Mrs Bales

Gosh - I am a terrible Blogger. Nearly 2 months since my last post....ugh. Well I sure wish I had better news for my first post since June, but I dont. My dear friend Michelle Bales passed away last night. It is so wierd...I just cannot believe that I if I attempt to text her, a smartass, funny comment would not come flying back at me. We loved to shop together, make fun of our husbands, and play board games. She liked buying the best margarita mix and I liked drinking the margaritas. In our earlier days we loved to go clubbing and make fun of other people in the clubs. As if we were so much cooler? Whatever....yeah, that was a word she would always say. She was so scary the first time I met her, and I mean crazy scary. She was this little 95 pound blonde fireball that wore a headset and never stopped talking on the phone. She was a powerhouse recruiter, could nail any candidate into any job....I took one look at all of her trophies and plaques and I wanted to be just like her. She was not nice to me at all. Now I am not saying this to make you feel bad for me, because she was not nice to really anyone at first. You had to earn your respect from her. She made you work for it and the work was worth it, believe me. One day in my first month or so at Culver I was so freakin depressed. The job was tough...I was so green, right out of college. I had no idea how to play the game. I had no idea how to sell or push or persuade. The business of recruiting is a grind and to keep up with pace, you have got TO BE ON every single second. I was on 100% Commission, making maybe $750 a month? Some low number that no one can live off, anyhow.....One Day I was really down and none of my candidates were calling me back. I felt so sulky and kind of wished I had taken another job out of college with perks, like a base salary! The "blonde girl" came over to me and sat next to me in my chair. I was like thinking...."holy shit, did I do something wrong....is this girl actually going to talk to me" You have to realize she never really talked to me before and I was going on 30-40 days with the company, sitting literally 7 feet away from her. She kind of whispered so no one would hear me.....show me your candidates and I will help you with ideas. I almost went speechless. Did she like me? Was she joking? Did she really want to help me? I could not beleive it. I showed her my candidates and she told me which ones to focus on and which ones to ditch because they were losers. She told me ideas of companies to get them into and she gave me names of recruiters to send them to......I still could not believe what was going on. This was just not like her. A couple minutes later she went back over to her desk very slyly so as to not make anyone notice...she of course did not want anyone to know she just totally helped the newbie. When she got back to her desk I tried to look at her eyes and smile, but too late....already back on the phone, face down, hidden from the ridiculously huge golden eagle that took over her whole workspace, back to selling like the Type A we all remember her as.

She was there in so many different phases of my life, her and David were my family, inadvertently guiding me through different paths. They loved me for who I was, never judged, never set expectations on our friendship. HB was my home away from home.

In 2001 we are heading out to Santa Monica to meet up for drinks with one her candidates that she just placed. She took a picture of the two of us (michelle never left home w/0 camera) at dinner and I still have that picture on my dresser to this day. She asked me what I thought of him and i told her I was not crazy about his hair or his fancy rolex watch. She assured me he was not the typical LA guy. I married him 2 years later.

She was there for it all and then some....my little Type A Chicken Hawk, fist waving, wont take no for an answer, Mrs Bales.


My Gosh, what the hell am I going to do without her?