Employee of the Year

Chapter 26 - Pascal's Wager

Once I'd unpacked my bags, I waited at the bar at the end of the long hall past the lobby. I knew most of the rest of the team wouldn't get in until shortly before six o'clock, when we were scheduled to go on a cruise followed by a late dinner.

I sat in the bar and drank a virgin margarita. A small, well-dressed man in a windbreaker sat at the other end of the bar. I recognized him as J.P. Breton, the chief strategy officer, who Marcus referred to as "the company genius."

J.P. was scribbling in a notebook on the counter. Occasionally he would pause for a sip of red wine. I moved over to the seat next to him. I could see numbers and letters scribbled across the page. He finally glanced up and seemed to recognize me. I introduced myself, figuring he'd forgotten my name if he ever knew it in the first place.

"Ah yes, I know you, Temo," J.P. replied with his heavy French accent. "You are our great hero in the call center, the contender for Employee of the Year. Pretty soon the winner will be decided." He closed his notebook. "I was just having a little fun with an equation I've been trying to solve ever since my university days."

"I always wondered what college would be like," I said.

"It's not too late. Maybe you will still go. If you win the Employee of the Year Award, you could put that money toward a degree."

"I am not sure what I'd want to learn. Did you study business?"

The Frenchman scoffed. "I had no interested in money back then. I earned my doctorate in decision science."

"I never heard of that before."

"It's not as well known as other fields, but it's growing."

"I didn't know decisions were a science."

J.P. laughed. "You might be right about that. Decisions are as much art as they are science, that's for sure. No matter how you categorize them, decisions are important. Our choices are the most important thing we control as humans. We can choose whether to go to the gym at night or go to a bar. We can choose whether to help our children with their homework or cheat on our wives. Whether we are rich or poor, sick or healthy, free or imprisoned, these states of existence are driven in large part by our decisions."

"You really think people decide their fate?"

"Of course they do. We are born into a certain set of circumstances. But even within that framework, we have a lot of options, especially in this country. We don't create our fate in one sweeping decision; we do it through a million little choices we make every day. Let's take the Employee of the Year contest. You and Roland Shavosian are both trying to win the award. What's your strategy to win? Should you make as many calls as possible? Should you just focus on the customers with the largest outstanding balances? Should you try to reach cardholders before or after their dinner time? Should you try to charm the cardholders into paying up or should you try to intimidate them? Should you take a break every hour? Will working straight through without interruption give you an edge or just drain your energy? These are things you need to consider every day, don't you?"

"That's true."

"Well, the sum of these decisions will probably be the biggest factor in your performance. Of course luck plays a part and other variables may enter the equation that you can't control. But the winner of a match is usually the one who makes the best decisions. A whole field of study called Game Theory is about choices and behavior in a competitive environment. Every day people, companies, and nations compete in the decision-making process. It's all about trying to make better choices than other people. It's all about making decisions that will maximize your self-benefit."