Chapter 1: The Beginning

Finding (or being found by) the Devil

I had just graduated from my master’s STEM degree program in International Business in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. As an international student with a student visa, we’re supposed to
apply for employment authorization during this period so we can obtain our OPT status, which
allows us to live and work in the country. In August 2023, after graduation, I was rushing to find
a job for two reasons. The first reason was that I was broke. The second reason was that I needed
a job to stay in the United States. International students are granted by the government a period
of 3 months max of unemployment to find a position, and that’s what secures the OPT status. So,
my clock was ticking, I did not want to lose unemployment days, and my whole plan when
coming here was to work in the US, gather experience, and adventure into something new, a new
market and new people.
Although the school had helped us with the job searching process, in practice, it turned out to be
harder than I expected to find a company that would sponsor my employment authorization as an
international. What they didn’t tell me when I applied at my school in the first place is that most
international students do successfully find a job, but only back home, because is actually
extremely hard to be lucky enough in the US to find a company that would sponsor an H1B Visa
the one that leads the path to the green card. Companies even pre-empt international students in
their application process that they do not provide sponsorship. Don’t even try in here
internationals!
As a result of all of that, hunting for a job proved to be more stressful than I expected, especially
in the area I wanted, data analysis. It required experience that I didn’t have, and time for studying
and applying that I couldn’t allow myself to have because, as a reminder, I was broke, like, very
broke. So, safe enough to say I was in the perfect position for a company that was looking for
financially unstable naïve young kids or international students desperate for American papers to
work in a slave circle or pyramid scheme and make a lot of money off of them. But I’m getting
ahead of the story. With this mild introduction of how things were before, we move on to how I
even started in the Devil Corp company.

After a month of applying massively on LinkedIn and other job boards without even looking at
the requirements or the positions being offered, I got called for an interview by the company that
started this story. It was my 3rd or 4th one at this point but in person, all the others had been
through Zoom, and none of them led to a job offer. It was scheduled at 10 AM, and it was an
hour away from my house, still, I was intrigued and excited about it because if anything that
experience would help me train more for future interviews. I arrived at the office in South Boston
earlier than required. I noticed that the office was weirdly empty but just imagined that people
were doing their jobs inside the rooms where I couldn’t see, so didn’t think much of it at that
moment. I just waited in the lobby after a Texan woman gave me some paper to put my
information on it, and told me to wait for Alyssa to call for me. That was the first time I met
Alyssa in person.
She’s a white American 1.40m woman, with blonde hair, and big penetrating blue eyes. As soon
as we sat down for the interview I was mesmerized by her talk and genuinely liked her presence.
She told me all about her experience working in the restaurant industry for 15+ years and that
she left everything for this position as she saw it as a better growth opportunity for herself to
make money fast, which I very much needed at the time so that idea seduced me right away.
Alyssa seemed assertive, very charismatic, and charming and gave me a great impression of the
company overall, but what I also noticed was very little information. Honestly, I just thought that
was how Americans did it, it’s all secretive here when it comes to corporate America and you can
never say too much, so it made sense at that time to me, I would surely understand more about it
if they offered me the position. By the end of it, she explained to me that it was going to be a 3-
round interview process, and if she liked me, and thought I was the right fit for the job, she
would contact me that same day around 6 PM to schedule the 2 nd round. And that indeed
happened, a little bit after 6 PM a number from Connecticut called my cellphone and it was her
congratulating me for landing a 2nd round interview and that she was very excited to see me
again.
I doubted myself a lot during that time, I kept questioning whether or not I was going to land a
job in the US, and my OPT start date was getting closer, so is safe to say I received the 2 nd round
news with satisfaction. Although it was nothing even near my field of choice, at least I wasn’t
going to waste my unemployment days, and it seemed like a genuinely nice opportunity to work
in the United States, even for experience reasons. So, I came back for the 2 nd round interview
excited, and as I entered, I saw one of my best friends from school who also had just graduated
with me, Catarina, from Portugal. Catarina was standing in the lobby waiting to start her
orientation day, also known as the 3 rd round, because she had just been hired. That made me even
more enthusiastic, I loved the thought of working with my friend.
I waited in the lobby for a while and then Alyssa called me and this other girl that I had seen in
the 1st round to her office saying we were going to be introduced to the team. The office that on
my first visit was melancholically empty was now full of young energetic people clapping and
talking loudly. We entered what was called the Atmosphere. A room with a leather couch, six
boards with dozens of dry markers, and what seemed to be 30 people hyped up, blasting
mainstream pop music playing in the background. The “team” was then participating in a game
that was referenced to me as a “team-building exercise”. Someone in the room asked my name
and as soon as I said Maria they asked if I could speak Spanish. It was not the first time that
happened since I moved to the US, so I simply said yes but kindly informed that I was actually
Brazilian and Portuguese was my first language.
Alyssa then introduced me to a guy named Neyo, or Nehemiah, a black American guy, with short
locks, and a nice black suit. Neyo seemed very friendly and tried to fill me in on what they were
doing. He made me feel welcome to participate in the game with them. After a few minutes of
team building, me and Neyo went to the lobby just the two of us, and sat down for about 10 to 15
minutes to talk. He asked me about my life, my experiences, the reasons why I was there, what I
was looking for, my strengths and weaknesses, and other simple questions any other interview
would have. I bonded with Neyo pretty well, he shared about his life, he was the oldest of 8
siblings, his mom was Haitian, and his dad was Jamaican. He was genuine, polite, a good
listener, and adjusted the questions based on what I was saying. He also shared a little about
himself and made me feel less nervous about the whole situation. After that conversation, Alyssa
called me and the other girl back to her office to finish off the day so we could go home. I never
saw that girl ever again, so maybe she realized what was going on there sooner than I did. Or
maybe she just wasn’t international, so she wasn’t as desperate as I was for that position.
Now, for the 2nd round, Alyssa explained a little better what was the company about and how the
corporate structure worked. Everybody started as a Trainee/Account Executive, then they would
get promoted to Corporate Trainer, then Assistant Manager, and finally Manager, just like Alyssa
herself. I barely listened to it or understood any of that at that time because, you see, at that
point, a bunch of red flags started popping up in my head. First of all, Catarina had told me when
I met her in the lobby between the interview with Neyo and coming back to Alyssa’s office, that
it was going to be a commission job, as it was explained to her on her orientation day, and that
already should have triggered my escape senses making me run the furthest away I possibly
could from there.
But even more than that, Alyssa stayed for a hot minute talking about how the Union is the worst
thing ever for a worker and this job was great because you were going to earn for your hard work
and, so it was dependent only on me and how much I wanted to put in the effort to make it to the
top. She again brought up her restaurant industry experience and how mad it would make her
when she was the one working the hardest every night and still would have to split the earnings
with everyone else no matter how bad they performed. She excitedly went into detail on how
they only promoted from within the company, she was once in the same exact position we were
going to be in, and she made it all the way to management and was now running her own
business, thanks to the old tale of the American dream.
Initially, I thought it was going to be a marketing focused job, but that day I discovered I was
going to work in a sales position for an outsourcing marketing company. Everything I absolutely
despised and thought was so wrong to do with workers seemed to be going on there, but still, for
some crazy reason, I thought the positives would outweigh the negatives, because remember I
really, REALLY, needed a job at this point, one that would sponsor nonetheless, which made me
still think it was a good idea to at least try and see what happens. And, hey, I thought at least I
would be making some money from it. If anything, I could always keep looking for other jobs
and stay there in the meantime, since there was nothing else for me at the time and at least
everyone seemed nice. Also having Catarina there with me pushed my decision even further.
Before I left, I had to answer a questionnaire and as I was doing that, I curiously watched all the
people I saw in the “Atmosphere” room leave in a hurry to go somewhere. At the time I thought
they were just going down the hall, or to an event somewhere since I noticed it was too small of
an office anyway to fit all those people in there for the whole day, but then again, I was just
shutting down the 100th red flag that popped into my head during that whole bullshit.
After ignoring all the sirens in my head and deciding that the job position was going to be mine,
that same day I called my mom and said confidently I was now employed, even though Alyssa
hadn’t called me for the 3rd round yet. I knew she would. Catarina and I went home together that
day, and we both discussed how easily the company was hiring new people. However, Alyssa
didn’t call me that day to tell me the good news. I had to wait for the whole weekend while she
went on a business trip, to hear from her. That weekend I met with Nathalia, my Brazilian friend
from Minas Gerais, and we talked about jobs and searching for jobs as we had for the past few
months since she also graduated with me in August in the same school. Nathalia had landed a job
on graduation day, so she went to Brazil for a month while waiting for her starting date.
I hadn’t spoken to her in a while, so we caught up with each other’s lives and to my surprise, she
said she was going to work in the same place Catarina was, and I jumped to tell her that so was I,
and we both got extremely excited with the idea of all of us working in the same place at the
same time. Her Orientation Day was going to be on Monday, the same day Catarina’s 1 st day at
the job. By the time I arrived, I would already have two people there to tell me what the job was
actually like, which gave me a fake security sensation. I waited for Alyssa to call me on Monday
sure that the position was mine and I couldn’t wait to start soon, I needed money fast. The
problem was that Alyssa didn’t call me for the whole day, even after I texted the company saying
I didn’t receive an answer from the manager telling me if I got the job or not. So, I decided to
call her myself.
I’m not 100% sure, but maybe that was the start of everything and determined how things turned
out later on for me in the company. Maybe that made Alyssa think I had some balls or was just
completely clueless and was going to be easy to manipulate. I’m not sure if this is too much
conspiracy theory or not, but anyway, after that, she called me for an orientation day on
Wednesday. On Monday night, Catarina, Nathalia, and I had a lot to share, since Catarina had
experienced what happens on a full day of work. She told us that the reason they all left the
office in the middle of the morning was because our actual job was to go to different parts of
Massachusetts and sell phones. That was how I found out. Nathalia herself hadn’t been to “the
field” as they call it, but she was already completely logged out of the experience as soon as she
found out what we were going to do. And then again on Tuesday, her first day, I had to hear how
awful it was and how she hated the whole thing from start to finish.
On that note, I arrived on Wednesday for my Orientation Day, met some of the people I knew
from last time, and went once again to Alyssa’s office for her to explain to us how to sell the
phones and how much we would make out of them. The whole thing consisted of a semi-charity
project aiming to give out free phone service to the lower-income community. I learned that day
that almost 40% of Massachusetts couldn’t afford a phone plan and because of that a very well-
known telephone company was giving out these phones with no monthly bills to the population
that had the prerequisites to quality for those. It was 4 different options with 4 different price
ranges that could fit into any situation the customer might be in, and, of course, we were always
pushed to sell the most expensive ones since that would make us (and them) more money. I was
listening to all that terrified of what was to come the next day because I had zero sales
experience. I do not consider myself a salesperson, and I had the negative expectations Nathalia
and Catarina put on me of what was about to happen.
On my Orientation Day, there were two more people with me, Keila and Karell. I only saw
Karell once more, but I still follow her on Instagram to this day. She was a very sweet American
girl, who asked for my Instagram right before we left, so we could have each other's backs from
that day on. Keila on the other hand was a quiet, extremely shy Cape Verdean short girl with
long squared colorful nails, and she actually ended up staying for about 3 to 4 weeks at the job,
even though she could barely talk at all with any of us on that first day I met her.
Another interesting detail about all these interviews was that Alyssa would mention a certain girl
named Coralie, saying she was a prime example of how fast you could grow in this business. She
was there for 12 weeks only and was about to be promoted to Assistant Manager because she
was doing all the right things; selling well, and building her own team, both concepts I still
didn’t fully understand at the time. I should have paid more attention to these details while I was
there, it could have prevented a lot of future problems. But anyway, Alyssa then gave us a picture
of one of Coralie’s worst days so far on “the field” where she made 210 dollars on one day to
prove it was completely possible to make a large sum of money in a week and that if she could
do it, so could we. With all that information, Alyssa then set up for us to be there at 8:30 AM the
next day. I went home hopeful since I finally landed a job in the land of opportunity and the
future looked bright that day for me. I was dating someone at the time and had found a job, so
life was pretty much perfect at that point. But that was just innocence and desperation combined
in the form of an international student from Brazil trying to pay debts and make money to
support her family.

Week 1 + 2 days – Meeting the Field

1. Coralie: Off to a good start
I arrived at the office on my 1st day both parts excited and terrified. I met Nathalia and Catarina
there, and I don’t remember much of what happened early in the morning, but I remember we sat
down for a long lecture by Kuralay, the other manager from the same office I had only seen but
hadn’t been introduced to, she was Catarina’s manager. That day I also learned there were
different teams, but the structure of those teams would only be clear to me after about a week
working there. At that point, I just knew Kuralay was a very important person there, a tall, super
skinny woman from Kazakhstan, that both me and Catarina agreed looked very fancy, had a
great fashion sense, and looked very serious overall, which was the complete opposite from
Alyssa’s bubbly and charismatic personality. Kuralay went on to do what I later learned was
called an “opportunity meeting” about her career, how she got there, how she was once in the
same position we were, just like Alyssa, and how she managed to get to where she was now. She
emphasized how that lecture would only inspire one or two people in that room, because this
opportunity was not for everybody, only a selected few who had the work ethic, determination,
and motivation to get to where she had gotten.
I thought the whole thing was complete bullshit, I did not pay attention to most of it and felt it
was a boring and fabricated speech. I could read right through it and that made me feel so
superior to everyone else in there. Unlike those other people listening with a sparkle in their eyes
to her say that their hard work would be compensated in the future if they put their minds to it, I
could see exactly how her speech was manipulative and caved to the same American dream stuff
Alyssa went on and on about in the interviews. But, once again, I was knees deep into the shit, so
I just ignored the red flags once again, focused on the money, made some funny comments in
Portuguese with Nathalia and Catarina, and moved on to find out what was to come for the rest
of the day.
At the end of our activities in the office, we all go to our separate team rooms with our managers
and find out who are we going to the Field on the day with. When I entered the room, my name
was there next to Coralie’s, which meant I was going with the office queen, whom I only heard
great things about, who was the best salesperson there, and who was going to be the next
Assistant Manager very soon. She tapped me on the shoulder and said, “We are going together
today. I’ll just grab my stuff first, follow me”. She proceeded to take me to the back of the office
where all our bags and coats stayed, gave me her huge Stanley cup filled with what I thought was
water to hold, took her massive red bag with her, and guided me outside the office to the parking
lot where everybody else gathered to decide who was giving who car rides. She tried to get a car
ride herself since even though she had a car key in her hand, she seemed scared of driving. As a
last resort, she asked me if I could drive and I said yes but had to inform her that my only driver's
license was still the Brazilian one, I did not have one from Massachusetts yet. So, she finally
accepted she was going to have to drive anyway, there was no escape from it.
We finally took off, me and her alone in the car, to our location which was 10 minutes away from
our office. As we got there, she noticed there was already competition in the same spot, some
people with phones and tablets had settled up in the same place we were going to be, which
meant she would have to work double as hard, and with a brand-new person who needed
training, so she decided quickly to just switch places to a much farther location that required her
to drive for about 30 minutes, but that she was sure she could do well. Nervously she drove us to
a Haitian-populated market in Randolph as I was watching Google Maps and giving her
directions to this place I’d never been. She stopped at the corner close to the store entrance and
told me to settle up while she was going to find parking, even though I had no idea what I was
doing. She just put a table, a chair, and a heavy bag full of phones in front of me and left to park
the car.
I stood there looking at all that information and had no idea what to do. I just started putting up
the table, trying to figure out how to make it not fall with all the phones on top of it (spoiler: it
did fall eventually, but no phones were harmed). By the time I was done, she came back,
corrected all my mistakes, sat down, and gave me a tablet. Immediately as she sat down a
customer came by looking for a phone service, and she proceeded to try to explain to me how to
qualify people through the tablet using that first customer as an example.
I have to say, Coralie’s sales skills are unbelievably amazing. I mean, I had no idea what she was
saying since she was speaking Haitian Creole the whole time, but there was not a quiet moment
with her on the field, she would always have someone at the table trying to get phones from her,
and she was great at managing all of them at the same time too. I could tell, even beyond the
language barrier, that she was assertive and persuasive. Half of them wanted the most expensive
phones, also called “Upgrades”. There was a free phone among the options, but she actually
would not even mention that most times. She would start explaining all the benefits of the most
expensive one, and work her way down to the lesser quality options. By 2 minutes of product
explanation, they would already buy into it, and buy the expensive phone, unless the person had
absolutely no money to give.
Coralie’s training skills on the other hand were awful. She was not good at explaining the
process at all, would often leave me more confused after trying to teach me something, and left
me alone for almost an hour, with no clue as to what I was doing, so she could eat some Haitian
food, while I waited there trying to talk to one of her Haitian customers in an intermediary
French (I hadn’t practice in so long) so that we could kind of understand each other. When she
came back, again she just sat down and from her chair, she would shout at people “Bonswa,
koman ou ye? Sèvis telefòn gratis!” and always at least one every 10 people would immediately
come to the table to try to qualify with her. For most of the day, she barely gave me attention and
was constantly face-timing the other people from the office. She explained to me later she liked
to check up on the other people during the day to make sure everyone was hitting their goals, a
leadership quality I also admired in her when I first started.
At some point during the day, she encouraged me to try to talk to some people too, especially
pointing out to me whenever there was a Hispanic-looking person so that I could feel more
confident to try. Hard to explain to her at that moment, just like to everyone else in America that
my Spanish was not all that good, and I actually, once again spoke Portuguese. To save up
energy, I just let that go and decided to try since I could practice my Spanish a little bit while I
was there. I didn’t end up being able to make people stop and listen to me, I was too self-
conscious about it and preferred to just watch her do it. As I said before, I was well aware of
what the day was going to look like and still felt all kinds of emotions throughout, thinking I was
too smart for that, I just graduated with a master’s degree, had a law degree in my past, and
though of that job as beneath me, as if I was better than that and would waste my potential on
selling phones.
I forgot to mention that my first day on the field was a Thursday, and this is important because
there’s this culture in the office called “Throwdown Thursday” where people from the office
challenge each other for various prizes. For example, someone could challenge a person to sell 8
phones and if they did, they had to give them breakfast on Friday once they arrived at the office.
There were harder challenges that would lead to better prizes, such as suits, dinners, business
cards, and being called “your majesty” for a week. It is a fun time when you’re already on part
with the office culture and know the people there but when you’re a new start that doesn't do
much for you. Coralie was super hyped about it though, and these Throwdowns also come with a
due time, we had to arrive back at the office at 6:15 at the latest, or else we would lose the
challenges automatically. So around 5 PM we packed everything and headed back to the office
so she could win something that at this point I can’t even remember what it was since I found out
later on, she always won every challenge thrown at her.
In the middle of packing everything Coralie was finishing up with a customer, an obvious drug
addict, with her arms full of bruises, who wanted the most expensive phone and took forever
calling her dad from Coralie’s phone to ask for the money so she could finally have a phone of
her own again. Once we were done with that, we hopped in the car and headed back to the office
as fast as Coralie could drive. On the car ride back, I decided to tell her how much I admired her
sales skills, and she loved that, I could tell she loved to get complimented on, so that had the
effect I wanted, she opened up a bit more about herself. She told me she was from Haiti, from a
business-oriented family and she came to the US to try to build something of her own. We even
shared our past as dancers, I had done ballet and so did she alongside a bunch of other dance
experiences. She was a tall, beautiful girl, with a great smile and always wore great suits that fit
her perfectly. She looked like a spoiled brat, but she was in reality very sweet and patient, I had a
fun time with her on the way back, as we sang Snooze by SZA together while waiting in traffic.
When we arrived, she entered the office a few minutes before the time for the challenges was up,
and she marched in confidently that she accomplished her goals while she went to settle up with
Alyssa on the final results of the day.
When I stepped into Alyssa’s office, she welcomed me with a big smile and asked how my day
was, so I said it was fun, I was still a little lost, but it was interesting seeing Coralie in action, so I
was excited for the next day. That was a half-truth since I skipped the part where I stood there for
most of the 8-hour work schedule wanting to either die or book my flight back to Brazil
immediately. But if there’s one thing I know is how to fake my enthusiasm, I wasn’t going to be
honest with my boss back then, even if I felt like that was ridiculous, a pyramid scheme and I
was way better than that lowlife job lifestyle. I kept to myself the wish to get out of there as soon
as I could and would only comment about it with Nathalia and Catarina, the only people I trusted
there.
After the settle-up, Alyssa told me we were going to have a team night in a food court near the
office and I should definitely go so I could spend some time and meet the people from the office
better. Another practice I found to be constant, is every Thursday there’s team night and
everybody urges how important it is to attend it. So once again, me and Coralie hopped in the car
and drove to this fancy food court place I’d never been to before to meet with our peers. We
found parking and she left her bag in the car and then proceeded to give me her passport to hold,
a big responsibility for a new start, but I guess she trusted me with that. We then went inside the
place and found everyone else from our office, I saw Catarina and Nathalia were already there
and I went to sit with them and vent out about my day in Portuguese, which I desperately needed
to do.
I remember that everybody was eating and drinking, and I was very hungry that day but had
exactly 9 dollars in my bank account, so I couldn’t buy anything to eat. I asked Catarina for a
few bites of her sandwich, and I was okay with eating something proper later when I got home.
That’s when Coralie offered to get me a drink and I made the poor decision to ask the bartender
to surprise me. He gave me a strong whisky taste cocktail. Needless to say, with an empty
stomach I got tipsy very quickly and started talking to the Texan woman that I first saw when I
arrived for my 1st round interview. She seemed very witty and enthusiastic, so I said without
thinking something along the lines of “I hope I get to go on the field with you sometime”.
Nothing much happened after that, I knew I should go home quickly before I started
embarrassing myself on the first day at my new job, so I decided to leave early with my friends.
Alyssa questioned the three Portuguese speakers if we were friends before the job and if this was
all a coincidence or if we applied together, and we told her that funny enough it was a complete
coincidence. Alyssa then accompanied me, Nathalia, Catarina, and Adriana (a sweet Italian girl
who went to the field with Nathalia that day) to the train station to make sure we would safely
get there.
At the train station on the way back home, the four of us started talking about the job and the
girls were burring me with questions about my day with Coralie. They all had the same chock
reaction when I said it was actually fine, I liked Coralie. Nathalia and Adriana especially had a
lot to say about Coralie, they hated her training style, said she was careless and a stuck-up bitch,
and did not enjoy the time they spent with her on the field. I said I understood their point of view
but in my opinion, Coralie was fine, she needed a bit more effort in her training skills for sure,
but she was very nice to me and helped me a lot. I didn’t know it back then and how my answers
were related to that but out of the four girls, I was going to be the only one left in that job till this
day.

