Fuck this I’m out

I think their names were David and Kathy but this is like ten years ago now and we never hung out. Anyway. David and Kathy slept in a park. By the time they got hired at the canvassing place I was one of the experienced part of the crew. I’d been there maybe two months; turnover there was nuts, new people arriving and old people leaving every week. Most of the canvassers were young. I was too though I didn’t think of myself that way and I was in the older track. A lot of the people there were in college, back for the summer. Everyone living on their own and so needing the job to pay rent, we were all older and tended to be madder. Some people on the older side were more chilled out but when you dug a little they’d let loose a lot of negative opinions about how the turf was assigned, about the pay, about the disrespect. I think above all most of us were negative about our lives, worried that this wasn’t a phase so much as a sign of things to come - am I going to be making seven bucks an hour for the rest of my life?

When I got hired I asked how the pay worked. The manager pushed up his black frame glasses and scratched his mountain man beard and said “if you go over quota you get a bonus. The bonus is twenty percent of everything you take in above quota. So if you come in five hundred bucks over, you get an extra hundred bucks.” I may be misremembering the percent, but that was the point: go over quota, make more money. I remember he said it like it was really cool. “Some of our canvassers get a few hundred bucks extra a week on a hot week. You can make real money here if you hustle.” “What’s the quota?” “The quota’s set at the beginning of each week. It’s the average of the last week. So if everyone has a good week, the quota goes up some, if everyone has a bad week, we recognize that we need to ease up, the quota goes down some. If you hit the quota, you get sixty bucks for the day.” “What if you don’t hit the quota? Do you still get paid?” “Oh definitely, we’ll always pay you for your time.” He says it like they’re doing people a favor. “What’s the pay then?” “If you don’t hit the quota you get minimum wage.” He pauses then says “so what do you think? Still interested?” I pause. “Sounds great!” I smile and shake his hand. He smiles back, “I think you’re gonna be good at this.” What he didn’t tell me is that the company policy was to fire people who failed to hit quota three days in a row. Like Kathleen, and soon after, David.

With the crew being mostly young single people living with their parents, people hung out a lot after work and were gossipy as shit. I don’t know who David told, but once he told someone over beers that Kathleen and he were sleeping rough, pretty soon everyone knew. I didn’t hang out much at all so I was one of the last to know. “Did you hear about Kathleen and David?” Richard asked me during a slow stretch one day. “What about them? That they’re married?” “No doofus. That they’re homeless.” “That sucks. They live in a shelter?” “No, they’re sleeping in a park at the moment. They’re saving up to get an apartment.” “I hope it works out.” Three days later management fired Kathleen. They knew what they were doing. Some of the crew hung out with them pretty regularly. David looked furious for three days then they fired him.

I don’t think that was the last straw for me but it was close. I started talking about doing something at work. I bungled it in lots of ways but people were into doing something. We used to stop on our walk to public transit, we’d stop at the Amtrak station food court and have breakfast. Those breakfast sessions got longer and longer. I talked to the people I trusted and they talked to people they trusted and we decided we’d confront management. We heard that someone from the company nationally was going to come to town to see how things were going and to give us a kind of pep rally. “He’s a really inspiring speaker,” one of the bosses said. We planned out who would say what. On the day of, he came in and gave us a talk about changing America by our dedication or something along those lines. I tuned out. When he was done, people started asking questions like we had planned. Some people got too nervous and didn’t talk but three or four people did. People talked about the disrespect, about how the way turf was assigned didn’t make any sense, about how the bonus system meant that some people had an incentive to canvass really aggressively which raised the quota really high and this was hard on people who were struggling with the work. I hadn’t planned to talk, I had planned most of what we did and we had agreed I should hang back, but enough people got nerves that I just jumped in. I don’t if that was a good idea or not but I was mad. By this time the guy was red but still smiling, he would nod and say “thank you for bringing that up, we’ll look into that” and stuff like that. I said “I agree with what everyone else said and I wanted to add, this place talks about values a lot, but we’re paid very little money and we work a lot of unpaid hours tallying up our sheets and getting our turf assignments, and you all are really quick to fire people, like there were two people here who were homeless and they got fired. If WalMart did all that we’d all shake our heads and point fingers. I don’t think you all are any different though, just because you talk about progressive values while doing the same stuff as WalMart.” He frowned and turned redder and stuttered something about the importance of the cause. One of the other managers stood up and said “all right, any other questions or comments?” No one said anything, so he dismissed us and we filed out to head to our turf for the day.

