by Kat Wheeler
What she didn’t love were people’s assumption that because she sold technology, she was some kind of tech genius. No one assumed medical sales reps were doctors. Yes, she was good with technology. Software more than hardware for sure. But she wasn’t an engineer. She also hated that people automatically assumed she was their go-to for tech support. She had to cut her mother off years ago. If she got one more phone call from her mom asking questions about how to use her cell phone, she’d scream.
Chapter Three
Working the phones
Cameron connected her phone to the Bluetooth in her Jeep, and she cruised down the Long Island Expressway.
“Call Casey.” Casey Keane was the head of NE tech support for SmartTech and one of Cameron’s favorite people. He was the stereotypical nerd whose love for Mountain Dew was legendary. And he took off work every time a new Star Wars movie got released.
“Thanks for calling SmartTech, this is Casey.”
“Casey, it’s Cameron.”
“Dude, you do know it’s three thirty on a Friday.”
“You say that like I can’t just be calling to chat, like I only call you when there’s a problem,” she teased, trying to lighten his mood before making the request she knew he’d hate.
“Really?” he replied, not buying it for a minute. “You just called to say hi?”
“I just left Barry Issacs’ place.”
“Oh great.” Casey knew Barry almost as well as she did, even though he never left the office. He had a reputation as a frequent and troublesome tech support caller. And never a particularly nice one. “Can’t you tell me on Monday?”
“He’s got problems with HomeTech Hubs.”
“Him and everyone else on the planet. Why don’t people realize these things aren’t magic? They don’t just do things without having proper hardware and programming in place. They can’t turn on the lights if they don’t have smart lighting! They aren’t psychic, and they aren’t real humans. Why can’t people just ask them for the weather and be happy?”
Cameron smiled to herself, agreeing. It was a rant she’d heard from him many times before. She had to always be careful to not get him started on the misnomer about the name of the hubs. He could go on for hours about AI not being real and the evils of marketing in the tech industry.
“Your mouth to God's ears, but look, he’s got a problem with the hubs integrating with a large system. He gave me two. Both units of the same lot, sequential serial numbers. One works, one doesn’t. He wants us to test them in the R & D lab and see what the deal is.
“We’re not going to test third-party products.”
“C’mon, aren’t you curious too? Haven’t you gotten zillions of support calls on these things? Wouldn’t it be nice to finally have a definitive answer to what their problem is? We have two perfect test units right here. You know you can’t resist.”
“Yes, I can. You’re just going to have to break it to Barry. For support on those things, he must call Synergistic. We won’t touch them.”
“Fucking asshole,” Cameron shouted as a car cut in front of her, leaving the carpool lane with no warning.
“Seriously?” Casey said hesitantly.
“Not you. Some jackass just decided to leave the carpool lane at a double line and almost clipped me. Standard New York driving. I hate this city.”
“You love it.”
“I know, but some days…. Anyway, is that your final answer? I’ll buy you a case of Mountain Dew?”
“Final answer, but I’ll take the Dew anyway for all the crap I put up with for you already. I spent two hours this week on the phone with one of your accounts walking him through troubleshooting shades. Shades! They go up. They go down. It’s the easiest thing to install, and he couldn’t get it right. You owe me a case for that just on principle.” Casey sighed on the other end of the line. “Look, Cameron, I know it sucks, but it’s a Pandora’s box. If we look at one of those things, we’d have to look at them all. You’ll think of something to tell Barry, but unfortunately, we just can’t do it.”
Well, shit. On the plus side, when she called Barry with the bad news on Monday, at least she could just hang up the phone. Or even better, she could just send an email.
Chapter Four
Therapy
“Anybody on yet?” Cameron asked after logging into her weekly Friday conference call via the Bluetooth in her car.
Cameron’s Friday call tended to be the highlight of her week. There were occasions where she had a great lunch or dinner with clients that trumped it, but those instances were becoming rare, or maybe she was just getting cynical. When she joined the SmartTech team, she was intimidated. Luckily, she ended up working with who she affectionately called the wonder twins: Bill and Phil. There were a lot of jokes when she joined the team that they should call her Jill. She squashed that idea pretty quickly. She didn’t even like her own name abbreviated, much less a ridiculous rhyming nickname. She was Cam or Cameron, and that was it. Not Cami, Cammy, or any other deviation.
The guys couldn’t be more different, but they were the best teammates and friends she’d ever had. Together the three of them made up the Northeast Residential Sales team. They were always at the top of the leaderboard for sales company wide and had come to lean heavily on each other to make it happen consistently.
“I’m here,” said Bill. He was the New England guy, and she called him her surrogate big brother. He was also the most technical of all of them. They weren’t allowed to sit next to each other at any sales meetings anymore because of their shenanigans.
“You sound like shit,” she answered, noting his deep voice. A sure sign he’d been out drinking the night before. A common occurrence more and more frequently since he’d begun dating again after his divorce.
“Yeah, I went out with Lacey again last night.” He sighed wearily. “She’s a lot of work.”