2. Kindell: Texas Hold ‘Em

I walked in for my second day with a bit less excitement but still firm about grabbing that
opportunity as hard as I could. We had presentations done by the new starts(including me). On
the orientation day, we were provided with a checklist of principles we needed to learn and
present back to the Corporate Trainers, also called the leaders. These principles basically
consisted of very simple terms you were told you should already know but no one ever put in
words like that. One of the first ones we learn is the SEE principle. SEE principle is part of the
intro, a way to teach new people how to stop customers on the street. S for Smile since smiling is
contagious. E for Eye Contact which builds trust in the seller. Finally, the second E is for
Enthusiasm which builds impulse for the sale. Needless to say, I thought of all that as complete
bullshit once again, but as the great student I am, I learned them pretty quickly, and since I
arrived early at the office, I could go through my checklist at a good pace.
Another important detail about the office is that you are required to always have a notebook and
pen with you, on any occasion they’ll start saying something you had no idea was that important
and you’re always supposed to write it down exactly as they say it or write it on the white boards
in the Atmosphere room. It was seen as a bad thing to write things down on your phone, laptop,
or anything electronic, the order was clear, to have a good student mentality you needed a
notebook full of principles at all times. On my 3 rd round interview, I forgot to bring a notebook
(they had warned me I would need one) and I felt the pressure of how not writing down
everything they told you is read as a lack of interest, so I promised myself I would not forget my
notebook again.
That same Friday I had my first experience with a conference call with other similar offices, also
nicely called by my manager as “cousins”, to learn about what was working for them and we
could apply for our business, and vice versa. Every Friday the offices around New England
would jump on a Zoom call and present someone new from each office who was doing
something very right, whether was in sales, building a team fast, or even getting promoted sooner
than expected. We were supposed to write that down and apply the new knowledge in the field
later on the day. Needless to say, I spent the first conference meeting complaining with Nathalia
because we were from the same team and set down with the rest of the people at Alyssa’s office,
so the whole time we were writing angst quick notes in our notebooks and showing to each other
while pretending to write down what was being said. That was also the first time she and I had
become familiar with this guy named Jason.
Jason would lead most of these meetings. He was an American black man, very impatient, swore
a lot, and had a firm and assertive way of talking. I remember him specifically saying that we
had to be more professional on the field, with no vaping, no leaning, and no dating in the office,
as I saw people vaping around me (including Alyssa), and some suspicious eye activity
happening around me, people giggling and looking at each other to confirm that if you hire a
bunch of young kids at your company regardless of what you say there will be dating, and drama
involved. But, once again, they blame that on the fact that these people are not focused enough,
and work is not supposed to be Tinder. Fun fact I also learned, Jason met his current wife on the
job, and they work together to this day.
During the team-building exercise later that morning, Neyo reached out to me saying I was going
to join him in the field that day. Since I already felt like I bonded with Neyo pretty well, that
made me feel a little more excited. We all walked into our perspective manager’s office when we
were supposed to, after the morning meeting and the high roll call, which will be explained later.
I discovered as I entered Alyssa’s office, that my name was actually written down next to
someone named Kindell, not Nehemiah. She informed me of that fact by adding “I heard you
were looking forward to working with Kindell, so I put you two together today”. That’s when I
connected that the Texan girl I talked to the night before was Kindell, and she was an Assistant
Manager at the time, so, someone quite important in the office, you know, building her team and
having her own desk and everything. That made me apprehensive of how serious my day was
going to be, and I was putting a lot of pressure on being professional in her presence. That only
lasted until I entered her car.
Kindell, who I knew nothing about other than she loved cows, and smoked vapes like her life
depended on it, went on that day to share her whole story with me, explaining she left Texas, put
all her stuff in a van, and moved to Boston to pursue this job. She’s a mid-size woman, not so tall
but not so short, with long straight hair and the most positive personality I have ever seen a
human have in my whole life. Nothing was a problem to Kindell, ever, she was the problem
solver. That day Nathalia and Adriana, once again being able to go together, joined us for the car
ride and sat quietly in the back while me and Kindell talked as if we were old friends already.
She showed me a few songs that I loved and still listen to nowadays. What I noticed is that
Kindell liked to talk a lot and she was also always trying to make the mood seem lighter and the
situations more adventurous. Now I know that was probably to distract us from the fact we were
going to the middle of the street to offer free phone service to the low-income population while
convincing them to pay for the device and give their information to a random girl in the street.
Once she left Nathalia and Adriana at their spot and we continued our ride to where we going to
settle in for the day, she explained to me that the most important part for her was to have fun, and
she did not consider herself a salesperson but a people person. Her main goal was to bring
positivity wherever she went and that eventually led to success for her in sales as well. I was
mesmerized by Kindell, everything I didn’t like about Coralie’s training Kindell made up for it.
She taught me not only the tablet but also how to actually reach people, and create personal
relations with them (another principle called CPR). Besides that, she made me feel comfortable
on the field for the first time, even though it was only my second day working at the company,
and she even gave me time to go grab some lunch while she handled things by herself. I
remember we talked about a range of things that day; she proudly told me about her heated vest,
the best investment for the winter according to her, and she even more proudly told me how she
survived three Massachusetts winters to get where she was right now. It seemed to me that I only
heard successful stories from the people at the office, that day changed everything for me, and I
think Alyssa knew exactly what she was doing back then.
I always wondered why she would put me with Kindell that first week if she wasn’t even on the
same team as me, she had her own team to manage, and still, there I was alone with Kindell in
Lynn, having fun, meeting people, and eating an amazing Italian sub with Coca-Cola for lunch. I
even made my first close that day, and sold a phone all by myself, yet with Kindell’s support of
course, but it all felt so much easier than the day before… sorry Coralie. I knew how to stop
people now and make them listen to me talk about the product, that was so exciting. But thinking
about it now, it makes perfect sense, she wanted me to experience what a good day on the field
looked like. But why me? For my whole time being here I watched so many new starts come and
go, and she never put anyone else with Kindell, only with other Corporate Trainers, especially so
early on, but there I was, and I guess it worked since I stayed for a long time, and I built a great
relationship with Kindell that lasted until I left.
At some point when I was peacefully eating my lunch, she called me and told me Adriana and
Nathalia were not performing well at their spot, and since she was a leader, she couldn’t allow
her team not to do good, and me and Kindell were doing pretty fine already. Adriana was part of
her team, Nathalia was in Alyssa’s team, but a leader is a leader, so she wanted to guarantee all of
us were going to have a good day. She went on to pick them up and that was the first and only
time I had ever been with Nathalia on the field. The only thing she did, the rest of the day, was
complain all the time, without making any effort towards sales. I honestly thought Nathalia
would have been great at this job if she really tried to. She’s such a smart girl, born in a tiny town
in Brazil’s countryside, and knew nothing about the world when she arrived in Boston for the
first time, a year before me to learn English. We often joke about how I constantly destroy her
idea of the perfect world by bringing new information to her, my favorite being Jack and Rose
from The Titanic not actually being real people, information she received with great
disappointment. I noticed since I met her that she is such a fun friend to be around and that she is
so good at convincing people to do something if she is passionate about it. But she was never
passionate about this job. That’s why she’s way smarter than me.
Adriana on the other hand, I barely got to know. For the time she stayed in the company (about a
month after I arrived), she seemed mostly quiet and would keep it to herself. I never saw her
bond with anyone other than Nathalia and me, and I liked her company but knew very little about
her and her story. After they arrived at the spot where we were for half of the day, Adriana made
some complicated mistake I didn’t understand at all, which then led to Kindell wasting an hour
trying to solve it on the phone with people she said the names, but I hadn’t met yet. As I said
before Kindell is great at problem-solving, there was nothing that day related to either the
phones, Adriana’s mess up, or her team's performance that she couldn’t figure out. That was the
first time she told me the phrase “The person that does the most problem-solving is also the one
that makes more money”. I’m far from being a problem-solver at Kindell’s level, but I can’t lie
that watching her do that so easily was inspiring, to say the least.
That day was raining and still, we all ended up performing well, I got to spend the day with my
friend, the amazing Kindell, with my almost new friend Adriana, had a great experience and was
ready to tell Alyssa all about it. The car ride back to the office was even more entertaining to me,
Kindell and I discussed even more topics ranging from more music, Massachusetts weather,
Texas cowboys, and goals for the future, while once again Nathalia and Adriana sat quietly in the
back not saying a word the whole time. I got to the office, told Alyssa how great my day was,
and proceeded to go home thinking maybe that wasn’t going to be the terrible experience I was
expecting. Great job Alyssa!
Even though I ended my Friday on a positive note, my weekend was far from rainbows and
butterflies. Things started to sour with the guy I was seeing at the time, and my doubts about the
job were still there. I went to see my Russian friends from school Liza and Valerie, and my
Peruvian friend Majo on Saturday and vented to them about how I liked helping people and how
I had fun for the most part still the job would make me feel morally and emotionally tired. I
remember crying in Liza’s bed while she ate feijoada and listening to me crying trying to
convince me I was going to be okay and soon enough I would find something else that would fit
me better. Liza is a data analyst with actual experience in the field, who was also having a hard
time finding something that would suit her job expectations, because after all she was an
international student just like me, and life is never easy for internationals in the United States.
Later that day I left Liza and Valerie’s house to meet Catarina since it was her birthday. I saw my
friends from school and forgot about the job at all. On Sunday I just focused on getting mentally
rested for the new week to come.

3. Neyo: Meeting my leader

Monday came and there I was again heading to South Boston. I was both interested and scared of
how my day was going to go. I realized that depended very much on who I would go to the field
with, which is not entirely true for office standards, we’re supposed to grow our confidence in
the field just like Coralie and Kindell and have a good day no matter what happens. But of
course, since it was my third day working at this company, I had no such ability… I don’t think I
developed that ever to be quite honest. But coming back to my third day I was once again set up
for success.
The office was the same as usual, a lot of bullshit and lies fed to us, but this time was the first
one I could experience what a normal day at the office would look like. First, I had to arrive
early, at least 30 minutes before, to learn from and present principles to the leaders, also known
as Corporate Trainers. At 9 AM the managers would call the leaders to a leaders' meeting while
the Account Executives (me and the other unfortunate new starts) go on to present the same
principles they were learning before but now for a Senior Corporate Trainer, a title division that
meant close to nothing in terms of earning, but a lot in terms of recognition inside the office.
After that stupidity was done, we moved on to workshops, once again divided between new
people and veterans, where we would receive insightful knowledge from the managers that was
supposed to help improve our performance at work.
Once that was over, we moved on to team building, which consisted of us being divided into 3 or
4 groups, depending on how big the team was at the time (I came to find out that place has a
staggering turnover rate), and play a game such as Charades or Pictionary. This all happened in
the Atmosphere, this is where ultimately everyone in the office comes together, and where the
trainees spend most of their time while in the office, so they only see the fun part and the
learning part. Very little is shared with new starts outside that room, and you are limited to that
space that has always loud music on and bright lights and you’re never supposed to sit down so
you’re always engaging and speaking to people about the business and how you feel about the
business and how you need to have a student mentality to grow on the business. Remember that
everything said by anyone who talked to you or taught you something and was already ahead of
you in the corporate structure was encouraged to be written down in your notebook, every day,
always.
The last part of the morning was announcements and morning meetings. One of the managers,
mostly Alyssa, since she was the best at hyping up the crowd, would take the front of the room
and update us on the office sales of the day before, we would “celebrate the people that went out
there and did their job”, and their reward was being in the Bell and Gong. If on that day you
made $100 that meant on the next day you would be on the Bell list. That meant you won a two-
clap from all your peers at the Atmosphere just for you. The same happened if you hit $200 then
you also hit the Gong list, in that case, you would win the impressive amount of three claps from
everyone. If you made way more than that and went “above and beyond” that would grant you
the honor to also hear the siren with everyone saying “woo” and waving their hands as if they are
ringing a siren at the end of the clapping to make you feel extra special. If you made less than
$100 well, you are not celebrated, because you didn’t go out there and did your job.
After all that clapping, some more announcements, and sometimes promotions (which I will be
delving into later), we would move on to the morning meeting. That was a mini life coach-style
motivational moment that we always had every morning right before we were divided into the
offices of our designated managers. This morning's meeting, unfortunately for me, was led by
Kuralay, the super tall, super skinny, super weird but very professional Kazakh woman who had
done the “opportunity meeting” on my first day. She looked like a very consistent person and her
speeches were consistently boring and repetitive. By this point, I was still able to deal with it, but
it only became worse with time.
I finished the office part of the day by going to Alyssa’s office, which was the room in the
middle. The first room was Kuralay’s and soon-to-be-but-never-did Ben’s office, the other
Assistant Manager that worked there. The second one was Alyssa’s, of course, and the last one in
the back was Kindell’s office. So, after Kuralay was finally done talking we could gather in our
offices, and figure out where the hell we were going that day and with whom. By day 3 I knew a
bit more people, some of whom mysteriously disappeared in the following weeks, and some that
went on to become dear friends since everyone who works in this business is extremely friendly,
or at least you pretended to be, so you could sell and network better.

