#31 ADT
Between shit and the shingle. Please enjoy this very long story about a terrible job. Yes, another one.
A very lucky thing happened to me: My upstairs neighbor had been smoking out on the balcony when he witnessed a Discount Cab hit my car.
My neighbor, who I’d never met but regularly heard fighting with his girlfriend and throwing his Nintendo 64 at the wall, was so kind to write down the license plate, cab number, and time of the incident. He left this important information on a post-it note on my apartment door.
Discount Cabs were big in and around Phoenix at the time–this was before Uber and Lyft took over. Discount Cabs were neon green Priuses.
I went out to my car and sure enough, on my silver bumper there were smears of neon green. I called Discount Cab and after several phone calls and a few months of persistence, I finally got a paycheck. That $800 was my ticket out of my job at the sweatshop posing as a marketing/reputation management company.
On October 6, 2013, my bank account was bursting at the seams with $800 more than it had ever seen. I knew I couldn’t give another minute of my life to reputation management. Instead of driving 10 miles on the freeway and getting in no less than three road rage altercations, I drove to Camelback mountain for a hike. I promised myself I’d get another job within 2 weeks.
On October 7, 2013, I went to a group interview and was hired immediately. I didn’t know what the job was, but a guy named Scott stood at the front of the room and told us we were about to make “life-changing” money.
Scott had a bushy head of hair, a gray goatee, a big belly, and took a lot of smoke breaks. He leaned onto the table and looked at each of us in the eyes, “Do you have any idea what life is like making over $100k?”
I did not. I did know what it was like to make $30,000 and it was pretty fucking rotten.
I slowly caught on that the job was selling ADT home security systems, door-to-door. Not exactly what I’d envisioned for myself, but I was hired within my two-week timeframe and that’s really all that mattered to me.
Scott had me convinced that selling security systems was my destiny, and that I was the perfect person for the job. I was charismatic, driven, and persuasive.
If we sold nothing, we’d make $250 per week plus mileage. If we sold one security system—just one!—we’d make $500 that week plus mileage. Each additional sale brought in bigger and bigger payouts.
I hung on Scott’s every word. I’d been in AA for over ten years, so when he told us to read The Four Agreements and practice gratitude everyday, he was speaking my language. One week he had us make vision boards to manifest our giant sales goals coming true.
On my first official day of work, I showed up in my blue ADT polo shirt and black pants, ready to bathe in cash. Our first order of business was to get fingerprint cards and background checks. Then we went back to the office to share our gratitude for the day.
The ADT veterans took us newbies out for our first night of selling. Each sales team got a tablet with a GPS map filled with blue dots representing houses we’d need to “hit.” We were all assigned to distinct areas in and around the Phoenix suburbs. I was matched with Corey, a tall, bald single-dad who smoked almost as much as Scott.
We got into his Ford Explorer. He grabbed a 5-hour energy drink from his glove box and tossed it back. “You got the map so tell me where to go,” he said, blowing smoke out the window.
“Can I have one of your smokes?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “It’s not a good look for you. People don’t like women who smell like smoke.”
“Uh, OK.”
We drove ten miles south to a new housing development that Corey referred to as a “honeypot.”
“I don’t know what that means,” I said. “Honeypot? That sounds like what a man would call me.”
Corey looked at me, unamused. “It means we’re gonna get a lot of sales tonight. These are all new homeowners.” He looked out at the identical rows of houses as if he were admiring the beauty and wonder of the Grand Canyon.
I learned that our target customer lived in a house under $300,000 because if they could afford a nicer house, they’d probably use something more expensive and sophisticated than ADT. A $200,000 house in 2013 was perfect because homebuyers with this budget could afford our system, and a $200,000 house was typically in a neighborhood where people wanted a little extra security.
I also learned that the blue dots on our tablets represented houses that had been sold within the last 90 days. New homeowners were more likely to invest in security systems and other things like home warranties for three reasons: first, buying a house comes with a whole bunch of expenses, many of them unanticipated, and people get into a rhythm of shelling out cash and chalking it up to new house expenses. Second, people are more likely to feel the need for security in a new place. Finally, new homeowners (especially first-time homeowners) are more likely to see home protection as a good investment even if it’s not actually useful.
We got out of the car and I followed Corey up the sidewalk to our first house.
