Slowly Going Bald

Being both weak-willed and hard up for cash, I allowed myself to be persuaded one summer in high school to pursue a seasonal position as a door-to-door salesman. A friend dragged me to a meeting at an office building a couple miles from my house, where we filled out applications and waited. We were led down a narrow, low-ceilinged hall that smelled like the '70s to a tiny conference room where a few other people, also applicants, were sitting around a table. The head of the small company came in and told us we'd be selling home security systems; as he talked, three or four of the eight or so applicants drifted out, though my friend and I, too dumb to leave and too fascinated by the whole experience, stayed. Other salesmen came in and joined the presentation; one of them was a jerk about 26 years old who disagreed with me when I voiced the opinion that people could always so no to what we were selling. He enlisted me in a role-playing exercise, where he tried to "sell" me while I kept refusing. He eventually said, "Your family's safety isn't worth a few dollars a day?" And I said, "Not right now, it's not." He said my response wasn't reasonable. I don't know where that guy is now, but I hope he's stuck in a dead-end sales job and weighing his suicide options.

Anyway, my friend and I actually went on a ride-along with these guys the next day, and it's only the fact that we were both strapping young males that probably kept us from getting assaulted in all kinds of heinous ways. These guys must have been pretty desperate to build their sales force, too, since there's no way a pale, sweaty, weak-voiced high schooler is going to close the deal on a stranger's porch; I couldn't sell a candy bar, so intruder alert systems were definitely out of my league.

Anyway:

The best part of the whole stupid ordeal was that first awkward meeting when we filled out applications. We were there for quite a while, and they ordered pizza for me, my friend, and the two or three other people who were dumb enough to stay. I'd noticed the secretary on my way in: Cute in an adult way. So when the pizza arrived, the oldest salesman there (think Shelly "The Machine" Levine) took some pizza out to her. Upon his return, the boss inquired, "Did you give her a slice?" And the old man grinned a little, mimed a humping gesture, and said, "Oh yeah, I gave her a slice."

And that's when I realized I'd rather swallow a knife than be a salesman.

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