Sybil Kibble and her ma JoAnn take a meditation class at their local Buckstars in Bourbonnais at the annual Credit Recovery Associates (CRASS) work ReTreat offered to combat stress from calling to interrupt lunches and suppers of unsuspecting debtors, by asking them to repay dubious bills.
Do you like coffee? How do you take yours?
Every year on September 31, Kankakee debt collection firm Credit Recovery Associates (CRASS) wants staff to bring their parents in to have fun at their team-building events like the Medicine Pronouncing Contest, Browser Loading Race and Bill-Collector Speed Dating.
Collections Team Leader Sybil Kibble brought her ma JoAnn to enjoy learning how to bother people on the phone to ask for money they likely do not even owe, and her mother took 3rd prize in the CRASS Idol singing competition. Sybil took last place because her mouth was full of dog bones while she tried to belt a tune.
Also known as “International Thank A Debt Collector Day”, Kankakee bill-collector Sybil Kibble thinks this day is just keen. Next time she calls, throw her a dog bone or two to celebrate this uniquely moronic holiday (just not the Brand X kind).
“Since that party last week in the break room set the sprinkler system off, the ventilation system is all jacked up. We need to do some work ‘round here and move some people”, CRASS Maintenance Manager Mikey Philips tells Collections Team Lead Sybil Kibble.
Head-pounding bangs and fart-like drills are heard, making it hard to get calls made. A smoke-like, horse-manure stench emerges from a cubicle near Sybil’s. Sybil gets up to investigate.
“Smokey? Why are you smoking? Go outside. I do not want to smell that.”
“Oh, they moved me due to the construction going on. I sit near you now. Nice boots, Ms. Kibble!”
“Get on the phones and put your butt out now!”
Sybil walks away and reads the posted sign: “CONSTRUTION – WATCH YOU’RE STEP”
“Yeah, they construe things around here: spelling and grammar!” Sybil wisecracks and steps back to her cube.
Sybil calls a few debtors and logs off the autodialer. The poopy stench continues to waft her way. Sybil clogs her way over to Smokey again.
“Smokey? You have not made a single call!”
“Oh, just one more puff!”
“Get to work! This is a verbal warning!” Sybil sternly tells Smokey.
Sybil grimaces at the loud pounding and drilling, as well as the tobacco clouds eminating from Smokey’s cube. She logs onto her autodialer and collects more debts from her clients’ numbers.
After a particularly stressful escalated call, Sybil logs off the phones and puts her head down. Tired and hangry, she smells the crappy smoke. “I bet she is still horsing around.”
Sybil approaches Smokey, who is slouched down in her chair, her ear in her mobile phone. She is clearly not calling her debtors!
“That’s the witch. Blonde hair, reading glasses, black and white outfit with heeled boots.”
“Come into my office, NOW!” Sybil orders Smokey.
“No! I do what I want!” Smokey shouts at Sybil and continues her mobile phone conversation.
Sybil storms over to her cube to devise a plan.
Smokey leaves for lunch, and to buy more cigarettes, of course.
Sybil goes to Smokey’s cube and takes her ashtrays, goes out back and tosses them into the dumpster. She thoroughly checks her cubicle for any other ashtrays. Sybil then takes her trashcan and moves it to her own cubicle, stopping to dump any butts onto Smokey’s desk. “Since she is not doing any work, she does not need this, hahaha.” Sybil hides the trashcan behind her desk. Sybil then takes all the cups out of the break room and hides them in her cubicle, in case Smokey wants to use them for her butts.
Smokey returns for “work” and plops her bum down in her chair. “Dang, where my ashtray go?”
Smokey begins to pace around the office. She looks up and down the office for an ashtray.
“Dale, handsome fella, got an ashtray?”
“Nope. Do some work.”
“Linda, got an ashtray, my sweet friend?”
“No!”
“Mikey! Hey my cool dude! Got an ashtray?”
“I am trying to do some work here.”
Smokey spends the entire day pacing around the office bothering people.
“Hey Smokey!”
“Mr. Avelli! Oh, Mack, you look so handsome! Hey, do you have a—“
“Yes, I have your termination papers right here. Now go clean out your desk. You’re fired. You have thirty minutes to gather your belongings. We will mail your final paycheck, minus today’s payday as you did not do any work.”
We want to TP everyone in Kankakee County! On April 1st, come over to the headquarters of Credit Recovery Associates (CRASS) and get the scoop on poop! One brand spankin’ new roll for each customer! If you use both sides, it lasts twice as long! Run on down now to CRASS before Bern Cacca steals it all!
And while we’re at it, be sure to pick up some half-ply toiler paper recipes, courtesy of Wally Green!
CRASS Chief Executive Officer
Mack E. Avelli
PS: April Fools!
“Let’s make work fun again!” announces Clio Bersola, Human Resources Director and Glee Club president for Kankakee debt collection firm Credit Recovery Associates, LLC (CRASS). She got permission from big cheese Mack E.. Avelli to open up a classifieds’ section to all employees, since their therapy goat did not pass probation.
Leaked from the CRASS intranet, here are some of the ads posted by CRASS staff and their buddies.
CRASS Classifieds: No matter how long you work, an ad in the classifieds never stops working.
001 LOST AND FOUND:
Lost: My mind. Please help! Call Mack at 555-3700.
002 ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Wanted: The beast in my dreams…the one that makes them loony! Call Judithann Avelli at 555-FIND if you find him. Don’t tell my husband.
