I was driving in the hot Atlanta traffic when my friend Samantha called. She asked if we could meet for drinks that night and told me that she had a favor to ask. I instantly agreed; I'm pretty much always up for a few glasses of wine, and besides the fact that Samantha was my old college roomie, she was an attorney. She had just been extremely helpful to me negotiating my prenuptial agreement. (I got pretty much the best deal ever, but that's another story.) The point is that I would do anything for Sam, just as she would for me.
That afternoon, I joined her at a table at the restaurant, and we began our small talk. Eventually, she got to the point of the meeting.
"Brittany, I need your help with something," she began. "I have received a few threats at work."
"Oh my God! What happened?" I exclaimed.
"No, no, don't worry," she continued. "I'm sure that it's nothing that serious. I handle many negotiations for my law firm, and every now and then, of course, someone isn't happy with how it turns out. Sometimes they take out their frustrations by threatening me. 99% of the time it is simply someone venting or somehow trying to intimidate me. Something like that."
I had seen Samantha negotiate, if you could even really call it that. While she was an excellent attorney and could professionally negotiate strongly if she needed to, like in group meetings or board rooms, her true strength was in one on one meetings, specifically with male adversaries. Samantha was in her upper twenties now, but she still had the looks that she had back when we were Florida State cheerleaders. At 5'6" with a gorgeous face, a toned, tan body and a penchant for sexy suits, heels and even a hint of lingerie flashing when needed, her most effective "negotiating" truly consisted of Samantha flirting with the other party. She would pretend to pout when her counterpart suggested something she didn't like, and then she would giggle and smile and encourage him on as he eventually came around and began agreeing to all, or at least most, of her suggestions.
Many of her negotiation meetings followed the same formula. First, she would ask her opponent to go through, in detail, his entire proposal. She would pay attention as he started, but fairly quickly, she would appear to lose interest. As he droned on through the specifics, she would begin to nonchalantly fiddle about with a loose button on her shirt or begin to dangle a heel off her foot or start to straighten or smooth her stockings. It was always something slow, gentle and almost hypnotizing. As the man would inevitably begin to stammer and lose his place, Samantha would move closer, often lightly brushing against his arm, and begin to soothingly suggest her changes to the agreement. Most of the men were very receptive to her ideas at that point. Many guys tended to agree to things while not even realizing it.
It obviously didn't take much of a leap of faith to believe that some of these guys, or maybe even their clients, were getting pissed later after regaining their senses and realizing what had happened.
"So what do you need from me?" I asked.
"Well, I've decided to put in a burglar alarm, just to be safe, but I'm having some problems," Samantha went on to say that the pricing seemed outrageous.
"I thought that security systems were like $99," I said.
"I did too," she agreed, "But they're not. At least not exactly."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"According to the various companies' websites," and they are all about the same she clarified, "The basic system is only $99, but that only covers putting sensors on the doors to my condo. If I want to protect the windows, it can run from $50 to $100 per window."
I started to finally see where we were headed. "I take it you're not asking me to loan you a few hundred bucks for the window things," I joked.
She laughed, "No, just some help in haggling with a sales guy."
I was always the shopper and haggler of our group so I agreed to help. I went to her office the next day and collected all of the information that she had collected regarding a security system. She had certainly done her research; she had printed out the info from probably half a dozen companies. And, it looked like she was right, all of the offers seemed about the same price. I started calling the companies, and found that most try to sell you the things over the phone. This wasn't what I had in mind. I knew that we needed to meet with a sales rep in person in order to get the kind of deal Samantha wanted. Finally, one of the companies, Safe and Sound, agreed to send over a representative. I was told that the lead would get forwarded to the rep and that he would meet me at the condo at 5:00 the next evening. Samantha and I dressed like we were going clubbing the next evening and as the doorbell rang at 5:00, we were ready to work our plan. As I opened the door though, I knew that our preparations had been useless.
"Hi, I'm Lydia with Safe and Sound; I'm looking for Sam Jones."
There was a red-haired beauty standing there. She was younger than I was, and I was only 26 at the time, and she was wearing a short black skirt and a Safe and Sound polo shirt. I could tell that she was wearing it in such a way that it would meet exactly what her company's dress code said she should wear, but clearly she had stretched the spirit of the guidelines. Her skirt was shorter than professional, even for someone in her early 20's, and she had bunched together the side of her shirt and tied it off on the side; the effect was that this tightened the shirt all over her body, better displaying the firmness of her chest and flatness of her stomach. Lydia, I'm sure, was a Samantha style negotiator who probably was as disappointed to find out that Sam was actually Samantha as we were to determine that our sales rep was Lydia. I was thinking that this would be awkward, when Sam walked up beside me.
"Hi, I'm Samantha; this is Brittany; please come in," she said. As we walked over to the sitting area, I couldn't help think how ridiculous the three of us looked. Without a guy in the room to focus our attention on, we practically looked like we should just go stand on a street corner somewhere. It truly is amazing that guys don't ever pick up on any of this when we are doing it to them. I guess it's because they simply don't want to.
After a few minutes of small talk, I decided to bring up the obvious, "Lydia, you thought Sam was a guy, right?"
"Well, I don't know that I thought about it," she lied.
"Lydia, let's be honest," I wanted to get past the fakeness and quit wasting our time, and hers for that matter. "Look at the way your dressed. You're beautiful, but clearly dressed to be provocative to a male customer. Hell, it's smart; I'm in pharma sales; I do the same thing to get in to see doctors, but it's obvious that you were expecting a male to be here. It makes sense as I think it through; I made the appointment under 'Sam Jones,' I said 'none' when asked about a spouse.
Lydia just looked at me, as I continued, "It's not a big deal; look at Samantha and I. We were obviously expecting a male. You don't think anyone really dresses this way to meet with a sales rep, do you?"
Now, the three of us were laughing. Lydia admitted that she usually did very well with male prospects, and Sam agreed that we did as well. Lydia asked why both of us were there, "I would think that either of you could handle this on your own."
"Lydia," I explained, "That's true, but please hear me on this. It's really not safe to just have one of us here. Particularly not knowing who is going to show up. I don't want to tell you your business, but if we had been two guys and you had come in here and acted as you probably like to, it could have gone badly. Most of the time, you get good sales, but there are people to watch out for out there."
"I actually have worried about that," she said.