That day I went to the field with Nehemiah, I was finally going to know my leader more. I only
truly realized he was my leader on this day I think, it was our first real interaction outside the
office space, and you got to know people better once you went to the field with them, something
about spending 8 hours with someone in the middle of the street selling random shady and
supposedly free services makes you connect pretty well, and at this point in my journey I only
had great experiences with my field partners. Going with Neyo followed the same pattern.
We went to Groove Hall that day, my first time in that place, and I could see things with Neyo
were not the same as with the two girls I went before. Kindell and Coralie are both amazing at
sales and sales hungry, the field to them meant showtime (something we usually yell every
morning before we go out, to give us motivation I guess), but for Neyo, I could tell right away it
was not the same place of comfort it was for the other two. He pitched differently, he was less
enthusiastic about it, and he was more contained and calmer. He also had such patience with me,
explaining things, being sweet and nice the whole time, made me feel extremely confident, I
made my first upgrade sale that day.
I sold the $50 phone for the first time, and it felt amazing. The thing about selling the phones is
that whenever someone shows a slight interest in any of the upgrades that would make my heart
race because the whole story, they feed you every day and make you write it down a thousand
times in your notebook is that we are helping people. Picking the upgrade themselves in my head
meant it was the best for them, for the client, for the office, and me. I could make money helping
people, amazing! We all can win in the land of opportunity! I won’t lie and say I didn’t think it
sounded way too good to be true, but right in the beginning I would pay attention to details but
never really debate them in my head because I had just arrived and people were always changing
subjects, trying to get to know you, and I’m friendly, I like making friends and talking about
myself and knowing new people so it’s easy to fall for it not being important to consider because
this is all supposed to be temporary, the field is just one step in the path to great money, financial
freedom and free time to do whatever you want, because that is what rich people do, this is what
we were able to achieve, never have to work again.
Going back to that day in Groove Hall, the thing about this location is that a lot is happening
there all the time. It’s a low-income neighborhood, so we went to set up our table at the exit of a
grocery store. That made sense because our customer base was supposed to be low-income,
and/or also participated in a government benefit program such as Food Stamps, or Mass Health.
That was the logic behind picking locations, combined with research about when and where the
highest foot traffic happens in that area. In Groove Hall, also some not-so-legal activities were
happening all around us at all times. I had conversations with many old black men who did
unofficial taxis in the area, ready to help fragile old ladies with their groceries and offer a ride
home for an (almost) cheaper price than the regular Ubers. Some of them stayed around us a lot,
which I later found out could be because my skirt was see-through and a savior in the form of a
woman gave me that hint 4 hours after we arrived there, so it probably was providing
entertainment for these men for a while without my knowledge. Not that it overly bothers me,
but also, I wish I had known before, and it made me feel uncomfortable with them at the end,
especially since they all started asking me about my love life at some point during the day.
Besides that, other activities were happening around like some people selling fake CDs/DVDs
(in 2023!!), selling flavorful vapes and cigarettes (illegal in MA), and from what I’ve heard
around drugs as well, I specifically knew about the weed (legal in MA) but there was also crack
(very illegal everywhere). I have no morally superior judgment for those people selling what
they could to make ends meet, but it wasn’t necessarily what I was expecting to sell shady ass
phones besides them after graduating with my master’s in the United States. But then again, I’m
from Salvador, and nothing would happen there that I couldn’t handle, and the more I stayed at
the job the more that became true too, I feel invincible now, sparkled with some PTSD.
Neyo was also a great partner in that, maybe because he was a man, I felt more protected in case
anything happened. I could also tell he cared, he didn’t want me to have a bad experience that
day and I believe he succeeded. He bought me a Dunkin Donuts refresher and a donut. That day
was so hot, the sun was burning us, and we could barely talk to each other during it because we
had to save energy under the ball of fire to speak to customers. Massachusetts is not exactly
known for its warm weather, but this was the end of summer still, so the weather was great that
day and a lot of people were around making us do a good job on the field that day. I was one of
the first if not the first person ever on Neyo’s team, so he was trying to make sure I had every
help I needed while motivating me the way he could when he wasn’t wiping the sweat from the
heat.
Me and Neyo had a good day, and the sales results were positive. Towards the end of the day,
Neyo still hadn’t sold any upgrades, only gave out the free ones, so he felt pressured to stay more
time and try more. He was apologetic at making me stay since I was a trainee, and they were not
supposed to be on the field until too late. Eventually, he gave up and we headed back to the
office with only me having an upgrade. I saw a lot of similar qualities between me and Neyo, we
were both way too nice and way too patient with people, but also easygoing, and didn’t approach
the sales as ferocious as Kindell and Coralie did. However, those same qualities, for a
salesperson at a sales job can be negative. Being way too nice makes less money than being
assertive. Despite all that, I thought Neyo was a nice guy, I didn’t mind that he didn’t empty the
phone bag and broke records, I could see his leadership qualities in another way. He was more
reliable than the other leaders I met, in an emotional way to be more specific.
On our drive back to the office I introduced him to some Brazilian songs, we bonded, and talked
about music and just things in life in general. Having a conversation with him always felt like
talking to a funny uncle, he was a good person to be around. I understood that day that I
appreciated him as my leader. I just saw him leave the field and be okay with his broken
expectations, he focused on what he did good and what he could do better next time. I’m not
entirely sure if that helped me in the company journey, or even Neyo for that matter, but I
wouldn’t have it any other way.
Already back in the office, we went on to “break down my day” which consisted of a leader, in
this case Neyo, breaking down the day of a trainee, in this case me, in three parts. Part 1: What
you did well, your Strengths. Part 2: What you can improve, your Weaknesses. Part 3: Set Goals,
and what you can do to improve those weaknesses. This last part was divided into 3 basic
homework-style tasks, the office one, the field one, and the personal life one. The office task was
supposed to be something you wanted to improve at the office, often advised to learn and
decorate more principles. The Field part was saying a number you felt you could perform on the
next day, and it had to always be higher than the one from the day before. Last, and definitely
least, was the personal task, the one we all wrote “sleep”, “go to the gym”, “eat better” or
“relaaaaax!!” with a face emoji drawn next to it only to keep reminding us of things we didn’t
have time to do anymore.

4. Coralie part 2: Everybody has bad days

So far, I only had good days and nice things to say about the people I went with, even if I wasn’t
enjoying my time as much as I wished, I was still good at being positive. I needed the job, so it
only made sense to try to have fun while I was at it, but my plan was always to stay in this while
I was searching for other opportunities. This job was supposed to give me something to report on
my work authorization and make me reasonable money, and soon I was going to find another
one, get paid a decent salary, and have my work visa secured. From the start, even though I was
having fun and saw the money-making potential, I never for a second doubted that my plans A,
B, and C were to stay for a month, maybe two, and leave without looking back (obvious spoiler
here, that’s not what happens).
I was buying myself time and maybe who knows, I could make some good money in the process,
and it looked so easy in theory, and based on these first few days at the company. They were so
good at showing you money, fun, and growth potential. I want to dive into this topic further, but I
will leave this for a future chapter, just putting it here as a reminder for myself and to comment
that Alyssa was always a genius at showing new people that. Sometimes she would slip and fuck
up with a new start, and I think she kind of fucked up with Nathalia, she did not put as much
effort into making her see the potential and what it meant to be a part of the team, so it didn’t
work on her. But for me it was smart decision after smart decision, until the very end, she always
knew what I needed to hear and how to push me whenever she needed me to go. Somehow, I
believe it was based on these first few days and how she observed my reactions to her coaching.
This second time on the field with Coralie was a good example of that.
On that Tuesday, me and Coralie hit the field together again and went to the same spot we went
to the first time, Randolph, the predominantly Haitian territory. As happened before, Coralie was
great at sales, did everything perfectly as she usually does, and also perfectly ignored me as a
trainee. I couldn’t communicate with people there as well as she could because she speaks
Haitian Creole, I could never compare with my hesitant and medium French. But, unlike the first
time we were there, I now knew a bit more about sales and the product. I felt more confident in
the past few days, I did relatively well with my other two trainers, which made me upset about
the language barrier, and my Spanish was getting better at this time, but still not at the level of
attracting people in Randolph.
There’s this principle they teach us called “KILT”, Coralie even mentioned it on my first day, and
it teaches you how to maintain a positive attitude. The “K” stands for Kill Them with Kindness,
meaning you should treat everyone nicely even if they are assholes to you so that you surprise
them by being nice and making them feel bad that they didn’t stop for you. The “I” stands for
Indifference: some will, some won’t, so what (my personal favorite), it’s supposed to make you
not focus on the No's and realize not everyone is going to want your service, you’re supposed to
focus on those who do. “L” is the Law of Average or “repetition increases the chance of success”
meaning that the more people you talk to the more likely you are to find someone that wants to
listen to you. And T stands for Treat Everyone the Same, “no cherry picking” meaning that from
the first customer to the last we are supposed to treat all of them in the same way, doesn’t matter
who it is or where they come from, they’re all customers.
This whole principle, aside from it being a bullshit way to make us smiling robots and distract us
from the reality of this job, also genuinely helps when you can do it because if you let any of
those affect you, the field will eat you alive. On this second day with Coralie, I felt like I was
being swallowed by the field, all of it was getting to me. The “No’s” especially got to me that
day pretty harshly and I felt my positivity fail for the first time on the field. It’s okay for a trainee
to feel roller coaster type of emotions in the first week, but as usual, being too hard on myself, I
started to get into my head way too much, thinking of different plans on how to get out of this
job as fast as I could. The day seemed so slow and even though I was able to close with a few
customers, in general, I felt useless.
An interesting thing I found out that same day was that a considerable number of Haitians do
speak Spanish, a language I am much more comfortable speaking than French, and even more
interesting is that a smaller but also significant number of them also speak Portuguese, those
were the people I could engage with that day. However, since the Haitian princess was right there
next to me speaking their native language, it was unlikely they would prefer to speak to me in
their second or third language than with her who knew how to explain things way better than I
did and is, honestly, a better salesperson than I ever could be. The only reason they seemed to
acknowledge my existence was to hit on me.
It happened three times that day. The first one a Haitian woman who also spoke English was
trying to qualify for the free phone and while her husband was waiting for her process to be
finished, he started to speak to me in Spanish while being very disgusting, and asking me
questions about my personal life. I had no idea how to verbalize my discomfort because I wanted
the wife’s process to go through, being a good employee, putting sales over my well-being. I also
felt bad for her because we had a good talk, she seemed to like me, and the guy was not giving
up. Another man also waiting for his qualification to go through noted how uncomfortable I was,
and I guess he understood a little Spanish, so he intervened and told the husband to leave me
alone in front of the wife. She took him out of there fast, told us that she was going to wait in the
car, and barely spoke to me after that.
The second time was an actual Spanish speaker who stopped for me, pretended to be interested
in the phones up until the point I told him I had a boyfriend (which I hadn’t but I wanted the
harassment to stop) and then he got mad at me, said a bunch of things I didn’t hear and left. This
one wasn’t as bad as the previous one obviously, but it’s the accumulation of bad interactions that
just kept throwing me down more and more. The third time was another Haitian man, an old one
this time, who was Coralie’s customer but was also speaking to me since I was most of the time
just there on the side doing nothing, who tried to convince me in every possible way to come
with him to go for a ride in his car. He said all sorts of things like that he was going to take care
of me, and that he was a loveable man who was ready for love. All I could think about was
dying. Please, sir, you could be my grandfather, leave me alone in my negativity bubble over
here, thank you!
And where was Coralie during all of this? She was right there, next to me. I can’t be unfair here
and blame any of this on her, she is a girl herself and I am sure many disgusting guys do the
same to her every day, and she for sure handles it better than me. Still, I was discouraged to open
up to her about it, I was pretty closed off that day and just looked mad the whole time, I knew
she couldn’t say anything that was actually going to make a change for me at that moment, so all
I could do was wait for the day to end and go home. That Tuesday went pretty badly for me,
except for finding out some people who spoke Portuguese and lived in Brazil at the smoothie
place I went to in the middle of the day, to grab a smoothie Coralie offered to pay herself to try to
up my mood. I also sold an upgrade at the last minute to a weird guy that in the end tried to hit
on me as well but at least he waited until the process was finished, but nothing was positive to
me that day.
Coming back to the office it was evident I was not happy, I’m bad at faking when I’m too upset,
that is mainly my weak spot. When I was doing the breakdown of my day on that Tuesday,
Alyssa came into the atmosphere room, a room usually filled with whiteboards full of principles
and excited young people, was now fogged by my negativity, that’s how bad it was. She watched
as I was trying to identify what were my strengths that day and all I could say was “Well I did I
good SEE principle, I smile at people”.
Alyssa saw me struggle, I was obviously upset about something, so she simply asked how my
day was and that created a wave of emotions to come out of me. As the good crybaby I am I
started crying, I have a hard time holding my tears in general, this has happened ever since I was
a child. Then, I started spilling all of my frustrations of the day, and told her about all the gross
men talking to me, how I hated the territory Coralie took me and that caused Alyssa to pull me to
the hallway and talk to me. She couldn’t risk me “negging out” in front of other new people. But,
just like her decision to put me with Kindell, the decision to pull me aside was very smart and
showed me how good of a coach she really was, when she wanted to be. She calmed me down
and said that was a normal thing to happen and because it was the first bad experience I had on
the field it was affecting me more than it should. She assured me she was going to find a way to
make me feel better the next day, and she wanted to make sure I was going to be okay.
It definitely wasn’t a fun experience, but looking back at it now and seeing how I became better
at dealing with even worse situations later in life, I am thankful for it. It felt terrible going home
that day, I felt awful, I wanted my bed so much, and I was tired, but the thought of quitting never
entered my head. This time, it wasn’t even because of the money or the OPT, but because I felt
protected. Alyssa supported me emotionally, she was smart in how to deal with me, she was
sweet and patient and even if it didn’t resolve any problems or change anything that happened, it
made a difference. It made me feel “acolhida”, an untranslatable Portuguese word that means
that I felt seen and understood. I started to feel like part of the team, and even deeper than that,
part of Alyssa’s favorites.

5. Vee: The Bounce Back

After the bad experience from the day before Alyssa couldn’t have put me with a better person
than Vidiksha, also known by everybody as Vee. She’s short, has long black hair, and is a
chubby, and very intense Indian girl, who always had a lot to share in her heavy Indian accent.
Someone introduced me to her in the office in the morning and at first glance, she seemed nice. I
was not in the best mood starting that day since I hadn’t paid my phone bill, so I had no internet.
I borrowed the money from Nathalia, and I was having difficulties paying the damn phone bill.
Funny when you think about the fact I was selling free phone service. But anyway, the previous
day had definitely been a challenge for me too, so there wasn’t much space for it to get worse
than that, and Vee could handle it. She was so excited to train me and acted like a bundle of joy
that day, making me want to match her energy.
The first great thing about this day is that I went to a territory where I felt way more comfortable,
Happy’s a Hispanic supermarket. I spoke a lot of Spanish that day and even a little Portuguese,
so that made me feel so much better already, at least people there listened to me, and that already
increased my confidence by a lot. Happy’s was a great territory, with good foot traffic, good food
for us in the meantime, and a lot of people that were interested in the phones, we started strong.
From the moment we stepped foot in there we were making sales, the movement never stopped,
and we were always busy, which distracted me from the hours passing and made the day less
insufferable.
The second great thing about this day was Vee herself. We clicked from the beginning. I liked
her, she problem-solved everything and even helped me with my phone situation whenever she
had some free time between customers. We also talked a lot, shared facts about each other and
most importantly we shared her vape. When I started in the company, I was trying to quit vaping.
It’s not something good for your health, and I know all that, but everyone in the office vapes, and
they all always have flavored vapes to share with each other. So, of course, as a recent addict in
recovery I relapsed, it was impossible not to. The vaping was hectic and even Alyssa did it at the
office in front of us all the time.
By 2 pm we had sold the most expensive upgrade phones, and we had customers asking us about
it, we needed someone to go to the office and bring us more, but everyone was busy and we
couldn’t find anyone available. That’s when the third great thing about the day happened. To add
a little context of how the sales worked, we would log in to the qualifying tablet under someone’s
code, in this case, Vee’s, since I didn’t have a code yet, and all of the applications would be made
under that code. If we reached 6 applications, we would make $60, for 7 was $80, for 8/9 was
$100, for 10/11/12 was $150, and for 13+ was $200, so the goal was always to reach the 13
phones mark so we could split the most amount of money between the two people, or as we also
called “max out the code”.
Up to the point that we had sold the upgrades we had in the first 6 applications put into the
system, so we had reached the minimum already. Since we had no more options, we called
Alyssa to ask if she could bring new upgraded phones to us, the most expensive one to be
precise. We predicted the movement in that area was going to increase again after 3 and more
people would come looking for the product. Alyssa then showed up at Happy’s around 3 to give
us the phones, but instead of just dropping them off and leaving she decided to park her brand-
new Audi in front of our table, put on some loud party music, bought us food, water, and started
to pitch with us. In a few minutes, our little table became an event and people were stopping for
us all the time. I was able to watch Alyssa on the field and see how she worked, and she was, not
that I was surprised, unbelievable at it. Just like Coralie impressed me on the first day with her
skills, so did Alyssa. She had the people skills to convince anyone who spoke any language to
stop for her.
I felt weird witnessing that. As a trainee, with not even a week in the company, watching Alyssa
say all the time that she didn’t have to go to the field with us anymore, because she was a
manager now, and the field was just a temporary game, but then proceeding to choose to, and
exceeding while at it, making it look so easy and having just a fun little experiment to get back to
where she started, definitely gave me wrong impression that could be me some day. I could be
the one driving a big car and meeting some international students and young poor kids and have
the fake sensation I was helping them while growing a business in less than a year of starting in
the company and making all my dreams come true. Ironically presenting it in that way may give
the impression that no one would be dumb enough to buy into this amount of crap, but being in it
made me realize that yes, people actually do believe because they need to, they choose to believe
they can leave all their troubles in the past, they can succeed if only they try hard enough, for a
lot of people I met in this business it was their only choice.
 I only saw Alyssa show up on the field on very few occasions during my time at the office. It
was not as common, especially on a weekday with a new start. The effect she wanted was to
hype me up and make me feel important, and to some extent that worked, I was way more
excited than the day before. Less than an hour after she arrived, we had already maxed out and
were ready to leave. She even saw me close the most expensive upgrade to a guy only to forget
to ask him for the money. Thankfully the guy came back a few minutes later and paid for it in
front of her, so everything turned out okay. Alyssa even complimented the guy saying he was a
gentleman to which he responded “Honey, I’m gay”, and that made us all laugh. In the end, it
was a fantastic day, I had fun, I sold a lot, I saw Alyssa on the field and left the field earlier than
the other days.
A quick note about the customer mentioned above: I was the one who attracted him to the table
and was dealing with him the whole time. At some point during the process, Vee took over and
made me go finish another application while she showed him the phones, which meant the sale
was going to her and not to me. I saw Alyssa pull Vee to the side since she was there watching
the whole thing, and talk to Vee for a minute, I’m assuming about not stealing my sale. I was
then called by Alyssa to resume my sale with my customer and Vee proceeded to take care of the
one she had handed to me. I mean, no one is perfect, and Vee shared some of her qualities with
Coralie and Kindell, she was sales-driven, but unlike the other two, Vee was hungry for it, in
ways I only really saw in action on future field days with her. I can’t lie, that action made me a
little bit suspicious of her, but nothing stained the day for me, and ultimately my impression of
her was highly positive.
Later, Alyssa took us back to the office in her car. Someone that I don’t even remember anymore
dropped us there, so we needed the ride, especially if it was in an Audi. I was riding in that car
back to the office feeling like a superstar. Even though I knew this was all bullshit, a pyramid
scheme, a scam to trap desperate and naïve people, while still thinking it was beneath me, that
day something different sparkled inside of me, and I felt on top of the world. I had made the most
money so far and started to enjoy it. The thought of that being my life, making easy money every
day like that didn’t sound bad to me. When we arrived at the office Alyssa made sure to tell me
exactly how much money I had made and added the comment “I bet you can’t make this amount
of money in Brazil in one day” and I agreed as she was half right, that is very hard to do if you
work in a similar type of job, especially considering the value of the dollar. Regardless of that, it
was an interesting comment she decided to add, almost as if she wanted to reassure herself that
she was helping me into a better life than I had before.
While driving us back she also invited me to a conference that was going to take place that
Sunday in New York, she said she saw potential in me, and she wanted me to join her car ride.
Since I was completely caught off guard I said yes right away, but to be honest that was also the
last spark of confidence that I needed to close the day on a perfect note.

