It happened sometime in late summer or the fall of 1991, the exact date I can’t remember, during a year I don’t care to remember, not all that much anyway. I was working for AT&T as an AEII. That designation means All Time Taken and the AEII means Account Executive II which was slightly above AEI and a lot above an LG or Lead Generator person. The last one spent all their time on the phone working for the other two unfortunate groups of people. Their job was to find potential business customers for us AE’s to sell an overpriced, underdelivered phone system to.

If I sound a bit bitter in the above paragraph, you don’t have any idea how that may be true and you also don’t know half of it. That half is the driving force behind my post for today.

I was hired by AT&T through a head-hunting agency. I was flattered that they would want me. When first contacted by the agency, I was the communications division manager for a hundred-year-old company. I was the boss until a few days before when one of my staff seduced the company management into demoting me and giving him my job. I won’t go into all those details, the person who did that was later murdered while working as a loan officer for a bank.

I couldn’t stay with the company after being “fired” from my position, it just wasn’t possible so I jumped through all the required hoops and took the job with AT&T. As a note, It was there that I met Mike, who would one day become my best friend, with emphasis on the words One Day, but not the first day, or many days to come. (That may be because my boss told the other AEIIs I was going to kick their…well you know.)

During my first few months with the company, I was in training at AT&T University in Cincinnati, Ohio. The school and our residence were both on the top four floors of the downtown Cincinnati Hilton. It was an interesting place to be, and I met a lot of people from all over the country who had various sales backgrounds, but not many in the communications business as I did. I gave a bit of a lecture on my experience as an independent phone system dealer which, as I learned later, helped a lot of my fellow graduates to achieve success. However, it didn’t help me much.

Being an AEII was a very tough job, and it was made tougher depending on the territory you had. Those territories were set up by zip codes and many of mine were in rural areas in Suffolk, Virginia. Not many cotton growers and pig farmers in the early 90s wanted a fancy phone system. I had a few zip codes in Norfolk and a couple in Virginia Beach. Did I mention that I had a small salary, a small commission, and a quota of 70,000 dollars a month in sales to meet? This plan went into effect a couple of months after leaving school and it could go into effect earlier if you managed to snag a good-sized sale as your first one. I did that but the commission would have gone to Mike if it had closed, which it did not do, not really.

Mike and I had a major issue with the sale. The purchasing company signed the contract and the leasing agreement. It went through AT&T’s in-house leasing but only after my manager forged the company president’s Personal Guarantee. That PG went with the contract to close it. I had three days from submission to go back to the president and get the real signature, or I had to come up with a way for them to cancel the contract. Mike and I agreed we could not take a chance on that PG being used in the future. That would have been a fraud, a very, very, bad thing to be guilty of. The president, at this point, thought he had a phone system on the way.

We got the sale because the company’s PBX had been hit by lightning. I went to the president and told him we needed his PG, which surprised him and he refused to provide it. I then made a phone call to Mike, we talked for a minute, and then I informed the president we would not be able to deliver the system on the date we had originally promised. He then canceled the sale.

I ended up on “The Sales Plan” because the deal went through, for a couple of days anyway, but no commission for either Mike or myself. This situation was a preview of what the next ten months would be like, even if I didn’t know it at the time.

I worked hard for the company. Many a Saturday I was visiting prospects. I spent long late hours typing proposals. I traveled out to the far ends of my territory visiting factories, cotton gins, you name it, trying to meet my quota and get the commission for myself.

One week late that summer, I had the opportunity for three sales. One was huge but I knew we couldn’t make the delivery time the customer wanted. This didn’t bother my manager, who happened to be a judge’s son one bit. Just keep telling them what they want to hear and we will deal with it later, that was his philosophy. He told me that during one of our 7 am group conference calls.

I was not accustomed to being dishonest, not one bit. This stressed me out, a lot.

One night I was sitting at the office phone system configuration computer. It was a big clunky thing, not easy to use for most folks but I could handle it, most of the time. That night it was giving me trouble. I was tired, frustrated, and a bit worn out from working hard and seeing very little in return. As I was typing in the number of phones, lines, etc, the lights in the room started to flash. I turned to see who was at the light switch bank. No one was there. I turned around to make sure there was not some kind of power glitch that would cause me to have to start my configuration over again. The computer screen started to flicker. The office lights started flashing faster, and then my fingers started to tingle. I also felt very lightheaded. My chest hurt. Something told me that I needed to get out of there and head home. I stumbled to the elevator with my hand on the wall. I rode it down feeling sick. I made my way to my car. I was feeling like I was losing it. I was not sure how to get home. What direction do I take?

I don’t know how I ended up in my driveway. By the time I got there, I could not remember my name, where I lived, or the names of my kids. I knocked on our door and when Jeri, our youngest daughter answered the door, I asked her if this was where I lived.

“Daddy,” she said, “Yes you live here and that is not funny.”

“Oh, well that’s good. And what is your name"? I asked.

“Jeri, she said, “and that is not funny either!”

