"Goddamn middle managers!" Katelyn raged to no one in particular as she took out her frustrations on the dashboard of her car.
Her meeting had not gone as she'd hoped. The prick from Gerson Manufacturing was not the decision-maker she'd hoped he was, but just another suit that stood between her and her first big sale. The labyrinthine corporate structure was a mystery Katelyn was only just beginning to understand, and the meeting with Blake was another lesson in the layers of bureaucracy wedged between sales people and the buyers.
It wasn't like Blake was a bad guy, either. He was just a regular working man, too boring and unremarkable, in both looks and personality, to feel much of anything for, even frustration. And he had told her he had to take her proposal to his boss, so it wasn't like he'd given her a hard "no." But the frustration was still there.
Katelyn was still feeling her way along in her new job, but she had always had high expectations for herself. And the fact that she still had not closed a big sale annoyed her.
Pounding her steering wheel was not a constructive use of her energies, so she put her car in gear and drove out of the parking lot toward home. She put in her favorite CD and lost herself in the drive, blasting Britney Spears and feeling the frustrations ebb away with the miles.
Jake was out of town this weekend, so she had to find a way to work out her frustrations that did not involve a nice angry fucking. Perhaps a little wine and some mindless television would help get her back to her normal self.
She flipped on the TV and popped poured herself a glass, but she could still not let go of her frustrations. Katelyn really wanted to be good in her job, and the fact that she could not make headway with Gerson bothered her.
A more experienced salesperson would probably know what to do, she thought. But her background as a waitress and a secretary had not prepared her for the twists and turns of closing a sale.
Executive assistant, she corrected herself. Secretaries like to be called executive assistants now. Corporate speak was like a foreign language to Katelyn, and its speakers were prickly about titles, she'd found.
Jake always said he jerked off to relieve frustration. That she could do, even if she couldn't close a sale, and her shower head did things to her that made separation from her boyfriend decidedly less boring.
It was too early for Cinemax to be showing anything that would help her get off, but she flipped it on anyway. A silly Chris Farley comedy was showing, but it looked like something good might follow. Katelyn went to get another glass of wine to help drown the self-imposed stress.
As she sat down with her liquid stress reliever, Farley and his little buddy David Spade were sitting in a diner on the television. They were discussing sales, and Katelyn's ears perked up. When Spade said something about selling yourself was more important than the product, Katelyn gasped.
"Holy shit!" she said. She realized that this dumb movie had just given her an insight. She had been trying to sell Katelyn, the hardcore corporate salesperson. She had largely forgotten about Katie, the fun and flirty waitress that earned big tips by being herself. Her ample breasts did not hurt her quest for tips, either, but she always thought her fun-loving personality had been the key.
In fact, she realized, Katie had probably been the one who was promoted from secretary into the sales department, as her sales manager always smiled and had a joke for her when she was answering phones and taking messages for him.
Monday morning came, and Katelyn's first order of business was calling Blake at Gerson.
"Blake, did your boss get a chance to look at my proposal?" she asked.
"Not yet. He doesn't work on the weekends, you know," Blake said a little huffily.
Thinking of Katie, she said, "Come on, Blake, couldn't you talk to him about it now? I'd be forever in your debt." It was corny, but also a little flirty. Surprisingly his tone softened, and he said he'd talk to Mr. Gerson today.
That was a big step. Katelyn knew that Gerson shipped computer components all over the country, and her company's pricing was very competitive. And they had more trucks than the other logistics companies in the area, so she really felt that she had a chance of closing the deal.
The rest of the day was taken up with expense reports, call backs and all of the other minutiae that go with being a salesperson. Her phone rang late in the afternoon, and it was Blake.
"Katelyn, these numbers seem a little too good to be true," he said without preamble.
