Chapter Two - The Bait

CHAPTER TWO

The Bait

MY FIRST INTRODUCTION to Alta came through Zack.

He’d been talking about this sales job for a little while, saying he might go for it, but I didn’t really think much of it. Dylan, our other roommate, had already been planning to dip anyway. He’s a Florida man at heart, he had bounced between living there and here and it was only a matter of time before he went back.

So it was just gonna me and Zack holding it down in the apartment, trying to figure out what came next.

There was this bar we went to all the time called Fieldhouse. It was the spot. Everyone we knew went there. It was loud, crowded, way too familiar, and kind of pathetic in hindsight, but it was our place. We went every weekend like clockwork. I was of legal drinking age, of course. Definitely had never been there before that. Definitely not with a fake ID. That would be illegal.

Anyway, Fieldhouse sat right near the University of Dayton. And apparently, there used to be a bartender there named Connor Woodruff. I never met him back then, but Zack knew him. From what he said, Connor had gone to UD for sales or marketing or something like that. And now? Now he was a manager at a pest control company called Alta. Every year, he’d take on a fresh team of rookies to train and lead. That year, Zack wanted in.

Zack told me Connor was making something like 300 grand a year.

Said he drove a nice car. Wore nice watches. Lived it up. Then he showed me the Instagram posts.

Dubai. Rolexes. Penthouse views. Champagne. Vacations.

It was everything you’d expect from a company built on dreams. Curated, aesthetic, and dripping in lifestyle marketing.

I didn’t need much convincing.

“Put me on brotha.”

Zack delivered. He gave me Connor’s info. I think I added him on Snapchat, and a couple days later, Connor hit me back. We scheduled a Zoom call.

I still remember getting ready for it. I threw on something halfway presentable, fired up the laptop, and got on.

Connor was smooth. Charismatic. You could tell he was a salesman. But not in the greasy, desperate way. In the “this guy could sell bottled water to Poseidon” kind of way. We talked, I answered his questions, and he told me right there on the call that I had the job.

Instant hire.

Which, depending on how you look at it, was either a great sign or a giant red flag. There didn’t seem to be much vetting. But hey, I had a job. I was officially in.

It was late December. Just in time for their little bonus offer: anyone who signed on before the end of the year got to go on a company-paid cruise. A free cruise. That was the hook.

They sent me an onboarding link for an online portal with some paperwork and training modules. I’d get into that later. For now, I just knew I was out of landscaping. I had an exit plan.

I remember how excited I was. I told my friends and family. I was done with snowplows and frozen parking lots. I was moving on.

Zack said we’d probably be sent to Tennessee. We’d all be living together in an Airbnb, just knocking on doors, running it up, living the dream.

It sounded sweet.

And in my head, I was already gone.