Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
I’m not a player, he repeated to himself; I’m not even sure what the hell that means. Whatever it really means, though, I know that ‘player’ implies a level of smoothness around women I’ve never had and I’m pretty sure I’ll never attain. What am I supposed to do, stay celibate until I can get a job where I can stay in one place for more than a month at a time? Anyway, these women know what they’re getting into with me; I’ve never misled them, have I? No, I haven’t. I don’t do that, not really. Still, here we go again …
Jim Halpert’s job title at Sabre International Corp. was officially “Acquisitions Manager,” but sometimes he thinks that a more appropriate title would be “Only candidate for the job who was single and could live out of a suitcase for 9 months out of the year.” When he got the job he had just turned 22 and at the time it seemed to be a dream come true: a position in management, a nice pay rise from his salesman position, and traveling only 2 or 3 times a year.
Six years later, however, reality has set in. The pay is alright for the kind of work he does, but it’s nothing special. It's a management position, true, but there doesn’t seem to be any logical advancement opportunity. He’s home so seldom it never really feels like home. It’s almost impossible to own a house when you’re there a total of three months out of every twelve, so he rents an apartment and you can’t really call an apartment 'home' when you’ve never gotten around to personalizing it. Why bother – you’re hardly ever there and nobody but family visits. His social life? When he was considering taking the job the dating aspect was placed in the “cons” column with the proviso “will be difficult.” It should have said “nearly impossible.”
Whenever Sabre Corp. bought out a company (and buying companies seemed to be Sabre’s primary business model lately) it was his job to travel to the acquisition and set up their transition from independent company to minor cog in the giant “Sabre Wheel of Industry.” Some acquisitions made sense; others were harder to figure out. It has been getting more and more difficult for Jim to explain to people what his company does. They started out as a supplier of toner for copiers, then they sold actual copy machines, then printers; now they are officially in the “publishing instrument technology” business. Whatever that means.
Jim had been to Delaware after Sabre bought a catalogue publisher, to New York and Southern California several times after they bought out generic ink and toner manufacturers and retailers and even to Mexico City when they took over a packaging company. Most of the time Jim’s task was straight-forward: get in and watch how the company worked from the inside, interview the major players, explain to the staff how they would fit in with their new owner, start the transition, and then leave. And, most importantly, one more thing: send a list to Corporate of all the employees who would be “downsized.” Because no matter what the company produces, no matter how successful they are, when Sabre takes over a company there is always downsizing.
Jim thought about his latest assignment as he drove towards Pennsylvania. He usually had the option to fly or drive a company minivan when he took these trips; when he had the choice he almost always chose driving. The extra hours on the road gave him a chance to do last minute preparation for the couple of months he would be immersed in the bizarre atmosphere of a small company just bought out by the big bad Sabre Corporation.
The strictly-business machinations of corporate change were easy to deal with. There were corporate manuals in the back of Jim’s van that covered every detail of the Sabre culture. It was the inevitable soap opera he was about to star in that made Jim apprehensive before every assignment. Everyone at the new assignment would know their jobs could be in jeopardy. Jim was not really their boss, but it was obvious their fate was in his hands. There would be people who shamelessly sucked up to him, people who tried to be his friend, and there were usually a few who were simply resigned to whatever fate might lay ahead for them – those people would typically treat him with a mixture of disdain and distrust. It was always, however, a soap opera.
This latest job looked to be among the worst: a telemarketing-driven paper company that didn’t even manufacture their own paper. They sold paper, over the phone, when 80% of the country had an office or warehouse store within 15 minutes driving distance who could sell it cheaper. Sabre’s CEO had a long history of shrewd business moves anticipating emerging opportunities, but this one seemed to defy all logical explanation. Jo Bennett’s finally lost her mind, he thought. Jim put in the text-to-speech CD of the internal Sabre memo outlining their latest purchase and began to listen to the computer-generated voice.
“Note: not for public distribution. The distress-sale purchase of Dunder Mifflin Incorporated was completed in February after one month of negotiations. There was no capital exchange involved in the purchase. Sabre assumed 55% of DMI’s debts and retains its personnel, office/warehouse lease arrangements, and limited inventory in four locations: Utica, New York; Nashua, New Hampshire; Scranton, Pennsylvania; and Akron, Ohio.”
Huh, no capital exchange. I still think we overpaid!
“DMI strategized themselves as a Northeastern United States paper and office supply distributor having re-branding agreements with 3 of the top 4 paper manufacturers and drop-ship agreements with several office infrastructure and equipment manufacturers. Note: the status of all inter-corporate contracts and agreements is, because of the change in ownership, undetermined.”
Great. Just perfect, we just bought a bunch of salespeople with nothing to sell.