6. Neyo: Bonding with my leader

It’s funny to think about how I felt back then. I was indeed seeing money, fun, and growth, and
in addition to all of that, I was also enjoying getting to know my coworkers. That Thursday at the
office started as it regularly did. After the same routine of presentations, workshops, team
building, and morning meetings, I found out I was going out with Neyo again. Happy news to me
since we had a good day on the field before and my week was on a high once again. I barely
remember what the managers actually said to us in those countless meetings, though. I remember
Kuralay repeating many times her dream job was to be a nature photographer, the National
Geographic or Animal Channel kind, and observe animals all day. For some reason, as relatable
as she tried to make her little tale look, even asking her audience (us) if anyone else liked
animals the way she did, everything out of her mouth took me out of it, I had no idea how a
woman with such poor public speaking skills and zero charisma reached a position that consisted
on inspiring people to tireless work for her and get paid very little for it. Watching her failure at
connecting to the audience in front of her every day except for maybe 2 or 3 people sometimes
and the other managers, was almost motivational, maybe that was the whole purpose anyway.
Before going to the field Neyo approached me to say his car was having problems and he was
going to stop by a car shop to get it fixed quickly before taking us to our location. I had no
problems with it, so I went with him there. On our way there I remember him asking me how I
felt about the job, and he always said “You can be honest” to me, to which I replied I couldn’t
really so I was going to be half honest and say that I didn’t love it, I liked the money I was
making and the people there but my ultimate goal was to do something else. I said that because
the truth was that I hated it, it was a scam and I knew it, but I had no idea how to even say that. I
tried resisting but still slowly bought into the mentality. It took me longer than I thought to even
notice. At this stage, I was still secure in my opinions of the place, I still pretended and smiled
and put up an act, because I needed a job, and honestly, it was my first week, and I had no idea
what else to do, I was alone in another country, away from everyone I loved, my family, my
friends, my home, was no longer a student, and was trying to make it in the United States. Is hard
to explain what blinded me so much and made me keep going there day after day, that is the
whole reason I’m writing this, to solve the mystery of why things happened the way they did.
Anyway, back to my 6th day in the company, the car thing was supposed to take us 20 minutes
only but when we reached the shop, a very moody and very big man informed us that the car
would only be ready by the end of the day. Neyo then left his car there and assured me he had
everything figured out, even though I know he didn’t because I heard when he called other
people asking for a nearby alternative location due to a sudden change of plans. He ended up
ordering us an Uber to Happy’s, so once again I headed to the Hispanic market but with a
different field partner.
That day the sun was burning us alive, seemed like it was following me and my leader
everywhere. To keep our sanity and our brains working we resorted to water and pastelitos. I was
selling very well too, stopping a lot of people, and giving out free phones and upgrades in a
charismatic Spanish I didn’t even know I could speak. By the way, I think this job ruined my
whole personality in Spanish because I now feel like I’m always speaking to customers when
doing it. Anyway, I had an easy day as they say in the office, all my applications were going
through, and I had a high average of people applying with me. Neyo on the other hand struggled
a little bit more, he didn’t speak Spanish at all, and he didn’t have the magnetic field Alyssa had
to pull people to her or the witty personality Vee had of pitching in any language possible, and
work her way through it. Neyo was shy the same way I felt when talking to customers in English.
We even talked about it in the breakdown at the end of the day and he added an improvement to
be made to work on my confidence in my English.
I also felt that this day he was more attentive to me, I assumed he found out what happened the
day I went out with Coralie to Randolph. He eventually asked me about what happened and
listened as I explained to him, always making sure he clarified to me that he was there if I ever
needed him for any help with that or anything else in the future. Bad days on the field happened
sometimes and he wanted me to know having a family at the office, people you can trust and
share your thoughts with was the easier way to get through this experience. As usual, Neyo was
welcoming and sensitive, I almost felt he was way too nice sometimes, which was also a constant
on the breakdown on my days, everybody told me that constantly, and the same was said about
him. It makes sense why we would be in the same team, and why Alyssa thought I was the right
fit to start his team. We both were shy at first, but we were always nice, easy to talk to, and very
sentimental (of course, I was a little bit more).
There was a small incident that happened to me that day, a guy was way too intrusive and
decided to ask personal questions about me and my love life, Neyo stepped in to check on me
and see if everything was okay. I assured him it was, and I was handling the situation until
suddenly the guy had an insight he needed to share. “¿Por qué no sales con él?” as he pointed to
Neyo, “me parece un buen chico”, he added. We both said long no’s out loud at the same time, I
explained we worked together, and Neyo complemented me by saying he already had a
girlfriend; therefore, he wasn’t available. I paid close attention to that information because at the
time I had some suspicions about him and Coralie, and that was more proof added to my theory.
The guy didn’t end up getting a phone, went away, and we resumed back to our work naturally.
Even with the difficulties and language barrier Neyo did way better at Happy’s than he did at
Groove Hall, he worked around the problem and still performed well enough for us to leave the
field celebrating a good day of work. On my way back Nathalia called me and asked if I was
going to the team night and then jumped to inform me, she wasn’t. Nathalia also told me with no
excitement that Alyssa told her she was going to the conference with us on Sunday. Our car ride
was formed by the two of us, the boss herself, and another new guy I didn’t know. I wasn’t in the
mood to go to either of these two. The team night was going to be in a trampoline park on the
opposite side of my house, which would take me an hour and a half to reach home after. I wanted
to join the New York trip even less, it was a Sunday I wanted to sleep, smoke, and rest my brain
for the full week of work I had ahead. But for me and Nathalia, the biggest problem was our boss
wanted us at her house at 5:30 in the morning, when the trains in Mass only open at 5 and it takes
longer than 30 minutes to reach her house. We had no way to get there, and Uber was not an
option, I hadn’t even been paid yet.
I would’ve never in a million years guessed she would give the easiest solutions to my problems
when I entered her office trying to redeem myself from the obligation of team night. Firstly, she
said she would take me home, she was going to my area anyway so that would be no problem.
Regarding the train schedule her solution was simply “You can just sleep in my house”. I was
astonished, never had I imagined my boss would suggest me to sleep in her house, make pasta,
and watch movies, and then proceed to call this other guy that was in our car ride too. I said yes
to the team night ride and maybe to sleeping in her house since to me that was not usual at all,
never happened to me and I was under the cute impression this place was professional.
I got into Alyssa’s car heading to team night, Nathalia pushed me to go and left me at the last
moment what I could as a betrayal of our friendship. But I had fun there anyway, I met Adriana
when I got there, and we jumped around the trampolines and laughed together a lot, I also went
to the bathroom and met this girl named Lorrie who complimented my tattoos, and Catarina
arrived late but joined me and Adriana on the fun as well. Before we all left, I watched the
people from the office compete in some very violent-looking game involving running and
climbing things that I was not in the mood for. Also, I was not about to suffer an injury in the
United States with no health insurance, so watching was good enough for me.
At the end of the night, Alyssa took me home as promised. She also offered a ride to this new
guy named Daffaldo, he started on Monday, and I also found out he was the person I didn’t know
and was on our car ride to New York on Sunday. She left him at his house first and then
continued the journey to my house next. On the way there she let a very spicy audio message
play by accident because of the Bluetooth connection to the car, it was the voice of a woman, and
I could tell she was extremely embarrassed about it. I brushed it away as if it was nothing and I
hadn’t heard anything, and she appreciated that. We had a nice talk about what talent we would
like to have and what our daily schedules were, comparing what time we left the house and how
much time we separated for each thing. She dropped me at home, and I went to bed right away, I
already knew I wasn’t getting a day off in at least another week.

7. Reggie: Bittersweet end of a crazy week

Friday morning Alyssa welcomed me to the office with, according to her, wonderful news: I was
close to hitting the promotion requisites, I was close to being a leader and a trainer, not just a
trainee. She needed to know how much I had done on my checklist, the one displaying the
principles we were supposed to learn (shove it into our brains) because completing it was also a
pre-requisite to be promoted. I only had four principles left to present, information she received
with a big smile and a “well done, good job” incentive. She told me to get this done by Monday
and hit Bell that day on the field, that was easy, and she would make sure I would succeed by
sending me with Reggie. I had never spoken to him before, but I definitely had seen him around
the office. He was tall, loud, very charismatic, in a popular kid of high school way, described by
himself as a half Italian, and half African American man, that was a constant name in the Bell
and Gong lists. I had only seen Reggie because he makes himself seen, as a new start is
inevitable you would hit the field with him eventually, he was the high roller, max out guy,
always coming back with high numbers and happy trainees.
After morning obligations and chit-chatting with my Portuguese-speaking allies about how
boring the whole thing was, we all met at the parking lot to figure out the car rides, as we would
every day. Since I was with Reggie and he had a car, I didn’t have much to worry about, trainees
also have the privilege of just being sent somewhere with someone. I put my thing in the front
seat of the car and Reggie tried to stop me saying Coralie was coming with us and she had
already taken that seat. She said she wouldn’t mind since he was dropping her off first with her
trainee and I could enjoy the front this time. The four of us headed then to Lawrence, a heavily
Hispanic area, which meant a lot of Spanish-speaking customers waiting for me.
We dropped Coralie and Karim, the trainee, at El Pilón, a Hispanic market, and went on to set up
in an open mall that held a Family Dollar store inside. We put the table and the collateral in front
of the store and started our workday. Reggie and I vibed in the car and seemed to have work
chemistry at first. The morning started smoothly and with good movement, with a lot of people
passing by and taking the time to apply for the service we were offering. As always, Reggie was
pulling numbers, and multitasking, taking even 3 people at a time, and I could tell he needed
help. I came by and one of the people waiting spoke Spanish, and not only helped with the
process but convinced her to pay for an upgrade phone. I felt proud of myself and was about to
celebrate when I realized Reggie counted that as a sale he did, not me, because he was the one
who did most of the process, and introduced the product and the service in the first place. I had
no way to prove I deserved to keep that sale, so I just let that go.
Then it happened again, another Spanish customer ended up staying just because of me and he
took the credit for the upgrade. Seemed unfair that I was playing teamwork, and he was playing
only for himself. From that point on I realized Reggie was the result guy for a reason, and I
couldn’t expect him to act like anyone else I knew from the office. Each person had their style,
and I had been to the field with other high rollers, and saw different techniques being
implemented on the field, even though it was the same system, each one had their own way of
doing it. Reggie’s way was being the guy who takes everything, including taking action, he was
there to beat the game and be the best at it while making the most money he could, and he wasn’t
going to wait for me, he was going to do it even if by himself.
It took some distance from him after those two incidents and started to push him away. I wasn’t
into the kind of guy going over people to enhance his performance, I didn’t want people like him
around me, so I simply did my job as far away as I could and continued my day trying not to
think about him too much. That only worked for a few hours because at some point I went to the
car and started crying about some things when Coralie called me. She called me to invite me to
her house, she was having a little gathering with people from work, but she could hear my voice,
I was shaky and that meant I had just cried. She asked me what happened, and I went on to tell
her everything, I spent extra time detailing how much I thought Reggie was an asshole. She tried
to calm me down as much as she could, she was very understanding, partly because of her guilt
for what happened to me last time we went on the field together, so she tried to resolve the
situation and assure me she was available to help in any way, and that Reggie was a nice guy and
I was going to see that once I talked to him about it.
I had texted Neyo about what happened in the heat of the moment, and after the call with
Coralie, he called me right after Coralie to check on me. I explained vaguely to him since I
wanted to discuss it with Reggie first and I was already done with the subject by that time, I only
needed to talk about it for a while and the more I did that, the less I cared about what happened.
He made sure to invite me again to the house party at Coralie’s, calling it “our house” cementing
the suspicions I had about the two of them.
Reggie and I ended up maxing out pretty early, and in addition to the fact that the security guy
who worked at that mall complex had warned us we couldn’t be there, he decided we were going
to me Coralie and Karim and help them pitch so they could also reach their goals. We left there
with a customer following us in his car, to bring him to do the application with Coralie, and on
the way there I decided to discuss what happened and maybe resolve the issue before it turned
into something bigger. That was a bad idea. Maybe it was the way I said it, maybe Reggie was
indeed an asshole and didn’t like being called out on it, or even maybe he just didn’t know how
to deal with it, but the situation got out of control very fast. He became extremely defensive and
raised his voice, he said no one ever had any complaints about his training and I was the first
person to point that out. I stood by what I said, and we ended up arriving at Coralie’s location in
a worse place than when we left ours.
It didn’t help that Karim, the Spanish trainee was complaining a lot, about everything, about the
time, about his train, about his obligations, as if no one else there needed to get home too. He
was rude to me, to Coralie, to the customers, and Reggie just hung out in his car waiting for us.
When the leaders decided we were done and needed to head back after all, it was an hour's drive
at least, we packed up and went. I almost picked a fight with Karim in the car, for how annoying
he was, and he couldn’t stop talking about himself. He told me that day he was a millionaire and
had money in illegal accounts in random European countries, he explained he won the money by
gaming. That raised a million questions in my head that he saw coming, and before I said
anything he admitted “Money laundry”, and that explained a lot, I had no further questions.
Reggie dropped him off at the train station before heading to our office, Karim had to come
home early, and he was very assertive about it. He told me he had a newborn baby waiting for
him at home. When we reached the office, once again I was struggling to break down my day, it
became a pattern for the times I didn’t have a good day on the field. Alyssa was observant and
well aware of what was happening in her office as usual. She pulled me to the side just like a few
days before and asked me to explain the situation, which I proceeded to do. She had the same
script as Coralie did, she was sure it was all just a misunderstanding, Reggie was an incredible
guy, and we came back with amazing results that day, so our work had been positive. Maybe his
style of training didn’t match mine, as it did with the people before him, but surely a
conversation would be sufficient to put this thing behind all of us.
After swallowing my pride and hiding the feeling of injustice inside me I finally accepted I
needed to talk to Reggie again. He was more approachable this time, and calmer too. I asked him
to meet me in the hallway outside of the office and he did, listened to me talk, apologized for his
behavior, and offered me a hug, which I gladly agreed to, since I had been satisfied with the
conversation. There wasn’t much more I could’ve done, I knew Reggie was there way longer
than me, he was in a much higher position hierarchically than me, he was about to be Senior
Corporate Trainer, and he might have used my eagerness to help him with translation a little too
much for this time, but his score overall remained positive. The fact was we maxed out that day,
regardless of me being upset or not, and the other fact is that I was getting promoted, on Monday.
He did his job, and this was work after all, money was all that mattered, and Reggie delivered
that.
As I was reaching home that night the smell of weed coming from my building was
overpowering, I could smell it from the beginning of the street. When I passed by the smoker, I
did something I normally wouldn’t do, but started working on it when I moved to the US, I
talked to him. I said simply “Nice smell!”. He quickly responded, “You want some?”, and that
was how I met JJ, my half-American half-French neighbor. I smoked with him that night and we
started to make small talk. He told me he was a preschool teacher and worked nearby at a private
school in Coolidge Corner, and I shared with him the fact I was getting promoted next Monday
even though it was only my first (unofficially second) week at the job. He congratulated me for
it, being very flirty the whole time we talked. He finally gave it a shot by asking me what my
plans for the weekend were, and I had to shoot it down by explaining I had a fully busy weekend
ahead including a conference to attend on Sunday, so we would have to make plans for some
other time. He reacted fine to it, we would certainly meet again if we lived so close to each other,
so I just finished the blunt with him and we went to our separate homes.
Later on, I reflected on how I understand Reggie’s actions a little more now I experienced the
whole thing. I didn’t know at the time how the turnover rate was extremely high, new starts
would come and go every day, and very few people stayed, so these always ended up being
prioritized by the managers. I was this new start, barely there for a week who was bothered by
my sales not being recognized, but Reggie was there for 7 months, and hungry for the next
manager position, so he was always going to prevail over me, his voice would be heard more
than mine. That dynamic happens in every company, I don’t think it’s too absurd to assume this
position and favor employees loyal to you, especially in this business. That situation didn’t make
me think about leaving, it was a temporary thing anyway. What could go wrong? From this, I
learned how important it was to be on the boss's right side, though.

