My boss, Helen, sits at the head of the conference table wearing an ill-fitting chartreuse dress. The rest of planet Earth has agreed to stop making chartreuse happen, but Helen isn’t quite ready to give up. The color makes her look ill, but I would never tell her that. Fanned out on either side of her are my fellow real estate agents, all women, all carbon copies of one another. There’s a leader, of course—Lori Gleland. She’s positioned on Helen’s right side and she watches me enter the room with a thin, arched brow carefully raised.
“Is this your third late arrival this quarter?” Lori asks, feigning concern. “I do hope everything is going okay for you at home.”
I want to take Mr. Hall’s pruning sheers to Lori’s face, but instead I am a picture of stoic professionalism as I pull out the very last chair at the conference table: my reserved spot. So what if it also happens to be the spot meant for the lowest agent on the totem pole.
“Car trouble,” I offer lamely when it’s clear Helen isn’t going to continue until I speak up.
The agent beside me, Sandra, leans closer and whispers so everyone in the room can hear, “I think you have something stuck in your bra, sweetie. It looks really…lumpy.”
“Ah, of course.”
I unsheathe the forgotten granola bar from my bra with grace and dignity then tear it open. I’m still hungry, after all.
Sandra rolls her eyes and I smile warmly. Sandra is Lori’s minion. What Lori does, Sandra mimics, down to the chunky brown and blonde highlights streaked through short bobs. I take such delight in those chunky highlights. They are the visual manifestation of a request to speak with a manager at Applebee’s.
“All right, that’s enough of a distraction,” Helen cuts in. “Madeleine, I’d like you to stay after the meeting so we can chat.”
The room might as well break out in a chorus of um-mum-mums because Helen has never once asked me to stay after a meeting. Fortunately, Helen pulls the attention away from me a moment later by announcing with a sing-songy voice that “Lori was our top-selling agent last month!”
Sandra breaks out in staccato solo applause, but it fades slowly as no one moves to join her. “What is that, the fifth month in a row?”
Lori bats away Sandra’s compliment. “Six, actually—but who’s counting?”
Everyone titters at her terrible joke, and then Helen plays right into her ego by asking Lori to define her selling technique for the rest of us. If there’s one thing Lori doesn’t need, it’s an audience. I predict her selling technique has something to do with showing the most cleavage possible, considering we’re all a millimeter away from an eyeful of areola in that tank top of hers. Instead, she unveils what she calls The Five Ss.
“Smile, Suck Up, and Sell! Sell! Sell!”
Groundbreaking stuff here.
“Copyright Lori Gleland, all rights reserved,” she adds with a laugh. “No, but really,” she says, her tone turning deathly serious. “I am thinking about copyrighting that phrase.”
“You would trademark it.”
All eyes jump to me. I hardly ever speak up in meetings.
“What?” Lori asks.
I sit up a little straighter, already regretting my choice to leap into the conversation.
“You don’t copyright a phrase, you trademark it, and that’s the worst phrase I’ve ever heard, so there’s no point in trademarking it.”
I leave off the second half of my advice since I’d prefer to leave this conference room with my eyes still inside my skull.
Lori laughs awkwardly. “Right, well, the point is, selling real estate is about more than just a pretty face, Madeleine.”
I want to ask her why she’s taken an hour to pile on so much makeup then, and bright blue eye shadow no less. What a treat.
“I think the esses sound great!” Sandra adds, trying to loop the conversation back to focus on her master’s brilliance.
“The Five Ss,” Lori corrects, adding air quotes this time. She really does intend on trademarking the thing.
The meeting is wrapped up shortly after that and I linger behind as I’ve been instructed. It’s painful to know that five pairs of eyes are watching me as the rest of the agents leave the conference room, but I pretend to be enthralled by my notes from the meeting and act like I don’t see them staring at me.
My notes read as follows:
- Take Mouse on a walk
- Let him loose so he’s someone else’s problem
- Maybe feed him double dinner and he won’t wake you up at 4:30 AM whining??
- Buy snorkel, steal coins from fountain at the mall to pay rent
- Avoid Mr. Hall, but stealthily deliver double baked goods to his doorstep
“Madeleine.” I jump when Helen says my name. “Did you find that meeting informative?”
I move to cover my notes, though she’s still sitting at the head of the conference table so she can’t see them anyway. I smile and nod, even tacking on a rambling compliment about how well she runs her meetings. I know she doesn’t believe me because when she smiles, it doesn’t meet her eyes.
She stands up out of her chair and walks closer to me. I slide my notes onto my lap and she perches on the table right beside me. At this distance, her acrid yellow dress makes my eyes water, so I focus instead on her face—her sad, pitying face.
“Do you like working in real estate, Madeleine?”
“Of course!” I reply quickly.
“You can be honest with me. If this isn’t the job you imagined it would be, I’d rather you tell me now than—”
“Helen, I really enjoy my job.” It’s the truth. “The days where I’m meeting with clients and showing them listings are my favorite. I enjoy the thrill of the chase, I just haven’t found my stride yet.”
“You’ve worked here for a year this month, Madeleine, and you’ve only closed on one listing.”
She’s merciful in leaving out the fact that the one listing I managed to close on was for my brother and Daisy’s house. That was six months ago, and I’ve had no solid leads since.
“Because of that, I think it would be best if for the next two months, I put you on a probationary period.”
“What?”
She holds up her hand to silence me. “Nothing too serious. I won’t be breathing down your neck every second, but I think you need a bit more motivation.”
“Don’t you think the problem is with Hamilton? This town is growing, but not that quickly. There are just not enough people looking to buy property!”
She leans back and shakes her head. “See, that’s where you’re wrong. Hamilton is flourishing, and if you really put your nose to the grindstone, I know you could be one of my top sellers.”
She really thinks it’s possible for me to turn my embarrassing sales numbers (or complete lack thereof) around, and when I leave the conference room in a daze, I’m not sure if I’m upset that I’m on probation or inspired by her mini pep talk there at the end. I settle somewhere in the middle at neutral, glazed over. All the other agents are already in their cubicles, placing phone calls and returning emails. Lori has a full headset in place as I pass by her, a blue stress ball throbbing in her left hand. Her face resembles a trader on the stock-market floor as she jots down notes with her free hand.