“Jeri?-who would name a little girl that?” I asked

Poor Jeri burst into tears. Christine who was listening to this conversation from the living room, realized right away that something was very wrong. She told me to come in and take a seat on the living room couch. I, not feeling very stable on my feet, thought that was a good idea. Diane was not at home at the time. I did not remember she had a business meeting that night. I may not have remembered I was even married.

Christine made a phone call to our good friends Sherri and Dennis. Sherri answered the phone. Christine explained to her, while Jeri was crying in the background, that something was very wrong with her Dad. Sherri, who lived close by, said she would be right there. Meanwhile, I was sitting on the couch wondering what all the fuss was about. I was preoccupied with trying to remember the girl’s name who was on the phone. I couldn’t but I wasn’t panicky about it. I just couldn’t remember.

Some time went by, and there was a knock on the door. Christine let Sherri in. She walked into the living room. I stared at this tall pretty lady and wondered where I knew her from.

“Derrick, how are you feeling?” was her question.

“Well, I don’t know.” was my response. “And do I know you?”

She turned to Christine.

“I think I need to take your Dad to the hospital.”

“Derrick, we need to go to the emergency room. I will call Diane” (who is Diane?) and she can meet us there…Let’s go right now.”

"Okay, but I need my insurance card.” I said, “I don’t know where it is.”

It was in my wallet, but I didn’t know that, I just knew I was not going to leave home without it. I walked unsteadily back to the bedroom and was a bit surprised by the look of horror on Jeri’s face as I passed her.

“What did you say your name was?” I asked her

“JERI”, she said, with a teary voice.

“If you say so, but I still don’t get that for a girl”.

“Derrick, check your wallet to see if your card is in there,” Sherri said. She put her arms around Jeri and whispered some encouragement in her ear

“Don’t worry, he doesn’t know what he is saying. He loves your name, he gave it to you.”

Jeri nodded her head.

I found my card in my wallet. We left for the hospital. Sherri drove her car. She seemed like a smart lady to me.

Once there, Sherri told me to take a seat and she approached the admittance desk. I saw her talk to them for a while and not long after a young doctor came over to see me. He asked me to go to an examining room, once there he checked my vitals and then just pulled up a chair next to me. He asked a lot of questions. The doctor got a bit of background from me and found out I had not eaten much that whole day and it was late. I also told him what I could remember about my “episode” at the office. The flashing lights, loss of memory all of it. He asked me if I had been under a lot of stress. Then he walked out to talk to Diane. She showed up without me even noticing. I thought she was a very pretty lady, and I bet I knew her. I could see him talking to her.

“Has your husband been under stress lately?” he asked. “He says no, but I don’t believe that to be accurate.”

“Yes!” she responded. “A lot of it. He is a salesman for AT&T, is on commission, putting in long hours, and has to be on a conference call at 7 am every morning. His boss is putting him under a lot of pressure, so yes he is under stress, as I said a lot of it.”

I didn’t think it was so bad, but I was a bit out of my mind at that point.

Sherri, who was listening to all of this, made a phone call, and the result of that was that our church pastor showed up with a bag of food from Burger King, for me. I took it, and after saying I was not all that hungry, ate it like it was my last meal.

The doctor seemed quite excited by all this. As it turned out he was a new resident at the hospital, and this was one of his first shifts in the emergency room. The really neat thing was his doctorate paper was on ‘White Collar” medicine which covered stress and its consequences including panic attacks. That is what he said I had. He described some of the symptoms to the folks:

• Fear of loss of control or death (yep)

• Rapid, pounding heart rate (yes)

• Sweating (not that I noticed, but others may have)

• Trembling or shaking (yes)

• Shortness of breath or tightness in your throat (not that much)

• Chills (no)

• Hot flashes (no)

• Nausea (yes)

• Abdominal cramping (that came later)

• Chest pain (yes)

• Headache (no)

• Dizziness, lightheadedness, or faintness (oh boy, yes)

• Numbness or tingling sensation (yes)

• The feeling of unreality or detachment (absolutely)

I experienced a number of the above. So I guessed he was correct. He was a smart doctor.

I finished my hamburger, listened to the good doctor, and watched Diane wipe the tears from her eyes.

I promised to take it easy, eat lunch, stay hydrated and try to get some exercise during the day, take the stairs instead of the elevator.

I thought I needed advice on how to get more sales, advice the doctor could not help me with.

I thanked Sherri for her help, and Pastor Butch for the burger and fries. I also thanked the doctor and we headed for home. Diane drove of course.

I think I took the next day off, but I am not sure about that.

The next morning’s 7 am conference call, Dianne, Mike, and Laura, the other AEIIs in the office, knew about my trip to the ER. My boss asked if I still planned on closing all my sales that week.

I said yes. I closed two. That was not good enough.

I lasted as an AEII for a few more months and then I was granted a big favor by AT&T. It was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

They fired me.

Thank God.

A year later Diane and I started a company selling and servicing, business phone systems. We were in business for twenty-five years and then sold it.

AT&T left our market.

I survived them for sure.

Derrick