Chapter 2: The Brainwashing

Conference in New York (Sunday Road Trip)
As an Account Executive, you are not summoned to work on Saturdays. That obligation only
starts after you get promoted. The concept of Promotions is a big part of the job. The requisites
to get promoted from Account Executive to Corporate Trainer are to hit a profit higher than the
base salary for trainees and finish the checklist. I was supposed to go over principles with Reggie
on Friday but because of how the events played out I didn’t, so I still had 4 principles to present.
I assured Alyssa, I would get them done before 9 AM on Monday as she informed me, we would
rehearse my promotion speech in the car on our way to the conference on Sunday. Being
promoted in this business is a weird feeling, everyone pushes you to do it. They constantly talk
about how important it is to be promoted fast and how amazing you are at fulfilling the
responsibilities given to you, but in the beginning, I barely knew what that meant, I just knew I
should want it and work hard to achieve it.
The promotions happened during the announcements, usually after the Bell & Gong list (all that
clapping). It started with a manager yelling “What’s the best part of the business?” and we all
responded out loud “Promotions!”, they would then shout “Let (a leader) know” passing the
room to the leader responsible for the promotion, this part was supposed to be followed by two
claps, just like every other event at Atmosphere. The next step was listening to the leader throw
some generic compliments about the person being promoted, a speech that always ended with
“But that’s not my promotion, it’s his/hers, so (the promoted) come here and get promoted”. The
whole room clapped and shouted at the person walking towards the front of the room, and smiled
and nodded as they performed their promotion speech.
Once you finish that whole act, you are now a Corporate Trainer. Congratulations, you’re
climbing the corporate structure! As it has been made well known thus far, I had no idea what
that meant and I was just going along with it. All concrete information I had was the promised
increase in payment once you get promoted, so I was looking forward to that. I had no idea the
actual load of work that was going to be thrown at me once I made the passage, but that was
after. At this point, I felt excited, I wanted more money, and I had finally been given a ticket to
the official company race.
When I woke up on Saturday, I felt the same way I did the weekend before, mentally destroyed.
The earliest symptom of this job is how tired it makes you and the distancing of everyone else
who’s not in the business. I still went to the Russian’s place on that Saturday, but that turned out
to be one of the last ones. Valerie was about to move back to Moscow soon and I went there to
spend time with her and help Liza move to a new apartment in the same building with new non-
Russian roommates. I met the girls early in the afternoon and we chatted about how things were
going. I had lost contact with the guy I was dating, and the job was still excruciating, but I made
sure to tell them all about this neighbor guy I met the day before. I love the Russians for the way
they react to things, it’s always beautifully dramatic. They get overexcited by my love life,
whenever I tell them stories about my past, they get goosebumps out of the amusement to hear
the experiences I had. We agreed in the past our cultures were polar opposites when it came to
relationships, Brazil and Russia couldn’t be further away from each other in that area. Because of
that, I had far more experience to share and stories to tell than them, so they enjoyed the tale of a
new guy after seeing me gush about the guy before him merely a week before.
After all the gossip and a lunch break at an Italian restaurant close to their house, we decided to
start moving. I confirmed with my boss the day before that I was going to sleep there to go with
her to New York on Sunday early in the morning. We started bringing Liza’s things to the new
place, and I made a mess attempting to bring the fridge items to the new kitchen, and, as usual,
they cleaned after me. Other than that, it wasn’t an exciting day, I shared my expectations and
anxieties related to the trip the next day, and they mostly spoke Russian throughout the
afternoon, but at least I could spend some time with Valerie before she left.
Being at my school and studying with so many international students made me used to saying
goodbye to people. We all lived together and lived the program together for a year, but most of
the people just went back home after graduation. Whether the reason was unemployment, lack of
money, or simply homesickness, it seems like the natural cycle for the international student is to
go back home. Only a few survive the challenges of the US and are able to stay. Later that day,
Rodrigo and Ali, two of my other Brazilian and Turkish friends from school, called me to hold
me accountable for standing them up one more time. It was the second time since I started the
job and the three of us were working on a project together at the time. I had a hard time
explaining to them that firstly I was immensely tired which made me very useless, and secondly,
I made Valerie a priority that day because she was living. I didn’t know it at the time, but
Rodrigo would soon be the next one to leave. I promised the guys I would make up for it
eventually and went back to give the girls my full attention.
The time was passing fast, and I needed to find a way to go to Quincy, a 40-minute drive from
where I was, and the train ride was double the time. Liza ended up agreeing to call me an Uber
so that could give us all more time together. Once I noticed my boss was repeatedly inquisitive
about my whereabouts, and it was getting impolite-to-reach-someone’s-house late. She had told
me she would make some pasta for us to eat and had a selection of movies for all of us to watch
before bedtime, so she was eager for me to get there. When we finished bringing the countless
boxes and suitcases to the new apartment, I said my goodbyes to Valerie and waited with them
for my Uber ride to take me to Alyssa’s apartment.
I was told Alyssa’s house was big and luxurious, and that the whole time had been there before, it
was a common practice in this business to do team nights. When I made it there, it just seemed
like a normal middle-class apartment from my Brazilian perspective. Maybe in Boston, since
rent is absurd, that was considered luxurious, but from how much they gas up their earnings, I
expected something else. Nonetheless, I went up to the building and met her waiting for me at
her apartment door. She greeted me with a high five, very American of her, and walked me inside
her place where there was Kindell, Marie, and Karly sitting on the couch watching the TV.
Marie and Karly were both from Kindell’s team. Marie had the Senior Corporate Trainer status,
was there for longer, and had more responsibilities, like building her own team. She was a
Georgian black and sweet girl, about my height, and I found out later she was so committed to
the job that she lived with Alyssa and Kindell in that same apartment. Karly was new to the
company, just like I was, also American, I think from Massachusetts, tall and blonde, and
extremely friendly. Alyssa sat down to work after offering me some pasta she had made earlier.
Kindell was basically thrown at the couch just watching a movie, alongside Karly who seemed
way less comfortable. Marie was going around, taking her dog (the smallest and cutest dog I’ve
ever met) in her arms everywhere with her. I ate some of the pasta to not seem rude and sat down
with them waiting for them to call it a night. A little before they did that, Daffaldo arrived as
well, I didn’t know he was coming to Alyssa’s, but I remembered she had invited him too before.
Around 10 PM we all started getting ready for bed, we had a busy Sunday and a long trip to New
York, so we needed to be well rested.

