Like I have been saying all along, the end of my sales program can NOT come soon enough. My final class is next week! Woo hoo. From the get go, there were pieces of the program that just rubbed me the wrong way. Day 1, I got put into a group of 9 with only ONE other woman. In picking a team name, the captain– a super suave prep charmer dude– insisted on something with “money” in it. Ugh, really? Well, I was outnumbered. Our team name became Team Money: Keep it 100. WTF does that mean, I wondered. Apparently, the Keep it 100 is from some rap song. Somehow I was designated the team scribe for our posters and tally scoreboard. I thought the Keep it 100 was like Keep the $100… you know, like I’m flush with cash so you just keep that extra bit. Nope. Got that wrong. The 100 is like 100 percent, not $100, so the saying means to keep things 100% or keep it real. Honestly, thank goodness I have had an entire lifetime of being a social and cultural misfit… this was YET another one of those occasions. And the only other woman on my team is a 20-something whose mom and sister are both Realtors. Fine, whatever. Team Money it is. Then, we had to come up with a team chant/cheer. I mean, usually, I’m not that creative with that team spirit stuff, so I had nothing to offer… Naturally, the chant was, “If it doesn’t make dollars, it doesn’t make cents. Ching, ching, ching” (with the motion of like sliding bills off a fat stack). Ugh. I mean, how money obsessed are we? I was so disgusted, but whatever. I didn’t have any ideas and whatever, be a team player and all. So fast forward several weeks and the coach is trying to get us to up our “financial thermostat”… like identify what our level is– below or above which, we get uncomfortable. So the thing is, I have a weird relationship with money. I like to save it, but I am not obsessed with acquiring things. Sure, I like a comfortable life but it’s not like I wish I had a yacht or Ferrari or personal jet or whatever. As it is, I already feel super blessed and spoiled. So we do this exercise where every day we receive a deposit of money and we have to spend it ALL by the end of the day. The next day, we get another infusion and it’s double the previous amount. We’re not allowed to save or gift the money. The idea is that people with high money goals know how they plan to spend it and that helps them push to hit that goal. So people are like doing fancy $100k+ cars and luxury bags and private jets and personal chefs… I dunno. I bought my parents a house and just invested in real estate mostly. But it just felt like a really materialistic exercise and after my day with the homeless lady, I just was not in the mood.

But the shit just kept flowing. We were instructed to each bring 20 $1 bills to class. The coach claimed that people have a weird relationship with money which often forces them to push it away, so this exercise is supposed to have us welcome and want money. Huh? So no joke: each person lies down on the floor. The teammates throw the dollar bills over him/her (like it’s raining money) while s/he exclaims, “I’m a money magnet,” over and over again and grabs at the money. I was so disgusted by this and yet… people on my team thought it was funny. They like took pictures and videos. WTF. Where the fuck am I???? There was something about it that felt so cheap and sleazy and after I came home and described it to John, we realized what it was. It was as if I were a prostitute being thrown dollar bills. And some people on my team even released the bills in that Ching, Ching, Ching fashion like you would see in rap videos. It was so fucking ridiculous.

And the thing is, my partner is that 23 y/o chick. She was totally into it. Like she totally knew the Keep it 100 line, the rap song, everything. I mean, I suppose there’s two decades of life between us. She’s sweet enough but I dunno. Clearly she didn’t read things the way I did. Just for some background: she’s also a pro golfer who has hung out with Shaquille O’Neil and shit, so obviously, we run in different circles.

Another example of the huge disconnect? The other day, she asked me: do you ever have meetings with potential clients where they just set an appointment with you so they can ask you out?

Um, no. I can’t say that has EVER happened to me. In real estate. In my other jobs. In anything. SMH. I mean, am I an alien to the nth degree or what?!?!?

Fortunately, after talking to John and my friend G and a few other peers, I am starting to see that I’m not alone in sensing all these red flags. Yesterday at the office, I talked with a lady who’s around my age and she revealed that every fucking week, during the class, she is counting down the hours and minutes AND wanting to run the fuck out of there every chance she gets. She also found the money magnet exercise super cheap and degrading. And she didn’t like the hyper focus on money in general. Not everyone is in real estate for the money! Anyway, I had a great conversation with her and it was just a relief to find someone who was on the same page. She also hates the scripts and referred me to a book that uses better language.

Then she also gave me a warning. She used to be a mortgage lender and she said the sales culture can be very destructive. She knows a lot of people who have gotten divorced, broke up their families, etc. bc they get caught up in the lifestyle. You work late hours, you work weekends, you have to meet lots of new people so there’s a lot of happy hours and partying and whatever. Be careful. I mean, honestly, I don’t think it’s a problem for a dowdy, awkward, alien like me, but it was interesting just hearing her perspective bc subconsciously, I had already noticed how many people in real estate are divorced…

I remember at the environmental agency, a colleague of mine divorced his wife a few years ago. The reason in their case was that she got all caught up in the “startup” lifestyle. And oddly, I’ve been saying to Bubs that my job is very much like working at a startup. I meant it more in the way of long hours and high stress plus the pressure of sales like when Bubs was in the game and ALWAYS thinking about work. But I guess there’s also some truth to the sales culture involving a lot of schmoozing. Anyway, something to keep in mind. I hope I keep my head on straight.