“I’m driving, so I don’t have my spreadsheet out. Which one is she?”
When Bill began dating after his divorce, he’d done so with gusto. He’d signed up for every dating app on the market. He had more dates in a week than Cameron had all year. She tried to support him, but between all the one-and-dones and girls he’d seen a few times, she started to lose track of who was who. The situation reached critical mass when she realized he was simultaneously dating three Emilys and he hadn’t even realized it. So, she did what any good sales rep would do: she created an online spreadsheet for tracking and collaborative purposes. This way she could reference it when he talked about his dates to save him from recapping info she already knew, and it saved him from contacting the wrong girls or using the wrong names.
“She’s the one who worked for a dealer who I hit the casinos with,” he replied. “I think I’m done with her. I’m not as young as I used to be.”
“Eh, heard that before,” she replied.
“I’m winning this week. Boy, do I have a good one!” Phil broke in, saving her from having yet another conversation about Bill’s out-of-control sex life. Phil split the NYC area with her, and she called him her crazy uncle. He was the hardest-working guy she knew, and he also had the biggest heart.
“Doubt it,” she said. “I just left Barry Issacs.”
The answering groans made her chuckle. It seemed like she’d told enough Barry stories that they knew how painful he could be. Learning from her team and leaning on them through the stressful time when she first started was what made her job the most enjoyable she’d ever had.
Somewhere after her second year with the company, and after she’d nursed them both through messy divorces, they began implementing this weekly call. It was kept private, and they only ever discussed one thing: who had had the most painful week. And they never ever talked about their quotas. It was a numbers-free zone.
They each got to pitch one story, and then they declared a winner. It served to lighten
the mood and lead them all into the weekend in a positive way. In their business, it was hard to do, and they all discovered it was vital to their success.
“It’s my turn first,” Bill interjected. “I won last week.”
“Go ahead, man,” Phil said.
Cameron put her phone on mute so she could listen to the story and not distract them with any spontaneous outbursts at bad drivers.
“Okay, I saw Francois this week, and you guys know he’s building that new school and training facility to educate more people in our industry. He wants SmartTech to give him for free, mind you, one of everything we make. He’s been a dealer for almost fifteen years. He knows we don’t give anything away free. So when I tell him this, and not for the first time, he completely trips out. He starts cursing at me, and after a while, he switches over to French, and I don’t even think he noticed. So after a good five minutes of what I can only assume is him cursing me in a foreign language, I interrupt him to remind him that I don’t speak French. He just stared at me for a minute, said, ‘You got the point,’ and then kicked me out of his office.”
She unmuted herself so she could join in Phil’s laughter. She felt her stress fade just a bit. Sharing their war stories was a great idea. Sales was a largely thankless job; no one ever called unless they had a problem or needed a favor. It helped knowing she wasn’t the only one who put up with crazy for a living. Sometimes her job felt less like sales and more like babysitting or herding cats.
“That was a good one.” Phil chuckled. “But I’ve still got you beat. I got a call from an end user yesterday saying her shades didn’t work with the SmartTech app. So, I ask her who her dealer was. She has no idea. I ask if there’s a way to find out. She gets frustrated and says she paid a hundred dollars for this app, and it should just work. So, I’m trying to talk her down and get any info from her so I can find her dealer. I ask for any serial numbers from any of her equipment so I can look up her dealer. She says she doesn’t have any equipment.”
“Man, this isn’t a winner,” said Bill. “I’ve had this conversation with tons of end users. They never know where their gear is.”
“No, here’s the best part. After thirty minutes, I discover she doesn’t have SmartTech shades. In fact, she doesn’t have motorized shades at all. She just has whatever blinds came with the place when she moved in. She thought the app would magically transform them into motorized shades somehow.”
“Oh my God, that’s fantastic,” Cameron exclaimed. “Unbelievable. I don’t even need to go. You win. That’s a classic.”
“No kidding. I won’t even get into how pissed she got when I told her I couldn’t credit her money back for the app and she had to reach out to Apple,” Phil said.
“Agreed. Phil’s the winner for the week. We all owe you a drink,” Bill said, adding to the imaginary drink tally that they’d never use. Thank God for business expense accounts. “Even though it’s moot, what was your story going to be, Cameron?”
“Well, it pales in comparison now, but I was going to tell you how Barry wore me down and got me to agree to commit to taking two HomeTech Hubs to R & D for testing and Casey shot me down. We won’t touch them.”
“Yikes,” Phil put in. “So what are you going to do?”
“I’ll figure something out. But not until Monday.” That got chuckles out of both of them. “Listen, not to cut this short, but I just got into the tunnel. I’m going to be pulling into my garage soon, and the Maker’s is calling my name, so I’ll let you guys go. Thank you both for those stories. Always a good start to the weekend. I’ll chat with you guys on the Monday morning call.”
“Look at you not having to work on a weekend,” replied Phil. “I’ve still got to finish my weekly report for the boss man.”
“Freakin’ Steve,” Cameron said.
“Freakin’ Steve,” Bill agreed.