The next morning, I woke up and lifted my head from the couch I had slept on. Daffaldo took the
extra bed in the living room, me and Karly shared the big couch, Kindell shared her room with
Marie, and Alyssa slept in her room by herself. My first vision of the day was Daffaldo
completely ready and waiting for all of us while sitting at the kitchen table. He had a beautifully
tailored suit on, he was dressed very professionally. That made me self-conscious about my outfit
not being good enough for the occasion. I had heard someone was using the bathroom already
(we all had to share one), so I asked Daffaldo who it was, and he informed me “It’s either Maria
or Marie, I’m not sure”. Well, I was Maria, and that was definitely not me, so it should be Marie.
I put my head on the pillow again and closed my eyes, waiting for the sound of the door to open
announcing it was my turn to use the bathroom.
Our scheduled time to leave was 5:15 AM. It was a 3:30 hour drive to the conference location, so
we couldn’t be too late or else we would miss the beginning of the event, which started at 9 AM.
At 5 o’clock Alyssa checked on us, the ones from her car ride, Daffaldo and I were ready to go,
Kindell’s team was the one holding us back. The house was hectic, clothes spread everywhere,
and everybody trying to look their sharpest for the conference, we were told that all the big
names in the company would be there. Finally, at 5:30 we left the house and started our journey
to New York. Nathalia, who was also in the car ride, was supposed to meet us at 5 AM at
Alyssa’s. She had decided not to sleep there and to meet on Sunday morning, which of course
didn’t happen, she didn’t wake up for it, she had sent me texts at 4 AM saying she was feeling
sick, so we just left without her.
The car ride to New York is still one of my favorite memories from that time. I sometimes hate
what it led to, but sometimes I appreciate it. I can see how it was the flap of a butterfly wing to a
lot of tornados in my life, but more importantly for how the next 5 months went on to be. I sat in
the front seat, next to Alyssa, and Daffaldo sat in the back behind me. Alyssa was an impatient
driver, to say the least, she was speeding on the highway from Massachusetts to New York as if
she was on an arcade. But even with her Formula 1 skills, the trip was still long and very dull,
especially if it was 5:30 in the morning. As usual, Alyssa was extremely excited and talkative.
The music was loud and generic just like in the Atmosphere, she was talking about these
conferences, how fun they were, about her old times in the company, how many people she met,
how much she had traveled, and how excited she was about the two of us there, because we were
new people that were “doing all the right things”.
Daffaldo and I were smiling and listening with enthusiasm, this was a whole new world for us
right there. I come from Brazil, and my biggest wish when I came to study in the United States
was to have the experience of also working here. When I thought this company was serious, and
I was still impressed by the wonders that little time would do to my resume, it seemed harmless
to go and watch all the successful people tell us their stories. I had heard great stories before that,
of alumni from my school who had won the big prize, the green card, by working for a few years
in America, doing everything right, while making, of course, a lot of money. Daffaldo was from
Indonesia, he was a tall guy, with that funny clown personality, the type of guy that laughs at his
own jokes, you know the type. He was for sure entertaining and had a great sense of style, that
man can do fashion. I knew very little about him, we may have shared spaces, and given the
occasional “Good morning!”, but I hadn’t talked to him properly yet.
But Alyssa didn’t want to just share about herself, obviously, she wanted to know more about us
too. I don’t remember exactly what I shared that day, but I can pinpoint what made her excited
about me in particular. After we both told her where we came from and Daffaldo shared his
father had a business in Indonesia that down the line he was planning to go back to, she turned to
me and asked if I had anything to go back to in Brazil, in terms of business. Luckily for her, and
unluckily for me, I told her I didn’t, because it was true, I didn’t have anything, I was open to
possibilities in the US. In my head, made no sense for me to lie or downplay, obviously, I wanted
to leave a good impression on her, in case I needed a referral letter or anything like that for my
next job. She then asked if I had any attachments in Massachusetts then, if I was open to moving
out of the state, which I was also open to, I was open to anything, and I know now what she was
thinking then when she replied with “Good”.
From my perspective now it might seem the car ride was a trap from start to finish, and it
honestly was, but that is my judgment of now on the subject of the past, I had a lot of fun on that
car ride, the conversations never felt forced and were serious about professional things, but
informal enough to make us feel comfortable. She had two vapes on her car that she consistently
hit the whole trip, and both me and Daffaldo are smokers, so we both watched that closely. I was
the one who broke the ice and asked if I could hit one of her vapes too, the tension was killing
me for an hour at this point. She laughed and said that was no problem, I could hit the vape as
much as I wanted to, she even mentioned she knew a store in Connecticut that we could stop on
the way back so we could buy vapes for all of us. Daffaldo then jumped in to participate in the
vape session a few minutes later. She explained the reason she hadn’t offered it to us before was
because she didn’t want to be a bad influence, she wasn’t sure we vaped, and it would terrify her
to think she was the reason we got addicted to it. A valid argument that would be totally
believable if she didn’t vape all the time in front of everyone at the office, but okay, I hit the
vapes anyway.
Before we arrived there Alyssa had asked me to look for a Dunkin Donuts close to the event, so
we could have some breakfast. Daffaldo and I had eaten bagels at her house before, but she
didn’t have time to eat anything. I guided us to Dunkin Donuts, then she bought us both hot
drinks (I got a hot chocolate and Daffaldo asked for hot coffee), got her breakfast and we headed
to our final destination. When we arrived, still at the parking lot, Alyssa was meeting and talking
to people, she referred to everyone as cousins, best buddies, or mentors. I could tell she had been
to many of these conferences before, they all knew her. She introduced Daffaldo and me to
everyone as we entered the lobby where the event would take place. She had asked me earlier for
some makeup to cover a zit that grew the night before, so we headed straight to the bathroom
where she taught me a valuable lesson, something along the lines of “Always carry your
notebook, write down what these people say to you”.
 “Also, get those phone numbers” she added. Before we stopped at DD, she had set up a
competition between me and Daffaldo. We would have networking sessions in between activities
during the conference, so that was the opportunity we had to meet people, network with them,
and learn from industry veterans. She explained to us that in this business, everyone loves to
share, whatever worked for them can work for you too, the way to the top is the same for
everybody, so we should learn from those who made it. Asking for phones is a common trade of
this business too, and is greatly seen as a “student mentality” thing. Alyssa made a bet with us
that whoever got the most phone numbers during the networking sessions would win either an
Uber ride home any time after work, or an Uber eats dinner delivered to my house, anytime we
wanted. I don’t want to keep running in circles here, but I have mentioned before how money
was a big problem for me, so it had no discussion, it had to be mine. I had no idea who Daffaldo
was, but I had heard in the car his dad was a businessman, and I don’t even have one, so he
already had advantages enough, this was supposed to be mine.
I stepped back into the room after helping Alyssa with her makeup in the bathroom and saw that
more people from the office had arrived and the place started to look packed. I was introduced to
all the Brazilians present at the conference, of course, if it’s a Brazilian then they should be able
to convince me this whole thing wasn’t a scam. Sure. But I talked to them anyway and heard
their stories. There was this one Brazilian guy, Bruno, who had been in the company for years
now, he had climbed all the corporate structure, reached the top, and was now enjoying the
freedom that money and time could bring. I also chatted with other AEs and CTs, people who,
like me, were dragged to this event after a very short amount of time in the business, and forced
to talk about how great they thought the experience was without even understanding how the
entire thing operated. I heard as they all told me how they reached the company, everybody told
their stories with excitement, such a big group of people would rarely want to know and ask
questions about you, paying so close attention to everything. We enjoyed being the center of
attention, all of us.
Closer to the end of this first networking session, I noticed Daffaldo was talking to the same
people I was, I had underestimated him, I thought he was shy, and he wouldn’t be able to
navigate the room like I was. My impression of the car is that he was more complacent, a reliable
server at work, more closed off, and only into talking to new people once you give him time to
show off his colors. Sort of like me. I used to be more like that in the past, but since living in the
US, I had to expand my personality and become the ultimate extroverted person. I didn’t know
anyone when I went to Massachusetts, and in order to make friends I explored this new version
of me I created for this country. But, well, Daffaldo surprised me. He naturally made
conversations with people and smiled at me as we both realized he wasn’t going to let me win
the competition so easily.
Around 9 PM the networking session was done, and we were all told to take our sits. Some man I
can’t remember the name took the stage and started blabbing some motivational speech about
how we are the ones to make our own destiny, no one is going to make us succeed except for us.
And for those who stand in our way? “Shake it off”, he said, “Just like Taylor says, the haters
gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. But I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake. Shake it off!”
Extremely amusing, I might add, watching grown men in suits chant Shake it Off by Taylor
Swift, as a way to excuse the amount of abuse they suffer to remain in the company, so that in
time (no one knows how much though) they will get the money they worked for.
That was the rest of our morning, I sat there in disbelief at how many stupid things were being
said, while one after one, people would go on stage and tell wonderful stories of success, and
houses, cars, trips, fun, money, and growth. All of them had been through the same process,
started in the field, and now are millionaires. Suspect, to say the least, but it was easy to see how
the speech could get into people’s minds. It was all too fantastic, too good to be true, but still, we
had real people who actually experienced that fantasy, made it, and were now telling us in detail
how they did it. I had to stop myself many times from thinking “What if I just did it? What if it
works and I too become rich?”. Because I needed that, I needed hope, I needed the opportunity.
Isn’t that what we all want, after all, to make it in Corporate America?
They had some awards, and some promotions, lined up for this event. I watched Kuralay
promote Kindell from Assistant Manager to Manager, meaning she could now run her own
business. Kindell took the stage for her thank you speech and told the story of how she had no
idea what this business was about, but she did the Zoom interview, got accepted for the job
(which is anyone that applies ever), put all her stuff in a U-Haul truck and traveled from Texas to
Boston. That was three years ago, and now, finally, she was here, at the top, with all of them.
Some other people from our office Coralie, Reggie, and this guy I didn’t know at the time,
Stanley, were promoted there as well, to Senior Corporate Trainers. After all those speeches,
promotions, stories, and pop artist references, I thought we were at least having a lunch break or
something, but instead, they separated and sent us into workshops, just like the ones we had at
the office every morning, now with dozens of people. Everyone just organically started
networking with each other before going to the workshops, and a quick networking session
happened again. It lasted about 30 minutes, and everyone grabbed their stuff, looked for coffee
(we were struggling to stay awake, most of us woke up at 4 AM), and looked for our designated
workshops.
Catharina, unlike Nathalia, went to the Conference, and we sat together the whole time. We
complained about how much time it was taking, we complained about being able to find food,
we tried to look for coffee (for her, at that time I didn’t drink coffee), and before going to our
workshop, we took a bathroom break. On our way to the bathroom, I saw Daffaldo networking,
so I went to him and asked how many numbers he had written down, confident in the 4 numbers
I had in my notebook so far. He smiled at me but in a challenging way, I could see how excited
the competition got him. He said, “I won’t tell you exact numbers, but I have 5+”, as he showed
me a sneak peek of it… Shit. How the whole system worked to get people’s numbers was that
you had to give them attention, listen to them talk about themselves, share a bit about you, and
then politely and enthusiastically in the end ask for their number promising to network with them
later. That took some time, and sometimes people talk way too much. Sometimes you can also
just vibe with people and keep listening to what they say so much you forget to ask for their
number, I have seen that happen to Daffaldo too. But it wasn’t that surprising since I saw him
work for the numbers, and I was talking about people’s looks with Catharina.
That motivated me so much that when I met with Catharina again in the bathroom since I had
explained to her earlier about the little competition Daffaldo and I had, we started strategizing in
Portuguese.
“Amiga, help me with the challenge bullshit. I have to get more phone numbers than Daffaldo,
and he has 5+ already”.
“Wait, Daffaldo, that weird guy from our office? He has more than 5?” she replied.
“Yeah, he’s been talking to everyone. He’s actually charismatic.”
“O que? (insert Portuguese accent) We need to get you more than him, c’mon we can do it, we’re
two girls, and more charismatic than him, it shouldn’t be that hard”
The problem with our plan was that we had to attend the workshops, and during the activity, we
couldn’t really network, we had to listen and write things down. I arrived at the place of the
workshop and smirked at the Daffaldo as I got another number written down. He smirked back. I
sat down with Catharina and this girl named Raven, she was from Kuralay’s office, Kindell’s
team to be more specific. She was also new to the office, probably there less than a month, and
she had not been promoted yet.
The workshops were separated into 3: Account Executives, Corporate Trainers, and Assistant
Managers and Managers. The more experienced people, the ones beyond Management, now
called Consultants, were responsible for the workshops. It consisted of a series of lectures, or
speeches, just as before, about their lives, experiences, and what was the path to success. But
they were also separated for a reason, depending on the level that you are, you need more
brainwashing. I was at a basic level at that conference, so I would assume my level was also low
compared to the number of excuses you have to make to the managers, also called “business
owners”. I’m thankful now that I went to one of these Conferences very early on because despite
staying for (what seemed like) a long time in the company before, it was the feeling I had there
that kept me grounded for most of it.
The whole event felt disingenuous in my eyes. I remember at the workshops people talking about
how much better they were than the ones that gave up that life because it was so easy, they just
had to work extra hard for a while, and then, boom, their whole lives changed. Now they could
afford anything they wanted, support their families, and do whatever they wanted with their time
because their effort had been paid for. They had people from all over the world tell these
amazing stories of overcoming difficulties, hard days on the field stories, horror tales about being
broke, and then finally succeeding. The themes ranged from “Know your why” (going into the
reason why it’s worth it to be a slave for years so you can get some money after) and “Overcome
your Shyness”, mixed with personal stories, always. Everything in this business is personal, even
when they tell you it’s not supposed to be. They talk about how you’re supposed to give up all
your life, your family, your friends, your partner, birthday parties, weddings, funerals,
celebrations of all kinds, your comfort, your sleep, your dignity, only for a few years of your life
(that’s what they told themselves), and then once you make through that, your reward was to
become one of them and be rich. They went on and on about how they were there to help us,
telling us exactly how they did it, giving us the tools to succeed like them.
And how about my family and friends, you might ask? Won’t they ask questions? Won’t they be
worried that you will disappear for so long? Don’t worry about it! “Shake it off!” And why
bother with that anyway? Those who don’t want your success, and don’t understand that you’re
doing this for you, don’t deserve to be in your life. And it’s not their fault, they just don’t
understand. They see from outside us working every day (some people hit the field even on
Sundays, but I never did), twelve hours a day (sometimes more), not making a stable amount of
money (the job was commission-based), they ask us what we do and we can’t explain it, because
they just wouldn’t get it, no one does, only we do, the people in this business.
Do I need to explain how crazy and cult-like this is? I saw it then; it was impossible not to. Being
in the company for a week, I had the advantage of not being that deep in the brainwashing
process, but I could see how other people there lived for that idea. I also came from a high-
quality educational background. Not that I think it makes me smarter than anyone else attending
the conference that day, but I understand how I could see through some ideas that most people
there never even heard about, and grew up thinking this is how things are supposed to be
anyway. That’s not how I grew up, and that’s not what I believed, but without going too much
into my political beliefs, I decided from the start that I was just going to pass by, I was just going
to fake it, and nothing had changed, the Conference being a culmination of all the bullshit I
already heard before was not a surprise to me at all. The whole time in my head I was just
thinking “This will be a funny story to tell my friends in Brazil after”, and spilled everything to
them about how I worked in this weird company for a few weeks and was thankful I escaped
before I was brainwashed like them.
All of those who spoke that day discussed the “what to tell others what we’re doing here” topic.
They went on to invent a million different excuses, synonyms, and ways to go around that
subject when talking with your family and friends. We’re not supposed to talk about the field or
talk about the fact we just sell random products in the streets to strangers, depending on which
campaign we’re on. Since I was networking a lot that day, I talked to people who worked in
different offices and different campaigns. I heard they also campaigned for an internet company,
but they did the sales door-to-door, not set up events in the street and approach people walking
by as my office did. I remembered that in the interview process, they also explained to me how
the office is not about phones, but about providing the workforce for a third-party company.
That’s how so many offices were connected, there were at least 400 people in that room that day,
maybe more. All these people work in a similar business, but each office is owned by a manager.
Once you get promoted you make money out of your office, while paying a percentage of it to
whoever promoted you. Then you can promote other managers and make it to consultant, where
you collect money from these managers, and then keep climbing the ladder until you reach
millionaire status, making money off of other people’s hard work. But it’s okay because you
were once like them, that gives you the right to now profit from others who just like you want to
live the American Dream. So, a pyramid scheme. That was the most terrifying thing you could
say in this company, that expression can create wars in which you do not want to participate.
That was part of the “forbidden” words or expressions we had, saying it wouldn’t make people
jump at you with anger, but rather with a mix of pity and irony that you still had doubts about the
process, and were making excuses, because of course, it wasn’t a pyramid scheme, didn’t you see
that conference? It all actually works!
And how can someone live like this? Work tirelessly, pushing away loved ones? Is this worth
giving up everything else just for the possibility of making some money out of it? Some
questions that could pop up in one’s head when listening to all of this. Are we supposed to go
through this all alone? Absolutely not! Why need your family and friends if all the friends you
need are right here, this is your new family! They are in the same business as you, so more than
anyone else they’ll understand your struggles, and they’ll motivate you to reach your goals,
unlike the haters who will only bring you down and make you quit, like a loser. The strength of
the team is the strength of the office, these are the only people you should want to hang out with.
They also talked about how dating was not encouraged since it could distract people from their
goals, and if one starts “nagging out” or realizing they’ve been in a trap, they can take the other
one down with them.
Despite that being said, I watched Jason (yes, he was there) talk about how he met the love of his
life in this business, and they worked together for their success. And he wasn’t alone in this. I
imagine is sort of like the celebrity world, you can’t really date people from outside the industry
because they don’t get it. They don’t understand the long hours, the money spent, the small
return, the depression, the tiredness, the crying, the self-doubting (at least in our case, I’m not
sure about the celebrities). It’s better if you go through it with someone from the company, that’s
walking the same path as you. That’s not what they say, they say it’s not encouraged, but they
mean it’s okay if you do it, you can be successful together. A lot of people there have
relationships outside of the business, but most of them also complained about how hard it is to
explain the business to the outside partner. That was the image implanted in our heads, in theory,
you should seek it, but in reality, everyone will tell you not to, even though they all do it.
After the workshops, we all were hungry, tired, and sleepy, we had been there all day listening to
the same thing said in all possible different ways. I am eager to go home at this point. But we
were in New York, and the day was not done yet. We had more people waiting to talk about their
stories. At that point, I zoned out, I cannot remember most of what was said. These were
supposed to be the big shots, if we heard of rich people before, these were the richest of the rich,
these were the ones that promoted the rich people we heard talking in the morning, and were now
gracing our afternoon with more solutions to a perfect future rich life. As I said, Jason was there,
and he talked first if I’m not mistaken, followed by other 2 or 3 of these big shots that had more
time to share their lives with us since they were the richest and their lives were more important.
The only thing I actually remember from that section of the day is whenever my stomach was not
loudly complaining about the lack of food, since the last time I ate was 5 in the morning, was a
piece of the speech done by this woman named Alana.
She was a bit older, she was American, very elegant, and she had told us she’d been 19 years in
the business. I remember thinking how insane it was to me that she said so proudly how she
worked 19 years, but she finally got to where she wanted. 19 years? That’s a lot of years, it
caught my attention. She then went on to talk about all the things she had now, and it was all the
things I wanted. For a moment I was sucked into it, especially when she talked about how she
was able to finance her brother to produce a movie, and that is my dream too, and imagining
doing it with my sister made it all even more appealing. She had to give up all those things that
were discussed before, but it was worth it, she had a family, a beautiful house, and money to do
whatever she desired, including making her and her brother's wishes come true.
That caught me not only because of the movie, but it became my dream to pay for my sister’s
education outside of Brazil while helping my mom and my family live a comfortable life back
there. And the business knows that. Not about me specifically, but that is why we are made to sit
through so many different speeches about wonderful lives and successful stories because at least
one of them is going to hit you. There were hundreds of people in that room, and I’m sure
everyone there could tell you a moment they had just like mine when they realized that could
indeed lead them to where they always wanted to be. I freaked out about the 19 years, I wasn’t
even fully thinking about committing to this yet, but that resonated with me, and it got me
through the tough times that came ahead.
We were told that after we were (finally) done with the speeches, we would have another final
networking session and that was it for the day, we were (finally) free. We all got up excited about
finding food and going to our cars, not so much about networking. We took pictures with
everyone and resumed networking for a little before everyone just decided we should go out
somewhere to eat before heading back to Massachusetts. I had not forgotten my challenge
though, and me and Catharina had split for all the minutes we had to try gathering more numbers
for me to show Alyssa. But at this point, people were fed up, and things were moving fast, people
were getting out of the room, or busy taking pictures and talking to their peers. I met with
Daffaldo on my way to the hallway and I was already sure I had lost the challenge, I had 7 phone
numbers, and Catharina got me 1 more, at most I would have 8, and if Daffaldo already had 5+
hours before, for sure now he would have at least ten.
After telling him my results, I asked him again how many phone numbers he had and he only
responded with, “You know, I think you’re going to win this”, as in he would let me win the
challenge Alyssa set up for us. Wait, but why? That made me confused. He seemed like the
competitive type so far, why would he give me the win? Did he not get any more phone
numbers? But how? I saw him talk to way more people than I did, and we had teased each other
the whole day about it, I knew he had more than what he showed me, so why not just take the
win? I only found the answers to some of these questions later, but what I replied to him that day
was “I think we’re going to be friends”. He smiled in response.
Our office got together in the hallway and decided to meet at a burger place close by. Alyssa
looked for Daffaldo and me in the crowd and gave us the “we should go” signal. She then
proceeded to talk to several different people as she walked towards the car. I followed her but
still wasn’t sure if Daffaldo was screwing with me, since he had not told me his results, so I kept
asking for people’s phone numbers, in the politest way I could. I had 10 dollars in my bank
account at that exact moment, so an Uber Eats for dinner sounded wonderful. I had to call for
Daffaldo as I saw him smoke a cigarette with some of the people from our office, and he rushed
to meet us on our way to the car, Alyssa wasn’t waiting for anyone. We met at the car, and she
excitedly asked us all our impressions. She sat there happily sharing how much she loved
everything and warned us we would go over all of it on our way back, after the food.
All the car rides met at what was said to be this cheap burger place and upon arriving there, to
my surprise, it wasn’t cheap at all. I could have spent the 10 dollars but that would mean I had no
money for the train the next day to work, so I had to make an adult decision and ask Catharina to
get it for me, and I would pay her back once I got my paycheck. She bought us the cheapest
burger on the menu (she wasn’t loaded with money either), and one cup she said was for water,
but we filled it with Diet Coke at the machine in secret and shared it. We then sat down with
Daffaldo and Keila, the girl I had met on my orientation day, and later on, we were joined by
Coralie. I stole some of Daffaldo’s fries while I waited for my food, I figured at that point we had
enough intimacy for that, and he started making small talk to me and Catharina about rumors of
our schoolmates. We would speak in Portuguese about what we could tell him or not (he even
mentioned a friend of mine), and we would feed him as little information as possible.
Catharina and I noticed Kuralay barely touched her food. We were so hungry, so broke, and all
we wanted was to order the big meal like she did, but she wasn’t eating it. She had money to do
that, we didn’t. We conspired about the possibility of her having an eating disorder, which would
be very sad, yet not so far-fetched. She was extremely skinny, and I saw her mouth move a lot to
talk, but never to eat. It was the first time I ever saw a flaw in her perfect image. Maybe only the
two of us saw that, maybe everyone else did and just ignored it, but I remember thinking “Well
they can’t be that happy if they can’t even eat!”. We finished our food and stayed around talking
with the people at our table until Alyssa decided it was time to go home. Daffaldo and I headed
back to the car with Alyssa and prepared for the 5 hours of drive ahead (there was more traffic at
this time).
The car ride back was the best part of the day for me, we were tired but at least we had eaten, so
we had a boost of energy again, that’s when Alyssa asked about everything. She wanted to know
what we liked to hear the most, and who was the person that had the most impact on us, and she
wanted names and details as to what that impact was. It wasn’t that hard to give her all the
information she wanted, especially after a full day of listening, we could finally talk, so we were
excited to share, and it had been an interesting experience, to say the least. Of course, I wasn’t as
excited as I pretended to be that day, but I also wanted to make a good impression, I wanted her
to know I was paying attention, and I wanted to keep being the boss's favorite. She said to give
her the top 3 names and she would arrange for us to have networking calls with them. I don’t
remember what Daffaldo said, but I remember I said Alana, Diana (a Russian woman who spoke
at the workshop), and Phil (American, also from the workshop). She then called Diana on the
spot and told her enthusiastically how her new start named her (she called Diana cousin too) as
one of their favorite speakers of the day. “Good Job!” she completed. Diana had talked about the
fear of public speaking, so it made sense that Alyssa was so proud of her. Diana was shy and
more of a direct person, a Russian.
Alyssa reminded us of the challenge we set up earlier while we talked about networking, she
could start teaching us how to develop those skills with people in the business, and also, she
wanted to know who won. Daffaldo jumped to say, “You first, Maria”. I counted in front of
Alyssa; I had 9 phone numbers. She smiled and said, “Well done! How about you Daffaldo?”. “I
have 8, so Maria won the challenge”. I didn’t know if he was lying or telling the truth, but he
kept his word, and I won the challenge regardless. I had the feeling that, whatever number I said
he would’ve said a lower one. Winning the challenge helped me later on, I did use this award,
and I was very thankful to Daffaldo for letting me have that. It made me pay attention to him, it
was our first real interaction, and he did that for me, so for the rest of the car ride back we acted
as if we were long-time friends. We would laugh, provoke, and giggle and each other, it felt
natural.
Work wasn’t done yet, Alyssa reminded me I had a promotion the next day, on Monday, and we
had to work on my promotion speech. She then gave me a structure of how that speech should
look; I had to start by saying “Good morning, my name is Maria, I’m the new Corporate Trainer
at team Amped Up Enterprises”, and then proceed to tell 3 facts about me, explain 3 principles I
learned that helped me get promoted, choose 3 people I’d like to thank, and at last say 3 goals, a
short-term, a mid-term, and a long-term goal. In the end, I was supposed to say “Again, my name
is Maria, and I’m the newest Corporate Trainer. We’re all Amped Up...” and as Alyssa explained
to me, the rest of my team in her office would reply very loudly “…And ready to go” after me, it
was supposed to be the chant of war from our team. I wrote all that down and promised her it
would be done by the morning. She then asked me how my checklist was doing, and I was still
missing 4 principles. I also promised her I would finish in the morning.
Daffaldo watched this whole thing in the back in silence, but we knew he was observing the
process. I turned around and told him “You’re next”, I wanted to motivate him, as a thank you
for what he had done to me, and I also noticed he liked challenges. I complemented it with “Get
your checklist done by Friday”, his checklist was close to empty at that point, and we had been in
the company for around the same amount of time. He accepted the challenge again and assured
me he would get it done. After making us both text at least one of the contacts we got from the
Conference, and set us up with a one-on-one call, Alyssa gave us some rest from work duties,
and we were allowed to enjoy some songs. She had the same musical taste the Atmosphere room
had, very popular songs from popular artists, so we knew all the songs and had fun singing them.
Since most people from the US don’t know the differences in Latin America, it came as no
surprise that Alyssa wanted me to show her more Hispanic music. I’m not Hispanic, and Brazil
doesn’t even have a tradition of listening to Spanish songs, but since I’d been in the country for a
while, I made friends with many other Latinos and they shared their music with me, and vice
versa. I then used my club repertoire to find fun songs for the three of us to enjoy, some
Reggaeton, Bachata, and maybe one or two Brazilian funk songs, and we were all jamming
together to it. As Bachata by Miguel Turizo was playing and I was happily singing it, Daffaldo
tried to speak over the song about something else, but I was so into it, so I held his hand and
started singing louder, kind of like an “Shhh, bitch, you’re killing the vibe”. I didn’t think much
of it, it wasn’t intentional, and it didn’t have a double meaning, we just kept holding hands until
the song ended, and then I said he could speak. I didn’t feel sexual, or flirty, it was just organic.
I could tell it built tension in the car, Daffaldo kept his hand on mine and shut up, he understood
the signal, and I was sure he thought “What the fuck”. I mean, he was from Indonesia, and
they’re not exactly known to be as physically expressive as Brazilians are. I’m not sure what
Alyssa thought about it though, she never told me, even after that, but Americans are not well
known for being too touchy either, so I caught her looking at us. Maybe because I was
seamlessly singing, and not giving it too much attention everybody was acting as if it was natural
too. I have the feeling that this moment gave her some ideas, but it was too early and too little to
form opinions on it anyway. It was a simple moment, that didn’t last more than 2 minutes for
sure, and whenever the song ended, we let go of each other’s hands, the subject changed, and
nothing was questioned about it for the rest of the trip.
At some point we got exhausted from the songs, we didn’t know what else to talk about and still
had miles ahead, so Alyssa came up with a game. It was a typical road trip game, we had to find
words with the letters of the alphabet, in the exact order, and whoever reached Z first won. There
were no repeated words allowed. As soon as she finished explaining the rules, Alyssa yelled the
first word she saw with A, and in 10 seconds she was already looking for D. Me and Daffaldo
started at the same time, and he got ahead of me at first, but I picked up the pace after a few
words. Alyssa was speeding through the highway yelling words she would find on billboards,
laughing, and having fun rubbing in our faces her clear advantage. Daffaldo and I were basically
competing with each other, and as happened last time, we were great at it, until the end started to
come, and he started to slow it down for me to get the advantage.
The traffic was merciless, Alyssa obviously won the challenge way before we had even reached
the letter Q, a letter that got us stuck for a while, and the game started to be less exciting, and that
feeling when you’re fed up to being stuck in traffic started to kick in. From what I remember, we
stopped at Y, the both of us, and we never knew who the second place was. We just sat there in
silence, making up small talk, finally exhausted from the day we had just had. An hour before we
arrived at Alyssa’s, she informed us she would book us an Uber home, which could save her
some time, and we would still arrive early at our destinations, so everyone would be happy.
Daffaldo and I easily agreed to it and helped her fill in our addresses on the app on her phone.
When we arrived at her house, the car was already waiting for us. I transferred all my things to
the Uber and waited while Daffaldo used the bathroom inside the building. Alyssa had said her
goodbyes and entered her garage, so when he came out, we continued the journey to our houses.
I remember talking to Daffaldo about the day we had, and our expectations for the next week, but
we were both too tired and too sleepy. The only fun part is that for a while we started trying to
look for the Z word we hadn’t found before, and tried to spice up the competition side again, but
turned out unsuccessful for both of us. I was dropped first as he continued to his house, and I met
my neighbor in front of our building again. He offered me weed and asked how my day went, I
told him all about it but didn’t stay for long, I explained I needed to sleep early since I had a
promotion and four principles to learn until the next morning. As usual, he was understanding,
reminded me to let him know whenever I had time to hang out, and went upstairs to his
apartment. I went into my apartment, showered, and fell asleep, with at least 5 alarms so I
wouldn’t accidentally miss the time.
Week 2 - The day-to-day
1. Vee (+ Hannah) - I got promoted!
I missed my first alarm on Monday, as expected. I had barely slept, I didn’t finish my promotion
speech, and neither did I go through the principles I had to present that morning before said
promotion. My commute to the office consisted of taking the train to Copley Station (green line)
and then catching a bus, for 20 minutes, that had a stop in front of the office. The Broadway
station on the red line was the closest train station we had to the office, about a 15-minute walk
there, but it took me longer to reach that station by train than by bus. I got ready for my day and
left for the station closest to my house. I met my neighbor JJ there that morning, he wanted to
chat, but I had to cut him short and inform him I had much studying to do before I reached work
that day. I went through the principles on the train the whole way to Copley, until I memorized
them by heart, while also finishing my speech.
I realized when I got to the station I had missed the bus by a few minutes, so I would have to
wait another 30 minutes for the next one. The problem was, if I waited for the next bus, I would
arrive not having enough time to present the principles, something I was putting a lot of effort
into completing before office hours. I then decided to just get an Uber, and save myself some
time. I ended up arriving ridiculously early, which not only gave me time to complete my
obligations but also helped improve my image. I was a newly promoted Corporate Trainer
arriving an hour before office hours, without needing to, but wanting to perform to the best of
my abilities. That is a golden mine for them, they want people who show they can put in the
effort, work hard for their goals, and for the company, of course.
This CT named Maya was helping me with the principles. She was this tiny Philippine girl, with
a bubbly personality, and possibly ADHD, that gave me the best hugs every morning when I
arrived. There was another girl who was close with Maya who also did the same for me in the
first week, but mysteriously disappeared in this second week, so I was left with Maya only.
Coralie, Neyo, and even Alyssa herself signed principles off my checklist, but Maya was the one
I always looked for when stepped into the office, she was sweet and let a couple of mistakes slide
sometimes. Despite my early arrival, these principles were so unnecessarily long and annoying to
memorize that when they called us out to start the morning with the usual “Hey Guys” (followed
by the usual response “Hey what”) I still had one more principle to present.
The new CTs were supposed to follow Kindell to a special meeting and learn about the
expectations of a Corporate Trainer. Before that, as Marie was preparing the room for the peer
presentations, I asked her as a favor if I could present first, get done with my checklist, and go to
the meeting. She kindly did that for me, so I signed off the last principle “Morning/Event
Atmosphere” where you list all the things, we do every day at the office, for no purpose at all
other than memorize it, then ran to find where my meeting was. I left Nathalia at the Atmosphere
and went to find Catharina, who also was getting promoted that morning. I accidentally opened
Alyssa’s door but was informed by her that my meeting was at Kindell’s office.
Kindell had printed a list for all of us with all the DOs and DON’Ts for Corporate Trainers. We
were now expected to be more professional, more reliable, take more responsibilities, arrive
early, impact the new starts, teach, and watch their presentation about the principles, learn how to
interview on behalf of the company, and most importantly, train Account Executives in the field.
We were also expected to now pick our own locations and decide ourselves where to go and
when. Being a CT meant you had the freedom to make your own choices, but it also meant you
were now officially part of the team, so the demand started to get higher. The CTs, since they
were the majority of the office most times, were more respected, and more was shared with them
about the company, not only when it came to business, but when it came to gossip too. But
Kindell’s list had nothing to do with gossip, she wanted us to do what the program intended, be
managers in training.
After that insightful meeting (irony), we headed to the rest of the activities for the day. Once
team building was done, and before the Morning Meeting, we had the promotions
announcements. It was 6 promotions in total, but two people were pushed to be promoted on
other days so they could prepare their speeches better and feel more comfortable speaking in
front of everyone (one of them was Catharina). Since Alyssa had gone over my promotion
speech the day before, I was counted as prepared and was put in the promotions group on that
Monday. It ended up being 4 of us promoted. Jacob, Matt, and Karly, the girl at Alyssa and
Kindell’s house the night before the Conference. I didn’t interact with the boys up to this point in
the story, but later I hit the field with them separately on different occasions. I have no idea what
they said in their promotions speech, I can’t even remember what I said fully, I only remember
that the three people I thanked were Neyo, Coralie, and Alyssa. The boss lady told me afterward
that my speech was really good, she said this to most people.
Once the office obligations were done and we could hit the field I met up with Vee, and we were
going together again. She had told me we were going to get a ride from this girl named Hannah
since she owned a car, and she could drop us at our location. Hannah didn’t talk during the office
activities, she was very shy, an American girl, tall, and blonde, she looked like a supermodel, and
she had tattoos and piercings, but I had no interactions with her up to this point, she didn’t seem
approachable. I would’ve never expected what her car looked like though. She had a white
Dodger with red strips painted over it, the trunk was held by duct tape, there was a whole in the
top of the trunk, and the back door on the left’s rubber kept coming out every time I entered and
exited the car, there were scratches everywhere outside, the internal light was red so you couldn’t
see anything, all the warning lights in the panel seemed to be turned on, the car was completely
full of things, all sort of things like clothing, shoes, makeup bag, empty coffee cups, food, weed
supplies, and weed, a lot of weed. The car smelled like weed as soon as you entered. Saying all
that might seem like a bad thing, but that car made Hannah so cool, and she was cool, she was a
private person with the craziest and most outstanding car.
She and I were mostly quiet during the trip, Vee took all the talking to herself. We would all set
up in Lawrence, the same place I had been with Reggie on Friday, but this time Vee and I would
set up on the other side of the complex, next to the Go 1 Dollar, and Hannah would take the
Family Dollar side, the one we had last time. Vee went all the way trying to motivate Hannah,
through the conversation I found out Hannah was not doing well with her sales, and she needed
to make more money. Her last results had been very low lately, she needed to reach at least
minimum sales that day. I still hadn’t experienced a bad day in the field in terms of sales, I was
feeling confident in my work ethic so far, and I was sure this was going to be my standard
always.
When we arrived in Lawrence, Hannah dropped us on our side and proceeded to her spot. We set
up our table and started the day of work. On my first day on the field as a CT I had all the
confidence in myself to pull off great numbers. As happened last time, Vee was a great motivator
for me, we were giving out phones left and right, and the upgrades almost seemed easy to sell. I
remember I had a mini breakdown when one of the phones I had sold was not turning on, and it
was simply because it wasn’t charged, all I had to do was find a place I could plug the charger in.
At first, I panicked and got paralyzed, but Vee pointed me to the pharmacy, told me to go there,
turn on the phone, and she would handle things alone at our table while I was out. Everything
turned out fine, I was able to turn on the phone and give it to the customer waiting for it. Other
than that minor incident, the day went smoothly.
Another concept I learned with Vee that day was how to do an “open”. My source of success,
whenever I went to Vee to the field, relied on these opens. We got paid by the application, a
customer could very well apply for the service but not take any of the devices with them, which
would qualify as an “open”. Then we could register the phone with the person qualified but give
it to someone else who didn’t have the requirements needed. I did that on my own for the first
time that day, everybody was doing it, but I didn’t know that yet. Nathalia had told me she saw
people do it too, specifically Sans and Coralie, and she reprimanded the act of both of them, she
thought it was shameful that they were defrauding the process. Catharina had a similar mindset;
she was aware of the practice but didn’t do it herself. Well, that day I did, and it wasn’t the last
time.
As a duo, Vee and I hit standards pretty fast, around 3 PM we had 10 applications. She had been
checking on Hannah throughout the day, which I thought was really nice of her to do. I had a
REHASH (Remember Everyone Has Another Sale Hidden) from last Friday, a concept that was
part of the principles we learned, and it means basically someone that couldn’t qualify on that
day, so you take their phone number and set it up for another time. It could also mean someone
had other people they could recommend our service to, we were always supposed to provide
quality customer service to leave a good impression, so they could get us more sales in the
future. I ended up sending my rehash to Hannah’s side, but that still didn’t help her that much.
The woman I had contacted showed up with a friend, and Hannah was able to close another
customer after that, so she had in total, for the whole day, 3 applications.
Since our results for the day were satisfactory, Vee decided to call Hannah to our side to help her
out, maybe it was the location. But when Hannah came to meet us on our side, I realized what
the problem was. She was so shy she could barely speak to customers, and in Lawrence, most
people spoke Spanish, and the language barrier also didn’t help. I understood her because I was
once just like Hannah, I had a hard time coming out of my shell in the past, but for this job, I
decided to pretend the most I could, I was still shy, and everyone kept saying I was too nice with
the customers, but it was working somehow, and with my knowledge of Spanish, it made things
easier for sure. We ended up then helping Hannah get more apps, “At least 6, that’s the minimum
to get paid” explained Vee. We each closed someone under her code, I closed an upgrade for her.
It was very early in the company, and I wasn’t aware that this practice was an ongoing thing.
We’re supposed to help each other out because the results of the team also count as yours, but
just like the dating culture, they’ll tell you not to, but do it or request it of you anyway. It was the
first time it had happened, but it wasn’t going to be the last. It also looked better for Vee if the
entire car ride was successful, the managers make leaders accountable not only for their results
but for everyone else they were responsible for. The only time that day it bothered me was when
Vee asked me to make a sale for her, one she could take the credit for herself. That was
outrageous in my eyes, all this because she couldn’t come back to the office with a lower number
of sales than a newer person, in this case, me. She was the more experienced CT, so instead of
working harder, she started asking me, someone who had been in the company for less than 2
weeks, to help her with sales. Now, I understand she didn’t speak Spanish, and I offered my
translation services whenever they were needed, but doing the whole work and getting nothing
from it, didn’t sit right with me.
The same security guard from my last time there showed up again announcing we had to leave
immediately. Vee had talked to him earlier in the day and promised we wouldn’t be there for too
long, but that had been hours ago. We packed everything and I suggested we move to the
location where I had met Coralie and Karim last time, El Pilón. It was a 5-minute drive, and we
could continue our work there with no problem and no security to ask way too many questions.
We headed there with the hope we would find at least one customer, but there was barely anyone
there. Vee had a rehash coming to meet her there that was taking way too long (by the way, it
was a Spanish speaker, so I would probably have to do the talking), but it was getting late, the
time to drive back to the office was coming, and we had no progress in our mission to help
Hannah out. The three of us sat in the car, admitted defeat, and the girls announced they were
going to smoke weed before heading back, and with relief, I said I would join in too.
I loved it. I felt numb on my way back and was in need of a relaxer. The ride was an hour, so we
had time to get high, and then get a bit sober again. Vee was going on and on about the job, about
her training skills, about what we had done for Hannah, how she had given so many apps to other
people and they would never do the same for her. Funny she should say that. She had this weird
competition with me, saying that I made more money than her that day, and it would not look
good for her as the leader of the car ride. I didn’t care about that, I decided to ignore it because I
had fun that day, and good results, that was all that mattered to me. I also made sure to tell
Hannah what I had done for her did not need repayment of any kind, she could have it.
Vee was always an interesting character for me. I heard a lot of stories about her, and Nathalia
didn’t seem to like going to the field with her that much. Despite the fact she tried to make me do
a sale for her, I still loved going to the field with her. She gave me a long motivational speech, I
enjoyed that since I was high as a kite, it all sounded life-changing at the time, but I don’t really
remember what that was all about now. Regardless, I had my first day as part of them, and I liked
it, I liked that I was fully involved, and now I could finally smoke weed with them, among other
things. We reached the office very late for the settle-up, Alyssa was not happy about it, she
complained to Vee, and then opened a big smile and asked how my first day promoted was. As
expected, I said it was great, and the results spoke for themselves. I met Nathalia at the office
heading out home, and I joined her to get the bus. We talked about how depressed she was about
it, how she cried on her boyfriend’s shoulder every night when she got home. I felt bad for her, I
also hated this, but I didn’t feel as bad as she did, for me it was okay, I could handle it for a
while, and I was having a good time getting to know these people. We split at Broadway station,
I went on with the bus to Copley and headed home.

