Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

In episode 6.07 of Better Call Saul, Jimmy and Kim culminate their plot to discredit their former boss/nemesis and now punching bag, Howard Hamlin. They cause him to embarrass himself in front of numerous lawyer peers, cementing in many of their minds the innuendo the plotters have been spreading that Howard is using cocaine. But that's not the end of it for Howard.



Howard pays an unplanned visit to Kim's apartment (where Jimmy lives) that night. He's visibly drunk. He's figured out all the things they did in their plot against them. He criticizes them for not concealing it too well. "But that was the point, wasn't it?" he asks. "You wanted me to know."

Howard offers a bottle of whisky he's brought as a victory celebration. Kim and Jimmy aren't interested in celebrating with him, though. His mannerisms are unsettling as he's sloppy-drunk and agitated. But after a few moments of demanding that he leave their house, Kim and Kimmy's faces turn from sternness to fear.



Lalo Salamanca, the notorious drug gang leader Jimmy helped skip bail on a murder charge, walks in through the door Howard left ajar.

Jimmy and Kim are terrified for their lives and just want Howard to leave— for his own safety. But Howard, drunk and already on the offensive in his little game, is heedless of the danger. Lalo pulls out a gun a shoots him.

It's a sad ending for Howard. As much as he was a total ass-hat to Jimmy and Kim earlier in the series, it was hard not to feel a little sympathy for him at this point. His wife was already treating him like a housemate, and Kim and Jimmy's con had just ruined him, professionally. And now Lalo. Lalo didn't even know Howard; didn't even know his name. Lalo shoots him just to terrify Jimmy and Kim into complying with the request he makes next.

I'm leaving for Italy in... [glances at clock]... 15 hours and I haven't packed. Why am I spending a few minutes to blog about that here instead of, like, actually packing? Sigh. It's because I'm struggling with motivation right now. And no, the fact that I'm going to Italy for the first time ever isn't enough to motivate me.

What's demotivating me? Going on this trip is tied up with my frustrations about my job. Because this trip, though it's a vacation, is a work-sponsored vacation trip. And I had fresh frustrations in a long afternoon at work today.

For the moment I'm just relaxing to see if I can get over my motivation gap naturally. I don't need to panic about getting ready. I remind myself of three things about this trip: One, I've traveled a bazillion times before. I know I can pack a bag quickly. Two, this trip is only a week— well, 8.5 days. It's not like I'm packing for a month. Three, I only need to pack one style of clothes. It's a beach/warm weather/tourist trip. I'll back mostly beach-y clothes, a few changes of European-street-casual clothes, and a light sweater for cool evenings. It's not like I have to pack all that and a couple of two-piece suits. Or a tuxedo. (There's no high-stakes, James Bond-esuqe Casino Royale action planned on this trip.)

Yesterday I blogged "Feels Like the Old Days" describing how spending several hours on Tuesday meeting f2f with a client then hanging out with my sales colleague for drinks and dinner felt like 'old times' again. On Wednesday I had another face-to-face meeting with a client, a different client, for which I met two colleagues who'd traveled in from out of town. But while that meeting had some similarities with Tuesday's in that people traveled to meet together, it was not the same.

What was missing? What was missing was the camaraderie.

Wednesday's meeting was transactional. My colleagues flew in for the meeting and flew out afterwards. We did chat outside the building both before and after the meeting, but those were a) short chats and b) focused almost entirely on the situation with the client. There was very little that was off the straight-and-narrow of the business immediately at hand.

And that's the difference. That's the difference between what working in enterprise sales was like in the "old days"— which, keep in mind, were as recent as 10-15 years ago— and today.

In the old days we spent time together as a team. We had unstructured hours together that we filled with everything from chat about work, to families, to life in general. We really got to know each other as people.

That's a big thing we've lost in the shift to working remotely. Today we just assemble a team to do a task, do the task, then go back to our separate jobs and lives. There's no camaraderie. And that camaraderie was the key.