004 FREE CRAP
Free movie tickets for any of M’ladies who would love to adorn this tenderheart on a date to the multiplex. I tip my fedora to you. Email Damien Hurlbutt at connivingpimp@hautemail.con
006 AUCTIONS:
Auction at the corner of Wally and Green Streets. Half-ply toilet paper, finger ale, a date with Wally Green and more.
010 WHOLESALE, RETAIL AND WHATEVER:
Lifetime supply of Sitagin, Just like the energizer bunny commercial from 1991! $40. 815-555-0000.
Money for sale! $20 bills only $26. Call 1-900-IM-CHEAP. Only $10 a minute.
011 APARTMENTS, UNFURNISHED:
One room apartment with water, 1 3/5 baths, 2 windows, no pets allowed. Call 815-555-RENT and ask Sonya.
020 FARM ANIMALS:
The perfect animal for all your farm work! Many colors from which to choose and low maintenance too! Call the Parakeet Center for more information at 815-000-BIRD.
030 INFORMATION FOR SALE:
Underground alien bases! Flat Earth! The Deep State! Call Konrad at 000-UFO-RIDE to buy some information the MSMSG won’t tell you.
032 SERVICE FOR SALE
We scratch CDs, records and crush cassettes. Reasonable rates. Call Pat at 815-555-KRUSH.
100 VACATION SPACE FOR RENT
Swampland! Free port-a-potty with every stay. Call 815-0UT-HAUS and ask for Bernadette or just pay her a visit at night when she’s hungry.
120 AUTOMOBILES
BRRRRPPPPPPHPTTMOBILES! All makes and models of these teeny-weeny motorbikes. As low as $500, seats and tires extra. We also have plenty of lifted trucks to lift your ego. Call Brandon’s Imbecile Machines at 815-555-STINK. Free roses for the laaadeeeees!
Tara Bull, Accounts Receivable Manager at Credit Recovery Associates (CRASS) in Kankakee, IL holds a strategy meeting with the chief cooker of books, 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.
“By making our staff work harder for the same pay, we 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 white 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.
Sybil opens the front door to her rather oversized house. “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 Bee 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 hangs 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 locates a certain pile of papers and jumps on top of it, highlighting the entire stack.
Sybil exits the washroom after dropping off some kids at the pool. 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. She has lost out on her bonus.
Sybil doubles down on her nightly dish of comfort food, a bowl of Alpo. Yum!
As Hell’s Chief Operating Officer Satan unveils his newly procured “Welcome to Hell” sign — shown off by visiting intern Gothic Diana Ross — in-processing clerk for the newly damned Lucy Furr looks at her boss with visible dismay.
“Isn’t our new sign just peachy?” Satan asks Lucy as Diana continues to model by it, nearly getting hit a baker’s dozen times by the devil’s not-so-careful use of the pulley system.
“Couldn’t our money be better spent on improving working conditions? Hiring more people? Fixing the toilets?” asks the bully known for her tormenting of an autistic 20-something on their college trip to Italy.
“You have your own heated place for the rest of your life. Try being more thankful for the things you have,” Satan passive-aggressively demands of his clerk while sporting a devilish grin.
Meanwhile, communal narcadoodle Bernadette Cacca is still waiting to poop. All the other washrooms in Hell are closed for maintenance.
Listen to Dale leave a message for a debtor based after Sybil Kibble barfed up this silly idea:
“We need to increase our bottom line,” CRASS CEO Mack E. Avelli tells his entire staff in the board room.
“Size matters.”
Laughter fills the entire room.
“Our budget is only so big and we need to increase our revenue to exceed expenses. We could only give so much to the Optimal Club last year and we had to shortchange the Kankakee Medicine Pronouncing Competition, even though we had already committed. We need good ideas, only the best.
Dale raises his hand.
“I know. I have a really good idea. How about we do things the Dale way this year…”
Mr. Avelli sighs.
“No just listen up. I’m worth your time. How about we spend less money on charity? That way we will have more money for the things we need. It all makes sense. We can do things the way we have been doing them, or we can do things the Dale way.”
“That’s enough Dale. We need to look good for the community. Image is everything. Who will go next?”
“Maybe we can hire more people to cut back on overtime? I am swamped with purchase requests!” Linda Stay says.
“Nice idea, but work faster,” Mr. Avelli snarks.
Sybil raises her hand.
“Sybil Kibble! What is YOUR grand idea?”
“I know. How about we call up and say we are “Kristy” from Management. Ask the debtor to call us back. We have no Kristy working here. Block caller ID so the suckers will not know it is us!”
“Great idea Sybil! Change all scripts immediately and don’t forget to double down on every call, everybody!”
The collectors get to work.
Calls come in.
“I would like to talk to Crispy?”
“Crisco called. Hahahaha.”
“Is the Cisco kid? My router is stuck. Can you fix it?
“Yeah I hear I won a free trip to Frisco. When do I go?”
More calls roll in.
“Yeah I heard a manager called me. I wanna speak to the manager. This is Karen.”
Team Leader Sybil Kibble cannot keep up with the call volume. The Collections Representatives keep transferring all their calls to her because they keep asking for a manager. After all, the messages stated a manager called for them!
The phone system shuts down due to Denial of Service, in other words a system overload.
“What are we going to do?” CRASS CEO Mack E. Avelli asks Sybil Kibble in her office.
“Act more ethically next time?”
They share a laugh.”
“Carrier pigeons,” Mr. Avelli smirks.
It is CRASS business as usual.
MoronicArts 
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