2. Lorrie – Introducing Fields Corner

From the day before I knew I was going to the field with Lorrie, she told me that herself. She
was the most experienced out of the CTs, and she had been there for the longest, which gave her
a lot of control in picking and choosing who was going to the field with her. I had been
discussing this with Nathalia previously, we wanted to both be CTs so we could go out together,
going to the field with a friend would always make the job a little easier. She needed to be
promoted as well, but she wasn’t making any effort to do it, I didn’t understand how. In my eyes,
I got promoted very easily; I was put with the high rollers (people who make the most money in
the office), so I always had good days in terms of sales, I didn’t even know it was happening
until Alyssa informed me of my said promotion. Nathalia kept using that to say I was better at
everything anyway so it made sense for me, but she couldn’t do it. I hated when she used this
excuse because I wasn’t better than her at anything other than faking discontent better… Not sure
how that helped me so far. But I felt bad for her, I could see how she really hated this job, she
couldn’t put any effort into it even if she tried.
As I said before, I wasn’t on the same level as Nathalia was. It wasn’t an excruciating pain to
show up there every day, it was okay. I thought everything was bullshit, I could tell that was
something suspicious about it, but I was making friends, having fun, and discovering new things
about myself on the field. They also emphasize that a lot; how the field is supposed to teach you.
Teach me what? I’m not sure, but listening to that all the time made me believe I was learning
something. I mean, it was true I learned how to deal with harassment better, I also learned how to
fake it better, and learned how corporate America is filled with crap, so I can definitely say I
learned something. It’s calculated how they create in you the idea “Well, even if I’m not agreeing
with everything, at least I’m learning”, and that gets you to stay.
That was also the day of my first leader’s meeting. Whenever the Account Executives presented
the same principles over and over for a designated Corporate Trainer, the rest of the CTs also
known in the office as “Leaders”, at 9 AM, beginning of office hours, would go to a Leader’s
meeting, to learn whatever leaders had to learn to be better leaders. The meeting was indeed
different from presenting principles; we had to say good morning whenever our names were
called out, tell whatever the results of the day before (or the week before, if it was a Monday),
and then state the goal for that day, alongside the territory we were going and with who. In the
end, we were supposed to say good morning to someone else on our team, and it would go on
until everyone on that team had spoken, then we would switch to the other teams. After all the
CTs shared their sales report, we would go on to listen to one of the bosses teach us something
about the field, the training, the recruiting, the networking, the territories, or whatever else would
come to their minds. I don’t remember the topic from this first meeting, but they were so
repetitive that I’m sure I listened to one of the managers reteach it multiple times anyway.
As we were getting ready to leave that morning Lorrie tapped on my shoulder to inform me that
she and I would be getting a ride from Neyo. I went with her to meet him and Karim, the Spanish
guy, in the parking lot, so we could go to our location. I had been talking about Karim with
Nathalia, Catarina, and Adriana (the newest addition to our Little Rebels team) and we all agreed
he was very uncomfortable to be around. He would interrupt the managers sometimes during
morning meetings, he would creepily approach girls all the time, he was always rude to
everyone, and had the biggest ego in the world, he thought he was better than everybody else.
Another great trait he possessed was to talk endlessly, even when no one else was listening, he
would just keep talking to himself. Safe to say, that I was not happy about sharing a car ride with
him again, but since I didn’t have a car, I had to deal with it while practicing my selective
hearing skills.
Lorrie had told me before that Fields Corner was our territory for the day. It wasn’t so far from
the office, so Neyo dropped us there and went on his way. Fields Corner was slightly different
from the other locations I had been to so far. I noticed it didn’t have as much movement as the
other places. Lorrie assured me the territory picked up around 3 PM, so the first hours would
look dull, but I shouldn’t worry about it, she was a specialist. She explained to me that she had
this territory fixed for every Tuesday and Friday, she had been there every day of the week for
weeks, and through her field research, she found the best days to go were these two. And she
wasn’t exaggerating, she owned that place, and she knew everybody. Lorrie was this short black
American girl, with an assertive personality, and confidence. She seemed rough on the outside
but was the sweetest on the inside, we got along pretty fast.
Since the first part of the day the foot traffic was slow, we took the time to get to know each
other a bit more. She told me she used to live close to there, that’s why she was familiar with the
area. We shared our boy stories, I told her about the boy from before and about the new guy JJ,
who I wasn’t so sure about. Lorrie told me about her guy, who used to work at the company as
well, she had been seeing him for a while, but they hadn’t made it official yet. She also helped
me practice my pitch, identified what I needed to improve, and made me repeat it multiple times
until I said it better and more confidently. We made applications in the meantime, it was an
extremely pleasant day, nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary, and the low results of the
beginning were not scaring Lorrie the slightest. She was confident in the final results, so she
played music on her portable speaker, bought some McDonald’s for the both of us, and chatted
with me all day, just letting destiny attract people naturally to our table.
And it worked! Not for a minute she was bothered by it, she was sure of herself. I was bothered
though; I remember that as being the first day I ever worried about my sales results. I hadn’t in
the past, but for a few hours in Fields Corner I lost what they call “attitude on the field”,
basically meaning you get frustrated by external elements that make you perform on low quality,
instead of being a robot and smiling and waving at people the whole time. I was also reading
Nathalia's complaint extensively about going out with Coralie and this other girl Montana,
saying she was always betrayed by Alyssa’s choices, and she would never put her with good
people or good locations. I would just tell her to get promoted faster, in my head that meant
freedom for us, we could work however we wanted, so the solution was clear. That was naïve of
me, and thankfully Nathalia saw that before I did.
When we arrived in the first place, there was another set up for free phone services right next to
where we had set up ours. I had been in a similar situation twice before; with Coralie on the first
day, where she escaped the situation by leaving and finding another location, and with Neyo on
the first day we went out together, but the guy didn’t stay for long, and there were no friendly
relations between us and them, they were supposed to be competition. So, I didn’t know what to
expect from our competitors that day, and they indeed seemed to have way more people around
their table than us (but they also had tablets, maybe that’s why). However, Lorrie was friends
with one of the guys, she had been in Fields Corner so much, that she knew even the
competition. Her friend’s name was Godwin, a very nice tall black American man, who
explained to me he was in another company just like ours, but they worked with another client, it
was not the same brand of phone services. The three of us spent some time talking, but we also
understood that whenever a customer showed up, we had to go back to action.
Once you learn the supposed competition is a hard worker just like you, it’s harder to see them as
competition anymore. Whenever someone didn’t qualify through their system, the other guys
would send them to us, and vice versa. With the extra help, and with Lorrie’s charming “I don’t
give a fuck” personality, we achieved good results that day. We even had customers sign up just
to help us out, like this specific guy who kept trying to convince his friend on the phone to not
beat someone up, was extremely amusing. We were pretty satisfied, and at around 5 PM Neyo
informed us he was coming to pick us up, right at the time the last customer stopped at the table
wanting a phone. I helped the lady, she only spoke Spanish so I did the best I could with her, and
the fastest too. I was running against time, trying to do it faster than traffic would allow Neyo to
get there but it didn’t work. Before I could activate the phone, he arrived with Karim.
Those who never had to activate a brand-new free government phone might not understand, but
that takes a while. We had a better offer, like the upgrades that didn’t have the same problem, but
the customer that day wanted the free one, the government phone. These phones were slow, took
forever to turn on, and took the longest to give us the confirmation on the app, meaning we could
give them out to the customer. Although I tried my best to get it all done, we ended up having to
wait for the confirmation, and just because we wanted to be done with it, it seemed to be taking
longer than normal. In the meantime, Karim was getting stressed over his train again, so he
started making a scene about him being late. Not only he was extremely rude to me for wanting
to stay for a free phone, but also rude about my Spanish skills, he kept saying to Neyo and Lorrie
I couldn’t really speak Spanish, and that was also slowing the process. He was annoying and
selfish always, but that day it especially got to me. Everyone was upset, everyone wanted to
leave, but I wasn’t going to let the customer leave without the phone just because of him. It was
the job, he had to understand it.
Once that was done, we could finally leave the field and head back to the office. Pretending as if
nothing had happened, Karim was talkative as usual in the car, blabbing about his daughter and
how much money he had. I can remember he also said something very dumb about comparing
Portuguese and Brazilians as if they were the same, and that was stupid. As soon as he stepped
out of the car, I went on and on about how unpleasant he was, and so did everybody else. Neyo
even pointed out the fact that he acted out mostly with the girls in the office, never the guys,
which got me even more mad. I talked about it the whole way there and told everyone at the
office what had happened. I didn’t think about repercussions, and I enjoyed that now I was a CT,
my complaints were heard by them, and it made me feel part of the team. Once I had spread my
discontent regarding Karim, I finished the settle-up, stood around for a bit, and then headed
home. Before I left, Maya joyfully let me know she found out the next day we were going to the
field together.