Yesterday reminded me of the "old days" in software selling. These old days aren't that old, of course. I'm only talking about the mid-aughts (when I started in technical sales) through the early 10s! So, what was so 15-years-ago about yesterday? It was meeting prospects and colleagues face-to-face for sales work.

Yesterday wasn't really even a travel day, per se. It's not like the old days when I was traveling a lot to San Diego, Chicago, New York, etc.— or traveling overseas— for sales calls. This one was just a ~30 minute drive away in Newark, California.

I drove to Newark, made a quick pit stop to pick up a colleague who did fly in and stopped at a nearby restaurant for lunch, then drove on to the customer's office. We had a big meeting with in-person attendees, upward of 20 people in the room. The last time I presented at a customer meeting that well attended in-person was probably 2018.

The Meeting

Seeing how big the meeting room was— it was set up as a classroom— and how many people filed in, I fretted about how the meeting would flow. Rooms where the seats are all front-facing discourage genuine conversation. People see the physical layout and think, "Okay, I'm supposed to let the presenter speak."And when there's a large crowd in a meeting, anything over 10 let alone the 20 we had yesterday, the audience size also discourages a lot of people from speaking up. It's like people are thinking, "My question had better be worth interrupting 20 people or I should keep quiet." Moreover a lot of people are intimidated by such gatherings. They're reluctant to speak up for fear that asking a question may make them sound stupid or acknowledging that there's a problem they don't know how to solve will make their colleagues think less of them.

I fretted about these problems but I fought against them. I purposefully turned around a desk and faced the group at their level instead of standing behind the lectern. I invited questions throughout my presentation. I engaged each person who asked a question with a discussion to explore their needs to make sure I was addressing them on point. And I never said things like, "Well, moving along now...."

My techniques to overcome the lecture-hall setup worked. The meeting was way more interactive than I expected. Sure, not every one of the 20 attendees asked questions, but at least 6 different people did, and some asked multiple questions. And more than half the group stayed after the meeting to chat with my colleague and me.

The After-Meeting

Oh, but the successful f2f meeting wasn't the only part that felt old school. After the meeting in Newark I drove my colleague to his hotel in downtown San Jose. Just driving with a colleague felt old school. It used to be a regular, almost daily thing in my life as a salesperson years ago. Now it happens maybe a few times a year.

What did we do in the car? We talked. We debriefed on how the meeting went. We discussed what worked well and what we could improve. We discussed next steps with this prospective customer. We also discussed sales strategy more broadly in our company and with our latest products and positioning.

When we got to SJ my colleague suggested getting a drink together. I was happy to. Again, this was a many-times-a-week thing among sellers years ago; today, again, it seems to happen only a few times a year. We sidled up at the bar in his hotel and talked for another hour. There, we talked less about the company and more about life in general. I learned about his family, his house, his outlook on life; and he learned about mine.

After a couple of drinks each— two small glasses of beer, really; our aim was to relax together, not get soused— we noticed it was going on 7 and decided to get dinner together. Original Joe's was 1/2 block away, so I suggested we eat there. Dinner was more of the same. We ate slowly, talking the whole time. It was about 9:30 when I walked him back to his hotel (I was parked there anyway 😅) and drove home.

You know your relationship with someone is bad when you find yourself doing the math to answer the question, How much longer until I can quit these clowns? In this case the clowns are my mortgage company, and "quit" means pay off my mortgage so I can be done with them.

I've noted before that I don't like my current mortgage company. My loan has been sold a few times, starting from the originator, whom I genuinely liked. Then it was sold from Originating Lender A to New Bank B. Bank B worked fine when everything could be automated but was a pain in the neck to deal with every single time the computers kicked out an exception that required human intervention. Now Scumbag Debt Collector C— yes, my new mortgage servicer is a scummy debt collector— pisses me off with every single communication they send me because, well, they're a debt collector. All their processes as they try to move into mortgage servicing still read like they're a debt collector, treating me like a deadbeat borrower who's fallen behind on payments.