“Smile when they answer but don’t say anything,” he said to me.
He rang the bell and then knocked three times. I stood a few feet behind him.
As soon as a woman answered, Corey stepped forward, putting his foot on the threshold of the door. Then he went into the script:
“Hi! I’m Corey, and this is Nikki, we’re out here today to let you know that we’ll be doing security installations in your neighborhood this weekend so we wanted to leave you some information in case you’d like us to stop by and equip your new home with some really great security features.”
The woman began to speak but Corey cut her off.
“It’s normally $99 for the techs to come out, but since we’re already doing installations for a few of your neighbors, we’re waiving that fee.”
The woman looked back into her house as if wishing someone would appear, her husband maybe.
“You know what?” Corey said, looking past her into the corners of her living room, acting like he could see something she couldn’t, “why don’t Nikki and I just come in and show you how we can secure this house. It’s a beautiful house, by the way. Should we take our shoes off?”
And just like that, we were in her house, sitting at barstools and signing a deal.
We walked down the street and ended up with 6 deals that night. Corey made $3600 in one day.
WEEK TWO
By week two, our background checks had come back. A couple blips popped up on my background check including some misdemeanor drug charges, false identification and something about weapons. I didn’t even remember the false ID charge! But that was the one causing me trouble because we had to go into peoples’ houses, and I guess ADT didn’t want their salespeople to have a propensity for pretending to be someone else.
Anyway, Scott helped me get cleared with ADT and soon I was on the road all by myself. And boy, was I by my SELF. Selling security was no fun without a partner to chit chat, make jokes and sing along to the music in the car. On my own, the rejections were harder to bounce back from and they added up quickly.
We were told to ring even if there was a “No solicitors” sign. Mothers screamed at me, “My baby is sleeping!” Angry homeowners answered in a rage because I’d interrupted their meal time. Children answered and their mothers screamed in the background, “Don’t open the door to strangers!” and then the door crashed shut in my face, the sound of the latch turning into place as I walked back to my car.
There was one other woman at ADT, besides myself, named Brenda. Brenda and I went out together one night because her car was in the shop. She was a stereotypical “tough old broad.” She smoked a ton (Corey didn’t give her any hassle) and lived in a triple wide trailer. I had never even heard of a triple wide, but the day we went out together, I had to pick her up and sure enough, there she was standing outside the biggest trailer I’d ever seen. It must have been 3,000 square feet.
Like a lot of older women I’ve worked with, Brenda saw me as someone who could use some advice, some coaching or direction in my life. She told me about her past career as a “mobile lawn specialist.” It was a lucrative career, she said. She had a portable lawn aerator and a pitch about why any homeowner with a lawn (which was rare in Arizona) needed their lawn aerated. She rode around neighborhoods on her bike, aerating lawns for cash. She knew I liked to ride my bike and suggested I start my own lawn aeration business.
“It would be a lot easier than this shit,” she said.
“Really?”
“Fuck yeah. Plus you wouldn’t have to put up with these shitheads,” she indicated to the other guys we worked with who weren’t actually there.
“They aren’t so bad.”
“You should hear what they say about you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Never mind.”
“Well if the aerator business is so great, why aren’t you doing it?”
“I got two bad knees. I can’t do it anymore. I can hardly do this shit.”
We sat quietly for a while.
She looked out the window.
“I’m glad your car broke down so I am not alone tonight.”
“Shit.”
“I’m serious. Thanks for having a shit car, Brenda.”
She laughed and cracked her window, and took a half-smoked cigarette out of a pack of Winstons. I really didn’t want her smoking in my car but at this point, who cared.
“I don’t know what else to do,” I said.
“I hear that,” she said, bending down to try to light the tiny cigarette.
“I keep thinking I’ll get a job that pays enough to live and maybe I’ll start to like my life.”
“Ha!”
“Is that too much to ask?”
“Maybe. I’ll tell you one thing, you’re too smart for this shit.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
WEEK THREE
Any ambition I’d had coming out of graduate school had been sucked out of me, every last drop. I hadn’t even been in my new career for a full month and I was already beyond defeated. The need for money and absolute mystery about how to get some of it was making me insane.
“Would you take care of my cats if I killed myself?” I asked my mom.
“No,” she said.
“Are you serious?”
“Well, are you really going to kill yourself?”