3. Maya – Bad attitude saved by a pleasant walk

The next morning went the same as usual. I arrived an hour earlier at the office since now I was a
CT that was expected of me. As a CT you are also responsible for teaching principles to the AEs
and watching them present them back to you. That made it so much easier for Nathalia to finish
her checklist, of course. I allowed her to make a million mistakes because we just wanted to get
done with it. Nathalia told me she was going out that day with Reggie, which was great news, he
was the max-out guy, so the profit part of the promotion would be taken care of. He might not
have been the best trainer for me, but now I knew his style I could handle it easily, and for
Nathalia, it was the same. Contrary to her thoughts about Coralie, she respected Reggie because
she understood he worked hard, and going to the field with him meant money too. Daffaldo also
came to inform me that day that his checklist was almost done, and he was working hard on his
promotion as he had promised me.
When I told Nathalia I was going with Maya that day she told me with pity in her voice that
Maya wasn’t good at sales. I hadn’t gone out with her yet, so I wasn’t aware of her performance,
I hadn’t been at leaders' meetings before to know her results, and I didn’t remember paying
attention to what she said in it the day before. Maya had good relations with everyone in the
office and was always enthusiastic about the job, I had never seen her frown even once, and I
wasn’t concerned about the sales aspect, I was excited to get to know her more since that was the
recurring theme for everyone I went to the field with. What most excited me about working in
this company was getting to know new people every day, and being able to learn their stories in
the process. That happened both with the customers and with my coworkers, every time I went to
the field with someone new, I made a new friend. Even when it wasn’t so smooth and organic
sometimes (I’m talking about you Reggie), it was at least an interesting experience. That day
wasn’t different.
Maya got a ride for us from a guy named Jeff. I had seen Jeff at the office before but never
properly talked to him. He was this very tall and slim dude, with long dreadlocks, amazing style,
and a calm personality. We barely talked that day, but I listened to their conversation on the way
to our location, they seemed cool, and I liked both of them. The territory that day was Groove
Hall again, the same place I’d been with Neyo a week before. Being in the same place again that
you had good days before gives a false security sensation. “If I’ve done well there once, I can do
it again!”. We never know what the universe has in storage. Still, we confidently went to the field
that day with a lot of KILT. At the leaders’ meeting, Maya had told everyone she was going to
push hard to reach both of our goals, so when Jeff dropped us off and we almost immediately got
two people at our table, it seemed like she prophesized great results for our first day.
The first couple of customers weren’t able to qualify for the free phone, yet we weren’t worried,
it was the beginning of the day, and a lot of people seemed to be passing by, someone would
qualify and start our system. A girl around Maya’s age approached our table, and we were able to
convince her to try. When the result came back positive, we all celebrated. We had a little party at
our table just for her, the first customer of the day. Everything had gone smoothly, she didn’t
need additional information required to qualify, and whatever document we needed she had right
there with her anyway, she had just come from the DMV. Sometimes when you work with sales,
especially those that require qualification, and not just the will of the customer, you have this one
process that goes by so quickly and easily, with no drama, no troubles, only green lights
everywhere, and that is the most pleasant thing that could happen on the field.
These processes can take a long time, often request documentation no one has available to them
ever, and deny people’s applications for the tiniest details. Having an application go so easily
always calls for celebration, but celebration also catches people’s attention. We were dealing
with the girl’s application final steps, and talking to another new customer who had just stopped
for us, when a big woman, full of anger approached our table. She had a phone in her hand, the
most expensive of our upgrades, and she was furiously yelling for attention from us, saying she
had been robbed. Maya took care of the situation immediately by herself, she gave attention to
the woman while I handled things at the table, but the situation seemed to keep aggravating. For
a while, I got scared. I had never seen an unsatisfied customer complain that aggressively before.
From what I understood, she had bought two phones from this Indian girl, in a table setting just
like ours, and one of the phones got lost and the other one stopped working, so she wanted her
money back for the failed purchases.
It was fair for her to be outraged at this, she had paid $300 for two phones with a promise of
never having to worry about paying another phone bill again, and now neither of them worked,
and she was short $300 still. I understood the anger of feeling like you were scammed, especially
for a phone, an item people use for basic communication, it’s incredibly hard to live in society
without it. But at the same time, we were not the ones who could do anything for her, we were
not putting that money in our pockets, and we settled up with our manager at the end of the day.
Also, we were a tiny part of an enormous operation, and even if we wanted to help that lady, we
couldn’t, we were not the responsible ones. Since she said it was an Indian girl, we figured it was
either Vee or Sans, the only two Indians in our office, so we called Vee to try to calm the lady
down while we figured out what to do with our other customers who had been watching all this
scene play out. But the woman wasn’t getting any calmer.
The first girl who had been waiting for the phone and now was just there watching for our
protection, was getting heated up by the minute. The more the lady yelled at us, the more the girl
wanted to confront her. The girl was not alone, she was accompanied by two male friends, that
also were outraged at the situation. In the meantime, I had no idea what to do, I wanted to panic
and start crying but the situation was getting out of control fast. One of the girls’ friends started
advancing in the direction of the woman indicating he was willing to physically fight his way to
shut her up, to which she responded by putting her fists up and getting ready for it. Maya and I
stood between the two, Maya trying to control the lady, and me trying to talk down the guy from
getting in a fight because of us. As an international in the US, you never want trouble with the
police, and that whole situation was about to reach that point.
Somehow Maya convinced the woman to calm down and I convinced the girl with the two guys
to let us deal with the situation. After realizing she wasn’t getting anything out of us, the woman
left with the promise of getting her money back (I do hope she did, but it wasn’t going to come
out of my pocket). We all breathed in relief when we saw her in the distance, that had been long
and full of drama. The girl then felt okay to leave us there, complimented us (but mostly Maya)
for handling it so well, asked if we were hiring, then took her phone and the three of them left.
After that whole event we felt tired, at least I felt tired, it demanded a lot of energy out of me, so
this is where my KILT started to go down a little bit.
Once things were done and we were alone again at the table, we saw a competitor approach;
another table with phones (and tablets). It was a girl very young, very informal, and very
unpredictable. Following Lorrie’s footsteps, Maya also from the jump started a friendly
relationship with the girl. And it worked, the girl was talking to us all afternoon. She told us her
whole life story, she had come to Boston to live with a guy, but then she got robbed, she had
nothing but clothes in her body and her cellphone. She clicked with Maya way more than she did
with me, but that made sense, they were of a similar age, and both were extremely talkative,
enthusiastic, and outgoing. So, mostly they talked between themselves about video games and
Gen Z stuff I wasn’t familiar with. It wouldn’t bother me on a regular day, it was nice to see them
bond so fast and so easily, but on that particular Wednesday, it was bothering me. It’s not that I
wanted to participate in the conversation, or that I was feeling left out, but it was because I was
bored, there was no one around, and people were not signing up for the free phones, there was
nothing for me to do.
Maya noticed my attitude getting worse by the minute, so she started to give me more attention.
Although she was very young at the time, Maya was very wise and could mature if the situation
requested it from her. That’s why we bonded so well, and we had a lot of time to bond, the
location was completely dead that day. We had nothing else to do other than talk to each other
and have fun. For Maya, that was easier, other than forming a new close friendship with
someone, I watched Maya get the whole office self-defense classes just by complimenting
someone’s bike, she walked holding hands with a baby across the street with the mother’s
consent, befriend everyone working in the area that day, and even get weed from a previous
satisfied customer. The girl acted like the mayor around, and she was treated as such. I loved
spending time with Maya that day. She was trying to distract me from our lack of sales as much
as she could. She went on to tell me that the weekend was her birthday, and she invited everyone
from the office, including me, to a club on Saturday to celebrate. And, speaking of that, she
ended up filling me in with all of the office gossip I needed to catch up on.
Turns out I was wrong, Neyo and Coralie were not together, but instead, Coralie and Reggie
were, as well as Nehemiah and Sans, the other Indian girl I hadn’t got to hit the field with yet.
She also revealed a guy from our office named Manny tried to date her, but she didn’t want
anything to do with him. We laughed about it, then she went on to show me what her type of man
was. Nothing against Manny, but Maya was more into white guys, as she told me, all her
previous love interests had been blond, white Americans, so many didn’t stand a chance. That
day she also told me that was her last week, and possibly also our first and last day on the field
together. She had gotten another job as an assistant to a politician. That made sense, I thought,
she was basically a natural politician herself, so it would fit perfectly.
Maya had been in the company for a few months now, and it wasn’t working for her, so it was
the perfect time to quit, and it made sense. She told me that when she quit everybody was
emotional, and they made sure she knew she had a home there whenever she needed or wanted to
come back, it all ended on good terms. “How nice,” I thought, “I hope when it’s my turn to quit
it’s gonna be the same”. And, as if she read my mind, she asked me what my goals were in the
company. I told her I was enjoying it, but I wasn’t sure about it yet, it seemed easy, so I stayed
around to see where it would lead me. She followed up by saying “Maria, I think you’re the next
Coralie”. Those words terrified me. I thought Coralie was amazing, I admired her so much
already even if we barely had met, but the “next Coralie” wasn’t something I took as a
compliment. I didn’t want to be the next Coralie, that would mean I had to stay there, and that
was not what I was looking for. I shared that with Maya, which was received well.
To be honest, I was afraid Alyssa would see me in the same way. At around the same time, I
noticed her attitude towards me was different than how she acted with other people. Not that I
was the only one, but I was part of the group of people she liked, and treated better. It was easy
to compare because I had Nathalia’s point of view during this time. From the start, Nathalia
wasn’t getting there early, wasn’t pretending to be excited about principles and presentations, and
wasn’t going to any team nights, so pretty much she was soft quitting from the first week of the
job. I think what helped her see the bullshit from the start was the fact that she wasn’t making a
lot of sales like Catarina, and I were, so the manager responsible for her (in this case, Alyssa)
didn’t put any effort toward her growth in the company. She didn’t bond with anyone, she wasn’t
interested in the learning part either, so of course she didn’t get special treatment from the boss.
I, on the other hand, did everything opposite that Nathalia did, and tried to leave a positive mark
on the experience, but I didn’t know that it was going to be what sucked me into the business.
We continued throughout our day being mostly bored and talking shit about people while waiting
for time to pass so we could call Jeff to pick us up. The other girl also selling phones had to go at
some point and we were left there waiting for our time to go. This guy with a dog showed up and
started to make up conversations with us at our table. Earlier, the same man had asked for my
phone number, which I unknowingly gave him thinking he was interested in the products, but he
was more interested in me. Maya and I engaged with him for a bit, and as I was trying to figure
out how to get out of the situation, we heard screams from the other side of the street. Turns out,
there was a fight happening, and a knife got involved. As I explained before, Groove Hall can be
dangerous when it’s getting dark, and even more if it is just two girls alone. The fight didn’t look
like it was going to end anytime soon; the more aggressive the subjects got, the more scared for
our safety we were. We agreed it was time to go home. We called Jeff, informed him of the
urgent situation, and waited with a few guys around while he came to pick us up.
Jeff was trying to reach his own goals for the day and was having as much trouble as we were.
He considered taking us back to his location so we could at least try getting the minimum of
applications required daily of us (6), but we just gave up on the idea and went back to the office.
It was as important to be on time as it was to be by standards, we had to calculate which one was
more beneficial. Although getting shit from Alyssa for being late was worth it in most cases, in
some situations the risk is high and the payoff is low, that’s when you get no additional apps
(applications) during the extended time you just wasted. The urgency was due to the ‘settle up’
after we came back from the field. We had to scan the phones we brought back to confirm which
ones we had sold, then we would hand the cash to the manager to account for the ones that were
missing and help organize the bags for the next morning last, it also included cleaning the office.
All those tasks took time, and I didn’t want to arrive home late if I had to wake up early.
This was the first time I did it, but the more I remained in the company, the more time I stayed
“after hours”. We were told it was off work duties because it’s after the field ends, and you are
free to go home, but instead, you stay and help with the office. We are technically still working;
we would plan the car rides (the duos/trios), designate territories for trainers with new trainees,
pack the bags for the next day, vacuum the whole office, clean the whiteboards, throw the trash
out, cleaned the tables, talked strategy for the day/week; all of it entirely for free. And they tell us
we should do it because it’s the same as taking care of our own business. If we’re not putting in
the effort now, what does that tell us about our futures? So, let me correct myself, we were not
technically still working, we were tirelessly working for (some of us) 10 to 12 hours a day and
getting paid almost nothing for it. Only the commission; the sales. And if you have a bad day?
Well, you better pick it up on the next ones, because even though you are demanded to spend
your entire life inside the business, if you have a bad day that is on you and your loss of attitude.
The problem is never them, it's always you.
When I came back to the office that Wednesday, I was told by multiple different people the issue
with my results that day came from my bad attitude on the field. I agree that sales are the type of
job where you can’t let your emotions show too much, or else people won’t trust you to offer
them anything. And I had seen how that works in practice; whenever my attitude changed, fewer
people stopped to listen to me pitch the free phone service. The secret was to fake it, but how? I
kind of already knew that, and it had worked before. I’ve had bad days with good results, and
even after crying on the field and having puffy eyes, I’ve made applications. So, what was so
different that day? Why couldn’t I do the same thing? Alyssa then declared out loud something I
would listen to a million times after that, the same way; “A week can’t have 5 good days. There’s
always a bad day, 2 okay days, a good day, and a great day. So today was your bad one, that
means tomorrow is going to be good!”. Once again stating that it is okay to fail one time as long
as you pick it up afterward, you can’t let your day dictate your week.
Talking to Alyssa indeed helped me feel less bad for giving bad results under the minimum
required. She was very considerate, tried to motivate me, and assured me I was going to feel
better after Crew Night.
Oh, shit.
Crew nights, I forgot about that.
In addition to team nights every Thursday, we also had crew nights, that were the same concept,
the team getting together, but on Wednesday. Sometimes instead of everyone from the office,
crew nights will be about the separate manager’s teams, but other times it was all of us; like
having team night twice a week. At first, when I started in the company, crew nights were on
Wednesdays, but after realizing that making people stay late for a company event after hours
twice in a roll every week and still show up early the next morning was turning out to be an
impossible task, they switched it to Tuesdays. Crew night was also a little bit less formal, when
usually on team night we often went to bars, restaurants, bowling allies, or any place outside of
work, in crew nights we stayed in the office and watched movies, or went to one of the managers'
apartments and eat pizza and play games together.
I had promised I was going to the next crew night after escaping it the week before, but I just
wanted that awful day to end. I had my first ever bad day (sales-wise). Everything was okay to
go wrong except the money, having a day with a low quantity of sales meant I worked 8 hours
standing up in an unsafe place for absolutely nothing. I got maybe $10 that day… that’s nothing.
And so, everything is clear, just like the “after hours” at the office are not seen work, neither are
the team/crew nights. But they were. You were not supposed to go just to have fun, it was a
chance to network with your managers, other leaders, and new people. You shouldn’t smoke or
drink too much either because the managers were always watching, and they judged our actions
as if we were working. As I said before, everything in this business is personal, so even when
they say you're off work, you are really not, and the line between the two begins to blur.
I noticed Daffaldo was having the same issue, I could see all over his face how tired he was and
how much he didn’t want to join the crew night. We were both new, so a lot of pressure was put
on us. When he came back from the field, Daffaldo went straight to the atmosphere and started
presenting principles to the first CT he could find; he wanted to get promoted. He said to me
“Remember you said to finish my checklist by Friday?”, dramatically threw his checklist on the
floor with a bunch of other bullshit papers we received from the company every day, “It’s done”
he concluded. I loved the theatricals, so I celebrated with him and told him I was impressed, he
was probably getting promoted before I had expected. We also casually slipped into the
conversation yawns and discussed how tired we were long enough that a plan came up. If we
both went to Alyssa and said we were leaving together to get the bus, she wouldn’t have time to
be angry, and we wouldn’t take the whole guilt shame to ourselves, we would split it. The plan’s
execution worked, and 5 minutes after we went in to talk to her, we were set free to go home and
finally get some rest.
We then went downstairs and smelled the first scent of freedom. We had decided to walk to
Broadway station together since the weather was nice, and the walk always helps clear the head.
I usually join either Nathalia or Catarina to go home, but both of them were gone by this hour, so
Daffaldo kindly offered to come with me, he insisted he did that every night anyway. Our walk to
Broadway station, although brief, was very pleasant, I told him about my day, the knife fight, and
the crazy woman who almost fought with a customer. He also told me about what happened to
me in the field, and we talked again about the fact we were from the same school, and had
friends in common, but still had never met before. Just before we arrived at Broadway, I told him
I was going to continue the walk all the way to Copley, which added 50 minutes to the journey.
After moving to Boston, I became an avid walker, I enjoyed long walks when the weather was
nice, and that always had helped me think better. Then Daffaldo asked if he could join me, and
we continued our way to Coplay Square and resumed our conversation.
We didn’t know the way there, and Google Maps was giving us confusing turns, adding extra
time to our journey which was already very long. We had time, and nothing else to do but walk
and talk, so that’s what we did. But now, since we had a lot of time, we went deeper in our
conversation. Daffaldo straight up asked me how the pay structure was, and I didn’t hesitate to
inform him it was commission; he should be prepared. He was confused, as he should be
listening to disturbing news like that. By talking we realized the money we made there maybe
wasn’t going to be enough to cover our expenses. We dwelled on that while we smoked a
cigarette together. The path was long, but not for one minute it felt dreadful, it was fun. If there
was one thing I realized, is that Daffaldo and I had a lot of fun together, we would laugh most of
the time we spent with each other. It felt natural to be around him as if I had known him all my
life, so I had no problem sharing secrets with him.
I told him how truly tired I was, and I was tired of faking the opposite. In that moment, unlike
whenever I hung out with other people from work, didn’t have to fake it. At some point I started
spilling all the gossip I found out from the past 3 days as a CT. I told him about the problem with
Karim, the dating scene inside the office, and Maya’s upcoming birthday party; preempting him
on how the company actually operated once he got to that corporate structure level. Daffaldo
didn’t seem to be that much into gossip though, he explained to me he was favorable to a
professional workplace, and relationships inside the business always turn into drama. I agreed
with him. At my previous job, back in Brazil, I could barely be friends with the people I worked
with because of how formal the environment was, and I wasn’t looking for more drama in my
life. We bonded over what we agreed on and discussed with enthusiasm what we didn’t. What I
also noticed was his actions towards me again; he acted like a gentleman. He would do little
things such as standing at the side of the street where the cars were while we were walking, and
would even switch whenever we traded places by accident. It didn’t feel like he was trying to
seduce me, I felt taken care of. I could tell he walked with me to make sure I was getting to my
destination safe and sound, and I appreciated him for it.
It was a light in the mix of everything that happened that day. He was as tired as me, yet we
sparked a little energy into each other with that walk. Presenting it this way may give the
impression it wasn’t such a big deal, but for the whole day I had felt scared and frustrated, and
now I was being cared for, by someone who understood my needs. I had told Liza before about
the job, and she spread the gossip to everyone else in our group of friends. Mostly I don’t care
about that, but this time I felt hurt. All our friends from school were judging what we did because
Liza felt it was within her power to share that without thinking if I would’ve wanted it to be.
From this point on I felt uncomfortable with my friends, just like the conference had warned me
it would be. Indeed, I didn’t want to talk to anyone outside about what Nathalia, Catarina, and I
did, they just didn’t get it. That also made that moment with Daffaldo more important, I had met
a lot of nice people that I liked, but did I trust them? Did I feel safe with them in the same way? I
wasn’t sure yet.
After walking for nearly an hour, taking pictures of weird cars on the way, smoking cigarettes,
laughing at the stupidest dad jokes, and, at some point, stopping to get Tasty burgers, we then
split in Copley Square, he went to another station, and I continued to my house. I met JJ, as I was
doing every other day that week, and smoked with him, listened to him go on about his day-to-
day as a preschool teacher, and finished by filling him in on all sordid details about what
happened at work, with names and locations because I knew he never fully paid attention to what
I said anyway. In this case, I knew it was safe to share because it wasn’t going anywhere else.