Sell Out III

Ruff Riders Anthem – DMX

Just to get this out of the way, I have not been able to take a good shit lately. I don’t know why. I come home after a long day and the first thing I want to do is drop a deuce in the comfort of my own home and…nothing. It’s really depressing. There’s nothing as satisfying as that feeling of going to the washroom and coming out feeling like you just shit out the remains of an unborn twin. People got problems, man.

Next, I want to congratulate William on dropping seven straight posts within the last couple of weeks. Your quiet dedication to shining a light on the depravities of mankind (and posting movie trailers) remains impressive.

By now, I think I’ve told everyone about my new job at RBC meaning that the brief chapter of my life concerning Gemma Communications is now closed. It is fitting that I have now TRULY sold out by getting an office gig at a major bank. I couldn’t have planned this series of posts better if I had tried. Some final Gemma related thoughts:

I learned that there were four types of customers.

Comedians – Customers who insist on making stupid jokes and odd comments during the phone call. For example, an agent will read the interest rate on a credit card that the customer is applying for and the customer might say “Oh, well if it’s that high then I might not be interested. That’s more like a distinterest rate, isn’t it? (annoying chuckle)” I made that up, but that’s generally the idea. These customers are capable of extending a call anywhere from five to twenty minutes and if these witticisms are intermingled with important parts of the script, then quality control is forced to endure.

Vigilantes – Customers who are immediately suspicious of the call and demand to know more information from the agent before they answer any questions. Common inquiries include: “What’s your name?”, “Where are you calling from?”, and “Why don’t you give me YOUR social insurance number?” The crazy thing about Vigilantes is how easily they are defused. Sometimes, the agent will just re-read the exact same script that they just read and the customer will be like, “Hmm, okay, well that sounds more believable.” It’s as if the act of making the agent do more work is some kind of victory. Even better are the guys who do it near the end of the call as the agent is wrapping up. You’ve already given them all your information!

Nervous Nellies – Similar to the vigilante, these customers are overly inquisitive; however, this behaviour seems to stem more from pure ignorance than paranoia. There is something about filling out an application that turns a normally intelligent human being into a bumbling simpleton. Simple words like “credit limit”, “consent”, “the” become cryptic phrases to the Nervous Nellie. They need everything clarified and by the time the call is over, you’re almost sure that they still didn’t understand a damn thing.

Rubes – The agent’s best friend. These people sit around with nothing to do and when the agent calls, the customer simply says “yes” to everything until the call is over. No questions, no comments, just consent. These calls usually make me black out half way through. By the time I recover, I’m completely unsure of whether or not the agent may have threatened to murder the customer’s family if they didn’t finish the application. I just hit that Verify button and move on. A subset of the Rubes is the Sad Sacks. These people are almost sure that they won’t be approved for a credit card, but agree to everything sounding like they’re just happy that someone is talking to them for five minutes.

Cool names that are 100% real: Dale MacPhail, Albert Sundown (great name for a Western), Catherine Durnfordwang (sounds like something you’d make up under pressure), Yogaluxmy Balasubramanian, Cynthia J Cockerline, Patricia Brainerd, Saxhide Petropoulos, Cherry Pie V Rumbaoa, Sabato Carnevale (sounds like a cool professional wrestler from Mexico), Ron Otten (sounds like a lame professional wrestler from New Jersey), Penny Trusty, Hermogenes Lasangue

Cool names that must have been legally changed: Trust Unworried, Roman Kiss and Rain Morpheus

Cool name that should probably be legally changed: Wayne Allcock (and he lives on Nutcracker Drive!)

Cool foreign name that I would normally exclude because as far as I know it could be like “Stephen Jones” in another country, but it’s just too awesome: Suthashiny Thirugnanasampanther

Cool name that Shirley Manh could use as an alias: Sharlynn Mannhardt

Cool name that William must consider for his own child: Zerubbabel Cheng

My personal favourite: Honeyleen P Superlario Aromin

My managers have been super supportive of my new job and I want to personally use this valuable webspace to thank them for the opportunity they gave me. They called me when I was sitting around doin’ absolutely nothin’ and I don’t take that lightly. I felt so guilty after RBC called and I had to spend the next couple of days acting like I was sticking around because I didn’t know how to break it to them. Every day they graced me with new responsibilities. “Here’s a new campaign for you to learn, Alexander.” “You’re in our e-mail system now, Alexander.” “Here’s the Budget Shoe Warehouse girl’s number, Alexander.” They always called me by my full name.

It’s going to be difficult to leave this group, because these are my people: the freaks and geeks of society. There’s John, the middle aged gay man who always had an innuendo on the tip of his tongue. Marcus, that young guy who went to a local college and thinks he’s got it all figured out already even though he still lives with his parents. Bernadette, your typical devout Catholic. Tom, the not so kindly old curmudgeon. Danny, the cocky guy who makes a million jokes without realizing that he’s usually the guy who laughs at them the most and who calls himself God. Sylvain, the former alcoholic trying to make things work while juggling this job and his family. Alain, the mostly harmless black man who sounds, both in voice and character, like Idi Amin from The Last King Of Scotland (and yes, that’s the second time I’ve compared someone to that character in the last six months). Lastly, there’s Elizabeth, this perfectly cool girl who has perfect pitch and spends her weekends transposing, who has everyone reason to be confident except that she suffers from stage fright and the occasional panic attack. Then there’s me.

Even though I’m super pumped to start my RBC job (the reality of actually doing the job for at least the next few years hasn’t actually sunk in yet and is surely post material for another time), I won’t forget that working at Gemma Communications was my first real job. It’s only been a month. Can you believe it?

Now, some links:

Did you know that there were two films made in the last fifteen years called Jack Frost? We’re all familiar with the wonderful Michael Keaton flick made in 1998. Courtesy of Wikipedia, here is Roger Ebert’s take on it. Damn, that is hateful.

What most of you don’t know is that two years prior to that, there was a cheap horror movie made with the same title. Courtesy of Wrestlecrap (the movie has nothing to do with wrestling, but plenty to do with crap), I give you Jack Frost. If you thought about skipping this link, I’ll tell you right now that Shannon Elizabeth gets raped by a snowman. Go ahead and click now.

The weird thing is that I think the Keaton one is actually scarier.

I had a fun time going through The Onion A.V. Club Worst Band Names of 2007. Obviously, I don’t recommend you read it line by line but feel free to skim. I especially enjoyed the commentary for the band Wishdoctor (near the end of page 1). I also liked Steaming Wolf Penis.

I know we were just watching this at my house so it’s kind of redundant, but I had to add this clip to make it an official part of WAMBAG lore: Jake Brown at the X-Games. Look at that muthafucka’s shoes fly!!!

A belated Merry Christmas and a premature Happy New Year to everyone!

*Coming Soon (no promises): Great Music From 2007 and some general holiday thoughts.*

Nice to have some positive reinforcement, isn’t it?
Well, it’s only positive reinforcement when they say it to you. In my case they’re just stating the facts. I do look like the Arrow Shirt man, I did lace up my skates profesionally and I did do a fabulous job finishing my muffin.

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