Overtime and Thanksgiving

One of the things that appealed to me most about working in collections (aside from promises of making ungodly amounts of money) was the strict 40-hour week. This was something that had been emphasized over and over in training - the idea that vast sums of money could be made while working only 40 hours, with no overtime at all. You have your time - make the most of it.

Having working in various professions that were very time-demanding (teaching, theatre tech, and law school), I thought that part of my own healing process (aside from paying back debts with the promised ungodly amounts of money) would be a job that was only 40 hours. I would have time at home, time with Sam, and time to reconstruct my life.

The distaste for overtime within the company was dramatic and down to the minute. Sometimes, while on a call, you would have to stay past your 8-hour shift because you needed the extra time to get a borrower to finalize payments (which was a challenge on west-coast hours, since the computer systems shut down automatically at 12:30 am). This was not overtime - this was to be kept strict track of and taken off of another day.

So the first thing you did on Friday when you got in was figure out how many hours you had to work to round the week out at 40 hours. To the minute. Then you wrote that time on a Post-it note and stuck it to your monitor. And, as your manager was making the rounds, he or she would remind you of the time to make sure you were out by the specific time.

The only time overtime was available was on mandated holidays. The company was committed to giving you the possibility of 40 hours of collection time every week. So, for example, the office was closed on the 4th of July. But that week, you could squeeze the 40 hours into the other six days, and get paid overtime for the holiday pay. At standard time-and-a-half overtime rates. Needless to say, most people took advantage of the additional time.

The first holiday I was able to take advantage of for this was Thanksgiving, and on that holiday I was grateful for it. Due to a variety of circumstances, Jess was taking Sam to visit a friend of hers out of state over the long holiday weekend and spending Thanksgiving with her friend’s family. Not wanting to really explain the situation to anyone (explaining meant I might have to face certain truths and deal with things), I decided to spend Thanksgiving alone. And aside from getting through the day itself, that would give me some structure to the other days.

The day before Thanksgiving was spent on the phone calling every reference and relative I could find on all of my accounts. My senior collector recommended this, and he was absolutely right.

“Yes, hi - I was trying to reach John Smith.”

“Oh, he doesn’t live here - this is his mother.”

“Will you be seeing him soon? I’ve been trying to get a message to him.”

“Well, yes, he’ll be over for dinner tomorrow, obviously. I can take a message...”

The question was how much good the messages actually did. As the Poet said, “It’s not like they can call back tomorrow or anything. Did you get any phone numbers? Those would be useful.”

Nope, no phone numbers. Probably made a couple of uncomfortable moments over the Thanksgiving table, but the result was zero callbacks on Friday for Wednesday’s efforts. The rest of the weekend was equally useless, and the month ended with my only accomplishment being a need to start writing about collections to stave off losing my mind.

December had three holidays - Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day. So this meant for the week preceeding Christmas, collectors could cram 40 hours into the five days available, and for the week following could cram 40 hours into the six days following.

I went round and round with my manager over taking the last week of the month off. I had the time, and I desperately needed to get out of town - the plan was to take Sam to Maine to see the relatives, and I hadn’t been out there for some time.

“So you’re basically blowing off any chance of hitting goal for the month of December.”

I shook my head. “Not at all - I just have to hit goal before Christmas.”

And Christmas is a whole other post by itself.

Life's Little Victories

One of my favorite cartoonists is a guy named Keith Knight, who does political commentary, and also an occasional strip called "Life's Little Victories". It's a brief look at the little accomplishments in life we should be grateful for. For example:



Often we pay no attention to the little things that make up a life - the small things we should be grateful for. So, with everything that has been going on, I am going to take a brief moment to be grateful for the small things of today:

* Sam got his cast off today

* I found the pool noodles for Sam's birthday party after an epic struggle at way too many stores. (It is July - this should not be a hard item to find.)

* The trim in the hallway is finished, so three of the five rooms in the apartment are now painted

* I will have fresh bread in about an hour

And those are just the small victories for today. Not bad for a Tuesday. Not bad at all.

So I will try to focus on the little victories, and put them together as I can.

First call

After practicing on a call simulator program, practicing with each other, and going over federal and state regulations again and again, the day finally came for live calls.

"All of you are going to screw this up," Becki said. "I'm not saying this to make you feel bad, or because I don't think any of you can do this. But this is your first call. It's not an indicator of how well you'll do. I know one girl who actually got someone to pay on her very first phone call. She was gone in three months - never hit goal once."

Mark raised his hand. "So what happened on your first call?"

Becki laughed. "Honestly? I hung up on them as soon as I got a positive ID by name. I panicked. So as long as you don't hang up, you're doing better than I did. So let's see who gets someone on the line first!"

I opened up my desk of accounts, and starting looking at them. Examining addresses, previous work...

"Nick - stop thinking so much and just call."

I looked behind me, and Becki was standing there. "You are procrastinating."

I shrugged. "I'm getting properly prepared for when I get them on the phone."

She shook her head. "You're going to get an answering machine or a wrong number 90% of the time. Stop thinking and call that number."

I pushed the dial button, and the phone rang, rang, rang - finally the system hung up on the call after the legally allowed 8 rings.

"See? Now just keep at it. Get into a rhythm." And she went over to help someone else.

I pushed the next button, a guy out in Florida who was marked as having been in prison a few months ago by our records found the previous day. Number's probably not even good at this point.

"Hello?" Gruff, male voice on the other end of the line.

"Uhhh...this call may be monitored or recorded. Can I speak to Jimmy Smith?"

Sigh. "Yeah, this is Jimmy."

My mouth went dry, and I swallowed hard. "Mr. Smith, I believe I have a business matter of yours in our office, but I need to make sure I'm speaking to the correct person. Are the last four digits of your social security number 1234?"

"Yeah, that's me."

Must. Remain. Calm.

"Ummmm...Mr. Smith, my name is Nick and I'm calling regarding your defaulted student loan debt of $2,000."

Another sigh. "Aw, shit."

Click.

I stared at the screen for a moment, turned and saw Becki looking over my shoulder.

"Not bad," she said. "You'll do just fine here."

And that post vanished too - sorry

I attempted to write something about the concept of broken things, but it ended up being way too personal for me to want to post. So it sits in the hard drive - better to have written it, but even better not to have posted it.

I also realized from looking at the listing that I've posted absolutely nothing of substance for a solid month, which is about 5 years in blog time. It's been a roller coaster of a month. I'm hoping some of it settles out this week, but I'm not holding my breath on a lot of it.

In the meantime, I'm still working as a substitute textbook clerk at a Rochester area high school due to the RCSD hiring freeze - no one can move into the position until the freeze is lifted. Kinda odd, but there it is.

More later.