With that rejoinder on their boss, they all signed off as she navigated through the crowded Manhattan streets. Just like her job, driving in the city had been intimidating at first, but now it was second nature. She smiled to herself amidst the horns and the noise of the traffic. All things considered, she was a very lucky girl.
Chapter Five
You can take the girl out of Kentucky
After arriving back at her apartment a little before six and dropping her bags on the floor, the first thing Cameron did was put on her sweatpants and take off her bra. The second thing she did was pour herself a bourbon. Traffic wasn’t that bad, but she sat for at least an hour after getting through the tunnel. Usually, reverse commuting saved her time, but you could never really foresee traffic patterns in Manhattan.
Her apartment was small, only five hundred square feet, but she prided herself on making it feel spacious. Storage containers and levels had become a necessity in a way she never could’ve imagined before moving to the city. Plopping on her bright red couch, the only pop of color in a predominantly monochromatic decorating scheme, she cracked her laptop open and took the first sip of her drink. Perfect. Now she could relax, clear out her inbox, and then, fingers crossed, have a work-free weekend.
Cameron had taken a lot of grief from her parents over the years for not being married. It wasn’t that she was anti-marriage, per se. Her parents had been married for over forty years before her father passed. If she was being honest, she knew she just couldn’t see herself committing to anything for that long. She almost had an anxiety attack buying her apartment, and she could sell that if she changed her mind. Traditionally, Cameron had a two-year cap on relationships, and that seemed to be working out well for her. She probably worked too much, but it was tough getting ahead in a male-dominated field, and to be taken seriously, she had to work twice as hard as her male counterparts. Realistically, Cameron knew it wasn’t her job that kept her single. She liked coming home on a Friday night at the start of a weekend and not worrying about what someone else might have planned, or want for dinner, or that they may want to talk. Her whole job was talking, and at the end of a long day, the lack of having to interact with anybody seemed like bliss.
“AIME, play U2.”
Cameron had plugged in the HomeTech Hubs when she finished responding to her last email. She was also on her second cocktail and had a firm rule not to send anything work related in writing after two drinks. It never turned out well.
As music filled the apartment, she smiled. It seemed like that hub worked okay. Voice command seemed to be working. As she listened to “Where the Streets Have No Name,” she plugged in the other hub, the one Barry claimed was defective.
After pairing the device and doing some basic setup, she played a round of twenty questions with AIME. The hub won. The hub always won, and it frustrated Cameron to no end. She was a competitive person, as most salespeople were, and losing to a machine didn’t sit well.
She was in sales, not a technical person or a programmer, and that meant her troubleshooting skills were limited, so she walked herself through the basics steps she knew.
Pulling up the app on her phone, she checked for available updates. Nada. She opened the settings menu and checked the firmware. All up to date, and both devices were running the same version. No issue there. Of course it couldn’t be that easy.
She pulled her spare box of hardware and demo units out from under her bed and began sorting through them. Since it was a network-based product, she’d tried both units with different routers and wireless access points. The long, painstaking process of configuring wireless networks took up the better part of her next hour and the rest of her second drink. They worked fine on whatever combination she tried.
With that, she was out of ideas and was beginning to wonder if there was really something wrong with one of the HomeTech Hubs or if it was simply a case of user error. It happened more frequently than any of her customers wanted to admit. They’d call her furious that a component she sold had arrived defective. They’d s
cream and complain, and when the factory received the piece back and tested it, they found nothing wrong. Once they’d received the replacement part, they’d have the same issue, and once her tech team walked them through the installation, the units would work, and the dealer would have egg on their face. But they never admitted it was their error; pride was rampant in her line of work. SmartTech estimated about thirty percent of all their returns came back as no problem found. It was a vicious cycle with Cameron stuck in the middle playing referee between the engineers and their customers so no one got their feelings hurt and business could continue as usual. It could be exhausting.
With her technical expertise tapped out and her team unwilling to get involved, Cameron was satisfied that she’d done all she could for Barry. In conclusion, it was a software issue in the HTH. Synergistic needed to write some new code. Probably new drivers. She’d write him a report tomorrow after her yoga class and offer him some credit on his account for his trouble. In her business, most problems were solved by throwing money at it. As long as Barry thought he won, they could move forward, and he’d continue to be one of her biggest accounts. At the end of the day, the dollars toward her quota were all that mattered.
She disconnected both devices and left them on the hardwood floor of her apartment. She’d box them back up in the morning. A movie had just come out in the theater she’d wanted to watch, so she pulled a Raspberry PI out of her messenger bag and plugged it into her TV. It was a gift from a satisfied customer. The small computer had software on it to stream any movie or TV show so long as another user was sharing it. Legal? Maybe not so much, but it was an awesome thank-you gift, and Cameron was going to take advantage. It sure beat paying for cable.
After the movie was over, Cameron planned to go to bed. She had yoga early in the morning, and getting up on a Saturday was always hard for her. But that yoga class was the only hour the whole week when she unplugged and turned off all her devices, and she desperately needed it for her mental health.