“DMI’s recent corporate performance can be described as troubling at best. Demand for their core products has been flat for five of the last seven years. The last two years have seen a four to six percent reduction in demand. There have recently been instances of DMI management under indictment for accounting irregularities and under investigation for corporate malfeasance. Note: no DMI employees under investigation have been retained by Sabre in this acquisition. Sabre’s purchase of the sales infrastructure of these four northeastern-situated markets will allow us to develop a new marketing micro-strategy consisting of periodic full-service sales of office supplies and machines targeting small to mid-range businesses within each satellite branch’s marketing region. DMI’s strength was anchored in its customer service: their branches had an average target-customer saturation of 23% within a 50-mile radius and a retention rate of .62, which clearly indicates …”
This was too much for him to handle. He dropped the internal argument going on in his head and proceeded with his favored mode of interaction with the world around him on these long trips: talking out loud, mostly to himself.
“Oh my God, I think I’ve found the alternative to Ambien.” Jim stopped the cd and pondered his new assignment. “Target-customer saturation? Micro-strategy? I don’t even know what our “macro-strategy” is anymore. So now we’re going to be a telemarketing company, annoying people who will probably have to resort to “do not call” lists to make us go away?”
Jim decided he’d had enough of the corporate-speak explanation of the acquisition and began to think about his responsibilities in this transition. He was driving to Scranton to embed himself into that branch’s operations. Scranton was chosen as the prototype because they had rather remarkable sales numbers over the last three years. Even with their Corporate problems, falling demand for their products, and the downturn of the economy as a whole this branch had managed to increase their sales figures. There didn’t appear to be anything special about their particular market area and they sold the same products as all the other branches: it seemed pretty obvious that Scranton’s management had perfected the sales approach they had been given. Jim would probably spend the first few weeks working closely with the regional manager in Scranton, Michael Scott, and, although it was something Jim hated to admit, a part of him was actually looking forward to it.
Jim started out his career as a salesman. His father and grandfather were salesmen. He would never, ever say sales was in his blood. That was too trite and too cliché and also maybe too close to being the truth for his liking. He would allow himself to admit, however, that he had a genuine respect for those who did it well. It was what his father strove for and it was what he was sure he could never accomplish; it fascinated Jim to see truly great salesmen in action. He began to relax for the first time on this trip as he thought about how this assignment might not be so bad.
*************
Monday morning Jim woke up in his hotel room with a feeling of optimism he rarely experienced in his job. When he pulled into the parking lot of the Radisson the night before he was pleasantly surprised. Admittedly all the research he had done before the trip was business related rather than about the city in which he would be living the next few months, but he didn’t expect much from a Hotel in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He had thought that most likely it would be a cookie-cutter multi-story box building like the ones that litter the freeways outside most cities these days. It turned out to be a six-story converted train station from the turn of the century (the last one, not this) and it was breathtaking, it was just … surprising. Jim hoped that perhaps this was a trend; he was actually looking forward to going into work, it appeared that the branch into which he would embed was competent and successful, and he was even beginning to understand Corporate’s strategy for this acquisition. The more he considered it the clearer the benefits of this kind of strategy became. There probably was a tremendous opportunity to make money selling Sabre's office equipment and supplies to repeat customers; these Scranton people somehow figured out how to capitalize on and retain their leads. Seemingly out of nowhere Jim began to consider the possibility that this might be the opportunity he’d been waiting for since he began to grow weary of the travel associated with his position. Maybe, he thought, this is the chance to settle down I’ve been looking for. For the first time in a long while his dreams about where his life was going seemed to drift into the realm of possibility. Let's imagine, he began, that this strategy works. Surely he would get a lot of credit for the success … and if Corporate decided this should be a permanent sales approach, they would have to establish an office up here to oversee the region … and if they had an office here maybe he could run it. Okay, in this scenario he would be returning to Sales, but it would be in a management capacity and he thought he could live with that. The truth was he thought he could live with just about anything career-wise if it meant settling down in one place. The real source of his restlessness and unease was not his career; it was his social life.
His brain did that trigger thing it did lately: when someone mentioned “social life,” it was automatic; he almost couldn’t help it. He would blurt out, “what social life?” Or, if someone asked, he would smirk and say “Whom have I dated recently? What’s a date?” It was the easiest way to slow down a conversation he wasn’t comfortable having. It was annoying, he knew that. He wasn’t unaware of the lull in conversation that resulted every time he started doing it. He was turning into one of those self-styled comedians who had a stock joke or catch phrase that might be mildly amusing the first time you heard it, but they would use it almost indiscriminately, even if the joke didn’t apply. But Jim did it anyway. It was the only coping mechanism he knew to use when conversations turned toward his personal life. “What personal life?” he thought, before he could stop himself.
As he pulled into the business park that housed the office in which he’d be working the next few months Jim shook his head to try to stop that train of thought. He knew he had to concentrate on the business task at hand and try to keep the other baggage out of his head.
This might be something to look forward to. I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve had a truly competent company to work with. Wilmington was not bad ... Sarah. That must have been 5 years ago. Um, Bakersfield. That was actually boring, it went so smooth... Lisa. He shuddered at that thought. God, I have to quit thinking about this stuff. No, I don’t; why should I be embarrassed? I’m not doing anything wrong. Any other guy in my situation… anyway, I’m not looking for anything more than a friend. He smiled to himself. I just don’t want to be friends with a guy, that’s all. Jim’s smile slowly faded. I really hate this. Still, here we go again…
