tries and 60 days between account clear attempts” he said with an aura of smugness
“We’re going to aim for 100% account retention” Chad said proudly
“Can you explain the, uh, glitch” I asked, skeptical
Chad beamed “It’s simple, in the account panel of our call management program, CallTek, if you select the name and press shift, you can select multiple other actions. Like cancel and forward, or so on. So if you select two actions at once and hit enter, the call disconnects and they get the flag on the account. If they try to call back they’re locked for 30 days. After 30 days when they try to transfer to the Account Retention Center, a flag gets removed, but then they get disconnected because it applies three flags at once, so they’re locked out again for 30 days. If they keep calling they finally get to an Account Retention Specialist. But the flag can’t be applied to that person again, and usually by then...well…” Chad trailed off “they’re pretty mad”
“We tried adding the flag again” Darryl said “using the same glitch, but there’s some account flag that gets applied where a flag can no longer be applied”
“But” Darryl said “I poked around in the config files and looked at how the account data is structured, and in a few test accounts we were able to keep the accounts locked out for a lot longer”
“So Next month” Chad said “we’re going to turn on the new system, and account retention is going through the roof. That will get us into the Golden Steak Club”
“What” I asked
“It’s a monthly dinner at a local steak house, all the branch managers from the top branches are invited. When I took over Account Retention our branch was a bottom performer, but since discovering the glitch we’ve turned things around. There’s 8 branches and only 3 get a seat at the table. We’re number 4.” Chad explained, excitedly.
“And what happens at this Golden Steak Club” I asked
“Well” Chad said “you get invited to the annual Contract Renewal in San Francisco” and this was explained by both as a sort of drug fueled debauchery where a lot of cocaine and sex workers were provided by the account managament company to the call center employees as a sort of payola. It seemed incredibly sleazy. Chad of course would be the one to go, and the one to get a seat at the table, but had promised Darryl repayment in the form of cryptocurrency or revenue share.
“Today’s Sunday” Darryl said “So we’re going to The Steakhouse”
“It’s important to be seen by management” Chad said “So we have a presence at the Steakhouse on sundays”
We all piled into Chad’s off white sedan to go to this Steakhouse. Chad put on a “Silverback Mindset” podcast that was going over the 7 truths to Silverback Success. It was equal nonsense but delivered in this deep baritone, the podcast would pause periodically to do ad reads for vitamin supplements and a paycheck advancement service.
The car weaved through the same kinds of suburbs and and subdivisions until it reached an unremarkable strip mall, one of the tenants of this strip mall was the aforementioned Steakhouse. The parking lot was full of identical offwhite sedans and SUVs, with one or two late model luxury cars. An entire crowd of middle managers. Chad had dressed himself in a formal business suit and Darryl was in something slightly more formal. I was still in my motorcycle riding gear and a light jacket, and felt very out of place.
The inside of the steakhouse had this kind of maroon carpet, booths circled the perimeter of the space with formica tables and shabby apulstry. Most of the seats had one or two strips of tape closing up tears in the vinyl. In the corner booth was The Golden Steak club, already two middle managers were there. Darryl explained that they always arrived early. With the top branch manager arriving with the TekSolution’s CEO. We sat down. I realized that other branch managers were also in the Steakhouse, taking up other booths and leering at each other.
“Those fucks in Account Escalation are jealous” he said pointing to a group across from us “Their numbers have been in the tank since we’ve been running the program, they were about to break into the Golden Steak Club”
“They keep trying to upgrade the software, they know about the glitch and an upgrade might fix it” Darryl Said “but a whole system upgrade would be too expensive, it’s not going to be in the budget, so they just seeth”
After some time the CEO Arrived. They pulled up in a late model Mercedes Benz SUV, with yellowing headlights and curb rashed bumpers. Two people got out, the top branch manager, a bald and sallow looking individual. And the CEO, an older gentleman who was dressed in a grey suit and loafers. When the opened the door Chad and the rest of the managers lined up to shake his indifferent hand. “yeah yeah” the ceo said, waving them off, before waddling over to the corner booth and sitting down unceremoniously. The three top branch managers sat up and tried to make polite conversation while the CEO sat miserably. Our steaks arrived. Overcooked and rubbery.
As the luncheon winded down everyone gathered by the corner booth, surrounding the miserable CEO. Everyone was jockying to have the last point or make a pointed remark, trying to impress I suppose. Chad was going over the Silverback System and said that if other branches applied it’s values that they’d get similar productivity numbers. The CEO pointed at me, noticing my riding gear
“Who are you, you’re new here” he said weakly
“Oh” I introduced myself “I’m with Darryl and Chad”
“Ah, and what do you do?” he asked
“I’ve mainly been riding around on my motorycle, no particular destination in mind” I said
“What do you ride?” he asked, enthused
“A BMW R60” I said
“Ah, a very good bike” he said. The mood started to turn now that I had the CEO’s rapt attention. I began talking about my recent travels, how I rode down the Gulf of Mexico. Traversing mostly on side roads and highways, purposfully staying away from interstates, getting chased out of a camping spot by a man with a shotgun. He was soaking all of it up as a wry grin came over his face. I could feel the eyes of every other middle manager drilling into me because I was talking about something other than the quarterly numbers or management techniques but was still getting the attention of the CEO.
“So what are you doing after?” He asked
“I’ll probably just keep riding until I get tired of it, or wintertime, and then I’ll usually settle into some kind of temp work for a few months” I replied. In truth I was always anxious about money, and I felt like my nomadic lifestyle was not going to be sustainable much longer. Not having roots was beginning to get to me.
“we could use someone smart like you to run a branch” the ceo said. I could feel the air getting sucked out of the room as I had silently sidestepped years of clawning and jockying by the other branch managers. “but” he continued “I think you should get the hell out of here, it’s miserable”
…
“A whole fucking branch dude” Chad said “He was going to give you the keys to fucking Contract Negotiation. You’d be in San Francisco every fucking quarter dude” we were riding back to Meadowbrook Terrace. Darryl was about to offer me a seasonal job in IT at the branch, and could take over for him once Account Retention became a top 3 branch. “I can even get you a free month at the apartment through a referall, it’s all ready to go, don’t throw your fucking future away dude” Chad said
“Did you listen to any of what I was saying? Silverback Mindset, always be looking for new oppertunities for growth, you aren’t going to find that riding through bumfuck nowhere” he said turning into the apartment complex.
I bid my goodbyes to Chad and Darryl. Putting my jacket on and getting onto the bike. I pulled away as they both stood there staring at me. I took one more look at the complex before turning out and riding away. I had no destination in mind, but I had to get out of there. I rode until the endless 6 lane streets and roads became four and then 2 lanes. I rode until the sun came down and I came across a random motel in the middle of nowhere and took a room.
I was months later. I had put my bike on the Queen Mary and crossed the Atlantic. The sun was setting and I was in Ireland. I was sipping a pint after a long day of riding, exhausted, when I got a text. It was Darryl. The glitch had been discovered and an entire system upgrade was in progress. Account Retention had gone from 80% to 5% in a week and they were panicking. Darryl explaind that him and Chad were ruined and asked if I had any money they could borrow from me to perform a system downgrade and get the glitched version of the software back. I set the phone down, closing my eyes and letting the setting sun bask over my face, breathing in the evening air.