Our morning at the train station that day took longer. I felt rattled about having spoken up so much. I was worried I’d be fired. I was in a really bad spot money-wise and I couldn’t afford to miss any paychecks. My co-workers were really nice to those of us who had spoken. The people who had been supposed to speak but didn’t, they all seemed embarrassed, we told them it was okay and really it was, it was a scary thing to do.

After a few days I had really mixed feelings about what we’d done. I was glad we had thrown the reality of the job in the boss’s face, I could tell we made him really uncomfortable, and the other managers all looked like they might throw up or cry. Share the wealth of misery, that’s how I thought of it, but it was frustrating that we couldn’t get our act together to make demands for improvements. That conversation among us kept breaking down. I threw in the towel then.

I was out canvassing with Richard and Shawn and Erika. I had worked with all of them for weeks and liked them personally. I got a big check early on and the Shawn did, we were at quota before lunch. The next person who stopped, after my pitch worked and hooked her into writing a check, I said “you know what ma’am, the on my clipboard died, I’m sorry,” and I shouted “hey! Richard, I need your help real quick, come here!” He ran over from his corner looking confused. “Richard, this nice woman has agreed to donate, thank you again ma’am, but my pen died so we’re going to put this on your clipboard.” She nodded and handed me the check and filled out the line on Richard’s sheet. Richard looked at me with his eyebrows raised. The lady walked away and I handed Richard the check to put in his envelope. “You’re not going to get credit for this.” “You at quota yet?” “No but now I’m close, I only need twenty bucks more.” “Well there you go.” Shawn and Erika had walked over by now to see what was going on. “Me and Shawn are both at quota, now Richard’s close, Erika where are you at?” Shawn was already nodding his head. “I’m still a hundred dollars down,” said Erika. “Okay, so Shawn” I didn’t finish the sentence, “yeah for sure, next person who stops for me or for you, we direct them to Erika. What did you say?” “I said my pen died.” “That works.” “Richard, after you hit quota, can you do the same?” “Yeah I will.” He paused and swallowed. “You guys don’t have to do this you know, I can pull off quota.” “Yeah man, I believe you. I’m not judging at all. But I don’t like this quota bonus thing where one person on a crew can make a lot of money while the next person on the next corner might be at the risk of getting fired. That makes me uncomfortable.” He nodded. “You all are some of my favorites, this is a really fun crew to be out with, and that’s partly because everyone’s really nice, the people who bonus a lot aren’t usually so fun to be around, they’re kinda standoffish and I think a bit selfish. I don’t want to be like that.” Richard nodded again, “that sounds good. And thanks, I appreciate this.”

An hour later Erika and Richard had both hit it. Erika had come up fifty dollars over quota and Richard was a hundred over. “That’s great, you guys are gonna bonus some!” Richard looked at the sidewalk. “I can send my next one to you if you want.” “That’s cool man, that’d be nice, but don’t feel obligated. I just wanted to make sure we all hit quota.” We decided to go to lunch together. We came back and canvassed a little more. The sun had gotten really hot and my feet hurt from standing. I called across the street to Shawn “dude, we’re at quota, let’s just knock off for the day.” He nodded, “if we go back to the office this early they’ll be pissed.” “Good point.” “You wanna grab a beer?” I smiled, “absolutely.” I crossed the street and we walked over to Erika, “I’m totally in” she said right away. We walked to Richard, who was collecting another donation. “We’re going for drinks,” Shawn said. “It’s only two,” Richard said it like a question. “We’re all at quota,” Erika said. “I’m just done for today Richard,” I said. He shook his head and smiled. “You guys. Man, you guys.” We turned to walk toward the bar two blocks down and Richard came running after us. “I didn’t say I wasn’t going!”