This Girl Talk Thursday, we’re ranting about our jobs.
I’ve only worked one job that I absolutely hated from the moment I took it until the moment I quit:
GutterHelmet Sales Rep.
Yeah, GutterHelmet, that thingie that attaches to your gutters and keeps the leaves and sticks from getting in so your lazy ass doesn’t have to climb up a ladder and clean the debris out yourself. I applied for and accepted this job because I thought it would be more money, and I was excited about the idea of traveling for work.
In reality, since I worked in the Flint/Saginaw area of Michigan (aka America’s dirty anus), I was trying to sell fancy gutters to people who couldn’t afford the payments on the house I was trying to sell them upgrades for. In four weeks, I did not make a single sale, but neither did I walk into a single household with 1) a new / recent model car or 2) a pleasant-smelling interior or 3) someone who I genuinely believed could afford to purchase this upgrade. And I’m sorry, I don’t care whether I’m supposed to be a heartless salesperson or not, but I can’t morally justify selling someone a frivolity but representing it as a necessity. I can’t. That’s not who I am.
Every Monday at 9am, we had a sales meeting at the head office… on the other side of the state. This was about a two and a half hour drive — and I always had to work afterward — so I’d be on the road at 6:30am on Monday morning, drive to this meeting, drive back to my home area, and work from 2pm til 7pm.
I was driving a shitty little pick-up truck that belonged to my boyfriend’s father. It huffed and grumbled and rattled when I drove, and since it had neither a cover for the cab nor a second row of seats, the front seat was always crowded. You see, I had to buy a TV & VCR combo to lug around with me to every home for my sales demonstration, and of course I needed my portfolio, and lunch, and my purse, and in the winter a change of shoes and my heavy jacket. I had many customers comment on my vehicle’s sorry state of being. But I couldn’t afford to buy a new one.
Because I wasn’t making sales, they apprenticed me to a more experienced saleswoman. She was the first person I ever met who was on the Atkins diet, and this meant that for lunch she would eat meat and cheese curds which really? Gross. She was a sweet woman, really kind to me and all, but she confided in me one day as we drove up to one of my sales calls: “We shouldn’t be visiting these people. They can’t afford this stuff.”
And in all the time she was with me? You guessed it. Not a single sale. She couldn’t sell this stuff to these people either.
Eventually, I was fired because I didn’t fax them a copy of my social security card. I refused to fax it. I suppose this was something that somehow was too crucial for HR to wait for me to deliver it by hand at the weekly meeting three days later, because when I arrived at the meeting I was escorted to HR and kindly told I was being let go.
They totally lost money by hiring me.
I winked at my boss on the way out.
Sucka!
{ 3 comments }
