I’d inadvertently spent too long around his kids to maintain a healthy level of professional courtesy. Sebastian and Dominic, the elder two, had been similar. Hey, Carl, yo, Carl, how’s it going, Carl? But they’d learned. A few days into the internship had knocked the familiarity clean out of them, and then it had returned stronger, more genuinely, and with mutual respect.
Somehow I doubted the road would be as smooth with Verity. She was here purely because Daddy was making her be here. By all accounts because of some crappy little US trip he’d used as leverage, and it seemed that this time she believed he’d hold out on his conditions. No internship, no fucking jolly at the end of the six months.
I pointed at the current slide.
“My requirements are simple. Everyone will do their best. I don’t care where you’ve come from, I don’t care what you know, or what you’ve done, or what a couple of cruddy pieces of paper claim you’re worth. I judge on what I find, and I find effort and determination to be worth a thousand university degrees. Don’t try and coast through this programme, because I’ll know it, I’ve already seen it a thousand times over. You have a problem, you bring it up and we work through it, other than that, I expect your all when you’re on my team, and for the next six months we’re a team. Understood?”
Eighteen heads nodded, while Verity’s looked at her Gucci watch.
“Miss Faverley, is that understood?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, Carl, I get it.”
But she didn’t. She didn’t fucking get it, because spoiled little bitches like Verity Faverley have never had to work for anything. She’s the youngest. The pampered princess in the ivory tower. Her mother’s little china doll.
A brat.
“We’ll be starting from the ground up, no exceptions. Everyone is on equal footing here, following the same path as the hundreds before you. You’ll start in the call centre, developing your customer service skills, your communication skills, your professionalism and your product knowledge. You’ll be learning to sell without visual cues, without a smart suit, without a company car, or flashy business cards, or a title under your belt. And then, when you’re ready, if you’re ready, you’ll get a shot at higher level account management, maybe a placement in one of the field sales divisions. Maybe you could even transfer to marketing. The world is your oyster, and we hope most of you, most of you, will stay.” I smiled at the rag-tag collection of newbies before me. “Any questions?”
A few tentative hands went up, and I addressed their queries one by one. All the regular. When will we have to make live calls? What products will we be working on? I don’t know much about the technology yet, is that a problem?
Verity had not a single one.
I gave them a smile and watched them settle, breathing out a sigh as they began to relax into day one of their new life. And then I threw them a curveball. I docked my phone on the speaker stand at the front, scrolled through songs until I found the Rocky theme. This moment would singe itself into their memory, the disbelief and the shock and the humour. Maybe sometimes the horror. This moment would begin the breakdown of their reservations, pushing them through their self-consciousness. Initiation by fire, and it had purpose here.
“Everyone sings. Everyone,” I said. “I’d better hear you, or you’ll be out on your ear on day one.” I scanned the faces, registering the first flashes of horror. I don’t know quite why it is that singing in public petrifies people so universally, but Christ it does. “Everyone will do their very best. Stand up, please.”
Nineteen people got to their feet, some shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, some grinning, some already blushing. All of them ready to give it a go, except one.
“Music is an anchor, and sales is a performance based career. Find your songs, the ones that lift you up, make you feel like you can take on the world and everyone in it. Find them and use them, often. This is mine.”
I pressed Play.
And then I led from the front, and that always surprises them most of all.
I can’t sing, not really, but I love music and I love to move. I listen to music wherever I go. On long drives to meetings, through hard workouts on the rowing machine, preparing for an important negotiation, crunching the numbers