Double Down on Dog Food Instead!

Tara Bull, Division Manager of Accounts Receiveable at Credit Recovery Associates (CRASS) in Kankakee, IL holds a strategy meeting with Chief of Accounting, Konrad “Big Bag” Teirant and Chief Executive Officer Mack E. Avelli. Tara thinks CRASS can increase their bottom line by using their synergetic mindset to implement the new increased production metrics.

“Making our staff work harder for the same pay will move the goalposts,” Tara insists.

Ms. Bull is Sybil Kibble’s supervisor. She asks her Lead Collections Representative Sybil Kibble how her team would best achieve those metrics. “My double-down tactic always works,” Sybil advises her superior as she munches on dog biscuits. “By telling our debtors to pay twice as much as they can afford, they will always pay more.”

“Get ‘er done” Ms. Tara Bull tells Sybil. “I do not care how it gets done. The ends justify the means.” A hovering Mack. E. Avelli flashes an evil grin and a thumbs-up gesture.

Sybil and her team spend the eight hour work day making the calls, even skipping breaks at Tara’s insistence. Dale none too happy, runs in place at his cubicle to kill the stress, checking his heart rate on his beeping wristwatch. Mikey does his usual cleaning, making the toilets clean and sparkly at his own pace. However, something does not get done.

“Sybil! Get over here now!”

Sybil hangs up on her angry caller and works her way over to Ms. Bull’s office.
“Yes?”
“You all are not making the metrics!” growls a livid Tara Bull as she chucks a pile of papers at Sybil. “Bring in the bucks or I will fire you all!”

Dale decides to try a different approach. He offers payment plans, and goes around Sybil and Ms. Bull’s hard rules. He finds his stress levels decrease as he is able to help his customers pay their bills and empathizes with them at the same time, as Dale was once down and out himself.

Sybil tries her might and cannot not double down to make her double bonus/Form 4 and metrics. She thinks to herself that if she could go home and work, she could call people around suppertime and reach more people. After all, it works for telemarketers, right?

Sybil drives her Chrysler LeBaron home, logs into her computer and starts making calls. Not long after 5:30 PM, Sybil hears a knock at the door.

“Who can this be, dag-nammit?” Sybil thinks to herself.

Image: a black-and-white cartoon of a young, mixed race woman with a cat in her lap.

Sybil opens the front door to her stone McMansion, next to the four-stall garage. “Hi Sybil. I am sorry to bother you. My cat Holly is missing and I am terrified. Have you–

“Your cat is not here, Kitty, go away,” barks Sybil as she goes back to her typing and calling.

As Kitty searches high and low for her dearest Holly-Cotton all over Kankakee and Bradley, Sybil’s Form 4s pile up. “I am winning! I am getting my Form 4’s! Gimme my Form 4’s!”

Sybil is so excited to collect all that money and make bonuses as a result via the Form 4 bonus and hopefully please her boss, Ms. Tara Bull.

“Man, I gotta pinch a loaf,” Sybil says aloud as she gets up after her last debtor hung up on her.

Meanwhile, a certain Miss Holly-Cotton, who has been hiding out in Sybil’s rather large house, needs a place to go herself. She hops up on Sybil’s messy desk and starts sniffing around. She sniffs a certain pile of papers and jumps on top of it, highlighting the entire stack!

Sybil exits the washroom, one of many, after springing a leak. She immediately spots Kitty’s cat Holly on top of what used to be a pile of Form 4’s.

“Oh my gawd, get the heck out of here you little brat-cat!” Sybil shouts at poor Miss Holly-Cotton as if she had done something wrong.

Holly gladly exits the house of Sybil and enters the loving arms of Ms. Kitty, who is waiting outside after having searched all Kankakee County for her long lost fur-baby. Meanwhile, Sybil returns to a useless pile of forms, formerly known as Four. Sybil doubles down on her nightly bowl of doggie chow.

Image: a dimly lit, black and white cartoon of a slender, 60-year old woman with blonde hair, wearing a headset. A computer workstation is seen in the background, dog treats on the desk. Text on computer monitor: "CRASS LLC"