The answer, BTW, is 6½ years. In another 6.5 years of steady monthly payments I'll have this loan paid off.

Could I be done with these clowns sooner? Oh hell yes! I could increase my monthly payments to retire the debt sooner. Hell, I could just write a check to pay off the balance. The whole balance. It's not that big anymore. I've been paying down the mortgage for 20+ years and have never taken cash out on refinancing.

Of course, just because the balance "is not that big" doesn't mean I have that kind of cash sitting around. I'd have sell a few things from my investment portfolio to pay it off. But the thing is, investments are investments. They earn money. And the cost of this mortgage— the financial cost— is small. I have a rate below 2.5%! It's financially a loss to sell assets that return way better than 2.5% APY to pay off a loan that costs less than 2.5% APR.

What would change that calculation? One thing is if the emotional cost of keeping the loan with these clowns becomes too expensive. The first time these clowns screw up in a way that's more than just passively irritating, I may just pay them off and be done with them.

There's a lot of action in late season 5/early season 6 of Better Call Saul I've been skipping over. While Jimmy and Kim are doing their own things as lawyers and plotting together to embarrass Howard to force a quicker settlement to a class action case, there's been a turf war in the local drug cartel. Except it's not turf, per se, they're fighting for but power and influence. Lalo Salamanca and Gus Fring are trying to destroy each other, and their war keeps other regular characters like Mike and Nacho busy.

Nacho (Ignacio) Varga has been an interesting supporting character throughout the series. We meet him early in season 1, when Jimmy runs headlong into gang leader Tuco Salamanca. Nacho is smart and thoughtful, unlike many of the hot-headed Salamanca family members who run the gang. Nacho chafes at their leadership. Believing he'd be a better gang leader he plots to push them out. First he gets Tuco put in jail, then he causes Hector Salamanca to have a heart attack after secretly swapping his heart medication with a simple painkiller. Hector survives the heart attack but is mostly crippled and confined to a wheelchair, only able to communicate by tapping a bell with his finger. (This is the state in which we see Hector throughout the entirety of Breaking Bad. Now we know how he went from being a cartel capo to being a near-invalid in a nursing home!)



Despite all his plotting against various members of the cartel, Nacho rises through the ranks. By the end of season 5 he has a sit-down with cartel boss Don Eladio in Mexico. Eladio gives him his blessing to run things for the Salamanca branch of the cartel in the US.

It's hard to root for Nacho. He's a drug dealer and he's willing to murder people. But he's a thoughtful guy in a gang of psychopaths. And mostly he only murders people worse than him. So, yay? I do find myself rooting for him.

Alas, there's what I've dubbed the Star Wars Rogue One principle: a significant character in a prequel story who's not in the original pretty much has to die. I've remarked on this principle several times pondering how Kim Wexler, Jimmy's ride-or-die friend/girlfriend/wife would depart the story. It applies equally to Nacho Varga. He's nowhere in the Salamanca gang in Breaking Bad, so he's got to die in Better Call Saul.

The end for Nacho comes when Gus demands Nacho help kill Lalo. Gus has leverage over Nacho from having figured out he caused the stroke that paralyzed Hector. Nacho becomes Gus's mole in the Salamanca branch of the cartel because, if he doesn't, Gus will tell the Salamancas what Nacho did, and the Salamancas will kill him and his innocent father. Nacho doesn't have to shoot Lalo, though; he just has to use his position of trust with Lalo to unlock a door for a team of assassins to infiltrate the house where Lalo is staying.

Nacho does as asked, but the team of assassins fails. I swear, Lalo is the luckiest sumbitch alive. He bests a team of 5-6 assassins who have machine guns, body armor, and two-way radios. Nacho is on the run after the failed assassination. The whole Salamanca clan, plus their considerable network of allies, are looking for him.

