Act I
1.
Jake, are you there? Did we lose you?”
In his mind, Jake Aarons felt fully in control of his life. Not only had he stopped worrying about the highly disturbing emails he’d received right before the client meeting, but the problems they referred to didn’t exist at all. He imagined a bright future with his girlfriend and a promising career at the agency.
But in the conference room where he sat, situated across from his boss and two seats away from the client who had just signed a major contract, he wasn’t paying any attention at all. Even as he daydreamed about an alternate reality, he knew that the one he was suddenly facing was far less desirable. If only he could—
“Hey, Earth to Jake!”
“What? Oh . . . sorry. I was just gathering my thoughts.”
He rewound the last few minutes in his mind, switching out of autopilot and willing himself to remember key details. Five people sat staring at him. First, his boss, Jan, who was leading the meeting and trying to get his attention. Next, two representatives of Avery Tech, the client that had hired them. A few seats farther over was Sloan, who carried the honorary title of Chief Asshole Officer. Sloan wasn’t aware he held this high honor that Jake had conferred upon him. In his mind he saw himself as “Senior Consultant,” despite the fact that their agency didn’t organize its employees by rank. Finally, next to Sloan sat Preena, a much nicer colleague he’d come to consider a friend in the ten months he’d been working at Brightside.
And then there was Jake. What was he supposed to do again?
Now he remembered. He was supposed to present his group’s ideas to help Avery Tech get out of its rut and go back to making money. Helping businesses make money is what marketers are supposed to do, after all.
He’d been distracted all morning, obsessing over some untimely news he’d received, but now it was time to rally. He cleared his throat and looked at the room, making eye contact with Jan and the client reps.
“So, uh, I thought we’d begin by looking at your social media accounts. I think you can do a lot more with them.”
The group waited. What more could they do with them, Jake? Right. He needed to keep going.
“We can get into specifics as we go along, but I also wonder if you’ve thought about reaching out to some of your current customers for feedback. You know, just checking in to see if they have suggestions for improvement.”
It was obvious he’d already lost them. That’s what happens when you come to a pitch meeting with no ideas.
Jan cut in. “It’s okay, Jake, I’ll take over. Or actually, Sloan, did you have something to present?”
Sloan, Chief Asshole Officer, could always be counted on to land self-promotion points.
“Absolutely,” he said, making sure he caught Jake’s eye before continuing. “I’ve been doing a deep dive into your website analytics and noticed something really interesting. You guys sell memory chips and cards for computers, right?”
The client reps perked up.
“Well, it looks like most people who land on your site aren’t actually searching for those things, at least not directly. They’re searching for phrases like ‘data storage’ and ‘computer processor.’ Not only that, but if you separate the people who make purchases from those who just come in and leave, the people who arrive looking for data storage are 26 percent more likely to buy.”
“That’s really interesting,” Client Rep One said, while Rep Two nodded and wrote something down.
“But here’s the thing,” Sloan said. “You don’t really have a strategy to target people searching for data storage. I think that’s where we should start. From there, we can look at retargeting, developing custom upsells, and otherwise extracting more value from all those visitors.”
“Huh,” Rep One said. “I don’t think we knew anything about that.”
The rest of the meeting proceeded from there. Jake went back into wallflower status, Jan ran the show, and Sloan made himself look good. Only Jake knew that this whole “deep dive into your website analytics” shtick actually came from Preena. She was going to present it when the toss came her way, but Sloan had pushed her aside in the lineup and run with it.
It was that kind of move that had led Jake to confer his honorary title on Sloan. He was always willing to go above and beyond, especially for his own benefit. Always the first to arrive in the morning and the last to leave at night, at least as long as everyone else knew about it.
Unfortunately, in an agency structure it was often those kinds of self-serving behaviors that ended up being rewarded.
As for Jake, he was frequently distracted, but not usually to the point of being such a space cadet. Especially when going into a meeting with clients, his boss, and his adversary, he tried to be prepared. But the fact was that he had a lot on his mind. Something had happened earlier that morning that threw off his balance: Jake had finally gotten around to reading his email from Tuesday.
Reading your Tuesday messages on Friday could be considered a power move for some people. Maybe if you were into that whole “don’t check email in the morning” mindset, and decided to interpret it as “don’t check email for several days at a time.” Alternatively, it could end up getting you fired, or worse.
The first message that caught his attention had an ominous subject line:
Loan Collection Status
The message was from Midland Financial Services, which informed him that it had recently purchased Jake’s student loan debt and was now seeking a payment schedule.
Eight years ago, Jake had discovered the miracle of student loans. “It’s free money from the government!” his roommate said with the air of winning the lottery.
“Sounds amazing!” Jake said, and he signed the pages that would lead to a large deposit in his bank account, as well as a free toaster that he never unpacked from the box. He figured that he’d be able to afford to repay the money . . . someday. Wasn’t that how it worked? Besides, it would be a long time before any payments became due.
It now seemed that this faraway day in the distant land of the future had arrived. Over the course of three years—he had a scholarship for much of his senior year—Jake had borrowed a total of $52,450.38. More than half of that had gone directly to California State University, Northridge. The other half had gone . . . somewhere. The loans stipulated that the money could only be spent on educational expenses, which by Jake’s interpretation included rent, food, gas, a trip to Ireland with his older brother, Zach, and beer.
Midland was seeking repayment, with interest, on a schedule that called for the first payment of $805.14 to begin next month. The notice cheerfully informed him that a discount was available for making a larger payment.