Black Buck(20)

“Aight I’m really sorry, for doin’ that thing you hate. I’m sayin’ comin’ in with excuses, jus’ a li’l late. Got two hundred and ten eyes on me, and nah, it don’ feel great, but it’s sure better than that guy who ran out barfin’ what he ate. It’s true I may be new, but I promise I got potential. Words and verbs coalescing into proverbs comin’ straight up at your mental. It’s my first day, but if there’s one thing I can say, it’s that my man Frodo, the Duchess, and me are gon’ kill it, like a turkey on Thanksgivin’ Day.”

Silence. All two hundred and ten eyes stared at me.

“Holy shit,” a girl said. “Buck can actually rap!”

The room thundered with applause, pale hands surrounding me for high fives.

Across the room, Rhett gave me a look that said, There he is. There’s the guy I hired.

Reader: If you are a Black man, the key to any white person’s heart is the ability to shuck, jive, or freestyle. But use it wisely and sparingly. Otherwise you’re liable to turn into Steve Harvey.





* * *





Rhett raised his hand and slowly curled it into a fist until a dense silence fell. I sat on the floor next to the Duchess, who scooted as far away from me as possible.

“What week is it?” Rhett asked.

“DEALS WEEK!” everyone shouted.

“That’s right. And for the uninitiated, can someone please explain what Deals Week is?”

A blonde girl raised her hand.

“Deals Week is the most important week of the month. It’s when every single member of the team is doing absolutely everything in their power to ensure we hit our MRR goal.”

“And what’s MRR?” Rhett asked.

“Oh,” she said, looking at us new hires. “Monthly recurring revenue. The amount of closed-won cash we assume will repeat every month after. It helps with the financial model and adjusting our CAC, which, of course, impacts the LTV of our customers.”

Everyone in the room nodded, as if she had delivered some prophecy. To me, it just sounded like she was speaking in tongues.

“Thank you, Tiffany. She’s right,” Rhett said, standing. “But she left out a few things. Can anyone tell the new folks why we have a Deals Week to begin with?”

The girl with orange-red hair, the one I’d seen yesterday with the piglet in her arms, stood. She had this far-off look in her eyes, like she was peering into another dimension. “Because it’s a crazy fun time?”

“It is that, Marissa,” Rhett said. “But that’s not why we have a Deals Week. Anyone else?”

A stocky kid with a full beard who was sweating through a plaid button-up raised his hand.

“Tell us why, Charlie,” Rhett said, walking the floor.

“Because we’ve achieved twenty-five percent month-over-month growth for the past eleven months, and if we don’t achieve our goals, our growth will suffer.”

“And what happens if our growth suffers?”

Charlie paused, surveying the room. “All this goes away. Everything we have, everything we are. We will no longer be the best.”

“Fuck that!” someone yelled.

“Yeah, fuck that!” another voice echoed.

Rhett stopped in front of me, my eyes level with the backs of his knees; his denim jeans were obviously tailor-made, his suede Chelsea boots unblemished.

“That’s exactly right, Charlie. Thank you. Now,” he said, rounding the back of the room, stepping over people, occasionally resting his hand on someone’s shoulder. “Are we going to let that happen?”

“Hell no,” a few responded.

“No? I thought I heard a few of you,” he said. “But I didn’t hear all of you. I said, Are we going to let that happen?”

“No!” more people shouted; some of them proceeded to beat their white hands on the table until they turned red.

“Not good enough. You call yourself Sumwunners? If you actually mean what you say, I need to hear it. So again. Are. We. Going. To. Let. That. Happen?”

“NO!” the entire room screamed, banging on every surface they could get their hands on. Someone flung a Moleskine at the glass behind me. I ducked just in time.

“FUCK NO! FUCK NO! FUCK NO!” they chanted. You could see the fire in their faces, the madness mixing like cement behind their eyes.

Dozens of nonsales spectators formed a crowd outside the room, throwing their hands in the air, stomping their feet to a beat only they knew. These people, who I assumed were semi-intelligent and sane, were hooting and hollering like a pack of savages beating their chests as a herd of mastodons approached. I was waiting for them to take out whips branded with Sumwun’s logo for self-flagellation.

“We have Deals Week because being the best means that we need”—Rhett thrust his finger into the air—“to crush our goals every month. And I’ll let you in on a little secret, it’s not just selling. It’s not just putting numbers on the board, because if we do our jobs this week, we will make history. Yes, history.

“So let’s be clear about what we’re not doing. We’re not fucking selling shitty pieces of cardboard and calling it furniture. This isn’t IKEA! We’re not fucking selling greasy, heart-attack-inducing poop on a stick that kills billions of people every day. This isn’t McDonald’s! And we’re sure as hell not fucking selling overpriced, low-quality pieces of burlap sacks assembled in Bangladeshi sweatshops halfway around the world. This is not fucking American Eagle, Hollister, Aéropostale, or any of those lame-ass fucking brands that are making the world a worse place to exist in.