Don's new strategy

In my company of twelve sales people, I am usually among the top three for monthly totals. In fact, September and October I led the pack. (Pat, pat, pat.) Usually it's the other rep in Richmond, Don, who is my biggest competition. In November he beat me by only about $1,000. But who's counting?

This afternoon I walked into the office, and was greeted by my boss saying, "What are you doing in here? You need to be out selling! Look at these numbers from last week. You'd better start hitting the pavement."

He said it in a way that I knew he was teasing, but I still got a little nervous as I rounded the corner of his desk to look at the sales report over his shoulder. I had felt like I was having a good week last week, how bad could it be?

I had no reason to be nervous. Turns out that I had quite a respectable first week of December. Then my eyes scanned the page and I caught Don's numbers.

He stomped me.

"Geez, what the hell did Don do last week?"

"I don't know, I was asking him the same thing. I'm guessing he gave out a lot of BJ's," he joked.

"Humph. His jaw must be pretty sore then."

My boss laughed, and walked out to the reception are to report my latest quip to the office ladies. I settled down at the table in the break room to do a little bit of work, and my phone rang. Don, to let me know of a product that was out of stock.

A few minutes later, my phone rang again. Don, to share a funny story that just happened to him in one of his accounts.

A few minutes later, my phone rang again. Don, to... dammit, I didn't care what he was calling to say anymore.

"Dude, if you keep calling me I won't be able to get any work done so that I can outsell you this week!" I fussed into the phone. "Wait a minute... now I see how you're doing it. Very sneaky."

"Ha ha. I wish that was my new strategy. Then maybe my knees wouldn't hurt so much. So anyway, I'm stuck in traffic right now in the same place you were earlier..."

As he rambled on, I smiled. And began hatching a plan to regain my lead.