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.