Nacho begs Gus to get him out of Mexico, but Gus sets up Nacho to be captured. Gus can't be seen helping Nacho, as that would tip his involvement in trying to murder Lalo. But Nacho is shrewd enough to recognize Gus is hanging him out to dry— and also shrewd enough to realize that if the Salamancas capture him, they'll torture him and get the truth about Gus anyway. Nacho says as much to Gus and offers a deal: get me out of Mexico, and I'll say what you want me to say, then give me a clean death. Gus, impressed that someone matches his level of conniving, reluctantly agrees.



Things go a little bit sideways at the handover where Gus delivers a "captured" Nacho to cartel underboss Juan Bolsa and the Salamancas. Nacho has a script to follow, including staging an attack against Gus, at which point Gus's men will shoot him dead in apparent self defense.  Nacho goes off script, breaks free of his restraints, and puts a gun to Juan Bolsa's head (pic above). Mike, monitoring the situation through a scope on a sniper rifle from 100+ meters away, whispers, "Do it!" But Nacho realizes that killing Bolsa would leave broad suspicion that he's working for Gus. So, after taking sole responsibility for plotting against Lalo, and declaring his responsibility for causing Hector's crippling stroke, he kills himself. He was going to die either way, but this way he protects his family from retribution.

Across season 6 of Better Call Saul a number of sub-plots are drawing to a close. One that's new-ish is Kim and Jimmy conspiring to pull down Howard Hamlin with a con.

Jimmy has his own reasons for disliking Howard. In season 5 he plotted a few nuisance pranks to annoy and embarrass Howard. He seemed ready to give it up after that as he was just kicking a man while he was down, but then Kim took new offense to Howard and pressed him to think bigger with revenge.

What offended Kim? It was when Howard confronted her in a courthouse hallway in ep. 5.07, ratting out Jimmy to her for his pranks. Kim didn't mind that Howard was complaining to her about Jimmy. She already knows that Jimmy is that kind of person. She knows it and actually likes it. What offended her was Howard's overbearing manner of framing it as I'm warning you for your own good and you need to know what kind of creep you're with. One thing we've seen with Kim is that she really gets bothered when people criticize her judgment or imply she's ignorant for staying with Jimmy. And Howard's such a douche overall that any douche-y thing he says sounds extra douche-y the way he says it.

The goal of this new scam is to force a quicker resolution to a class action lawsuit against a nursing home chain. Jimmy was the lawyer who found and initially developed this case. He's out of it now, but as the finder he stands to earn a sizable sum when it settles— well over a million dollars, based on the defendants' most recent offer. But Howard, now the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, and the other senior attorneys are dragging out negotiations, possibly for a few more years, hoping for an extra 30%. Jimmy— and now Kim— would rather they just take a quicker deal so they can get paid out now.

The gist of the scam is that Jimmy and Kim are discrediting Howard. They're engaging in various steps to make people around Howard, especially his co-counsel, Clifford Main of Davis & Main, suspect that he's developed a cocaine habit. If people like Cliff think Howard's becoming untrustworthy, they'll move to settle the case quickly instead of risking Howard spinning out of control and jeopardizing the settlement.

What's the motive here? Well, Jimmy and Kim both hate Howard. But while Jimmy seemed happy to stop kicking at Howard last season, it's Kim who's really looking to punish him now. Money's a motive, too. But again, while Jimmy was scraping for money months ago, it's no longer urgent to him to get this case settled. It's Kim who really has her eyes on the money. The settlement would fund her decision to quit corporate law and instead conduct pro-bono defense work for sympathetic clients. So, really, this con to destroy Howard's career is Kim's idea— and Jimmy even challenges her as much in dialogue. And that's sad because throughout the series Kim has always been the smart, hardworking, straight shooter. Now she's becoming just as bad as Jimmy. Or worse!