For
as long as I
can remember, people have said to Caroline and
me, both separately
and when we’re together
as a couple, "you
should have a talk show.”
I
guess they find
some of the stories
we tell incredible,
improbable and entertaining, but somehow they know we’re never exaggerating.
Odd and extreme things do happen and like powerful magnets both of us attract such occurrences and situations.
The same thing
seems to be happening
now to Jane.
Yesterday, I wasted two
and a-half long hours with a couple of predators from the financial adviser
world in a meeting called under false pretenses. Professional
semi-colleagues
of mine, who should be filed away in the “Ladies and Germs” comedy intro department,
are strongly insisting that I help them shill for these guys by offering their services to my law clients as a “value-added”
I might be able to provide to them. That is to say, that I would propose to my
esteemed peeps that they “take
a meeting” with these fellows, and if that conclave consummates in
a professional engagement, I would then receive (and share with my semi-colleagues) a substantial “success fee.”
There’s
nothing terribly
wrong about this, assuming one has the stomach for the activity, the brass to make
the suggestion and, of course, full and prior disclosure. I’m not
sure I do, but to
appear agreeable I said I would attend a pitch meeting.
I
need to mention at this
point that Caroline and I discarded
with drama our own financial adviser a couple of years ago.
This person came to us (and to my mother before us) with excellent recommendations and was a good-looking cove skilled at pushing fear/insecurity buttons while inculcating customer trust.
Ultimately, we found that he was just a glib charalatan-practitioner dispensing obvious advice and clichéd idées reçues that
typified a zeitgeist growth industry which
eventually got its wings trimmed as a
result of the 2007-8 Crash. We could have
obtained this information ourselves far less expensively by doing our own
research. The main
benefit of knowing him was eventually learning from our mistakes and growing up a little.
Yesterday’s tag-team
staged the meeting as “role-play,”
a contrivance I despise. I’m a Quaker aspiring to sincerity; I find “being me” difficult enough.
Our
assigned play roles were as follow:
THEY:
TWO FINANCIAL
ADVISERS.
I:
MY CLIENT – A
PERSON WHOM I HAD PERSUADED
TO "TAKE THE MEETING."
Accordingly,
as the curtain comes up on Scene
1, we three are seated in a corporate conference
room in Industrial Park,
USA. Adviser
1 and Adviser 2 are alert
with bright eyes and pricked ears, poised like mantises over pre-printed
questionnaires.
My appearance and affect
is one of blank, naïve
accommodation and, I am afraid, weakness.
They
begin by asking about my personal
finances in microscopic detail. This, they offer, is simply for purposes
of illustration, to enable me to analyze and judge for myself and my phantom clients the acuity and
usefulness of their methods
and diagnostic tools. I am assured that the information
I give them will remain confidential.
Inquiry
continues, becoming
more aggressive
in tone, detail and imagery. Advisers’ body language
and verbal colloquy-interplay
suggest judgements being
made and being filed for
eventual use. Running
me through a mill set first to "coarse" and then to "fine."
P.O.V.: Spirit
leaving body,
floating
high above the scene, I am Agent Scully being probed by hideous aliens.
Gregorian chant
refrain forms
-- the Advisers echoing
three times:
“Protect you from Predators &
Creditors;
In-Laws
& Outlaws."
“Protect you from Predators &
Creditors; In-Laws
& Outlaws.”
“Protect you from Predators &
Creditors;
In-Laws & Outlaws.”
The
day began
with nausea, finally subsiding,
now redoubling on itself.
Eventually
they make an undisguised
pitch to become our financial advisers and insist on scheduling a short-date follow-up meeting to
seal the deal.
End. There
is no Scene 2.
It’s
a crappy one-act play I’ve
attended before with the last, dismissed financial adviser, but at least I chose to buy
tickets for that one.
This
revival should be called “Dream Predators,” featuring as dramatis personae in the roles of First and Second Predators
my so-called-professional semi-colleagues who set up this charade
(and who stood to earn
a success fee if I
bought into the arrangement). My interrogators
play the key roles of Third and Fourth Predators.
I
am Agent
Scully.
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