End of Month Madness

Today is the last day of the month, which means everyone at work will be going mildly insane. Mildly insane being an average, as some will be calm, some slightly insane, and my manager in particular will probably be climbing the walls.

Collections works very similarly to commission sales. There is a base salary, and then there are monthly goals in order to get a bonus check. The monthly goals vary between lines of business in the office, taking into account what kind of loans you are collecting on, part of the country, and average time in default of the loans on your line of business.

In my line of business, the idea is to get someone to make payments to us on the loan for nine months, at which point the loan is then taken over by another student loan company. After nine months of establishing a new payment history, the loan is considered "rehabilitated", and will be considered by new agencies. There are different levels of payments, and the best one for reaching goal being a payment that is slightly higher than what the person would pay to pay off the loan over ten years.

To make the pyramid even more interesting, senior collectors and managers get a bonus check based off how many of the team members hit goal. So, for example, the team in the row next to ours hit goal right before Thanksgiving, so their manager is all mellow and smiles. Our team...not so much.

There was also a structural change - our manager used to manage two small lines of business, and is now just managing us. The other line of business hit goal regularly, which got her a bonus check. Our team hasn't hit goal for a while now, which is making her a bit, well, cranky. Understandably.

Personally, I am very close to hitting goal for the first time since I started this job. This is making my manager very excited, but also adds to the pressure that I can only imagine is going to be put on my shoulders when I walk in the door today, as I am one of two people on our team who has any hope of hitting goal right now.

So, on the one hand, I'm excited to be going in to work today to see if I'll get a bonus check with impeccable timing (bonus checks are usually issued on the 15th). On the other hand, it's going to be walking into a pressure cooker, with the pressure being directly applied to me for the first time. Very different from anything else I've ever done, which is why I took the job in the first place - a change.

"When forced to choose between two evils - pick the one you've never tried before."

We'll see how that works out. And no, I won't be calling the guy who doesn't answer his phone today. Last thing I need today is to be told I'm pathetic by a ringtone.

This is an attempt to collect a thought, and any information obtained will be used for that purpose.

American men have a tendency to identify themselves by their profession. It's how introductions are made: "I'm Bob - I'm a lawyer/teacher/doctor/insurance salesman/Mafia hitman." (Okay, maybe not so much the last one.)

I've held a wide range of professions - one of those people who keeps pushing up the average number of careers you will hold. For careers, I've been a theatre technican and then was a school librarian, and had started on potentially career #3 by entering law school. For "jobs", I have also been an archivist, music store salesman, desk jockey, Muzak installer, convenience store clerk, food service worker, Diet Dr. Pepper promotion person (you want to try this, really!), and Tony the Tiger impersonator. And I've been able to announce most of them with pride. (Tell someone you dress up as Tony the Tiger for a living, and just watch the smile. It's fun!)

However, at the moment I am none of those. For reasons that require way too much explanation (and occasional bouts of TMI), I have taken a year's leave from law school and I am currently working as a Student Loan Recovery Specialist for a local company.

Yes, that does mean what you think it does. I am a bill collector, calling people all through the day, telling them to pay their student loans. My line of work is for a west coast loan agency, which I specifically requested due to knowing fewer people on the west coast. (Our company also handles collections for the Finance Authority of Maine, which I politely told them was a business line I didn't want to work. Ever.)

It has been an interesting experience so far - I've received fairly extensive training on many aspects of financial law relating to third party collections, which I'm hoping will have some application when I'm back at school. I've learned how to find people using common sense and advanced skiptracing tools. I've learned how to argue with people and generally win, not scream at people who are blatantly lying in the face of all reason, and that someone changing their ringback tone specifically for you is a sign that you're actually doing your job.

I'll have much more to say about collections in later posts, but I'll just tell you about the ringtone. Called the individual, and he didn't answer the phone, as he hadn't the many other times I've called. The new ringback tone was: "I'm not away from my phone. I'm just not answering your call. And yet you keep calling. Which makes you sad and pathetic." As it is a short ringtone, I heard it twice before it went to voicemail. It then went to his name and request to leave a message. Which I did. And will again.

It's a funny story I would love to share. But the stigma attached to my current job has made me reluctant to tell people what I do currently. I've already got one friend who is not speaking to me over it, which has made me a bit gun-shy about sharing with others.

But if Life hands you lemons, you must make lemonade. Or, as the sage Jim Rodda put it once, "When Life hands you lemons, throw them at Life's head. Then steal Life's pocket change while it's unconscious."

So, it's fodder for restarting the blog. I'll post about what I've learned, interesting things, with other personal stories interspersed as well. To follow the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act, any and all personal information will be removed to not identify the person I'm speaking about. (I do plan on passing the New York Bar ethics exam, and it might be hard to explain away a charge of, well, breaking Federal Privacy laws. Always dicey, even at work.)

So, off to bed, and to finish off the month tomorrow. More on the importance of that later.