I thought I'd share with you a little about what day to day life on the road was like for us as a travelling door to door encyclopedia sales crew.
As I've indicated, one guy (usually Mitch Clinton in our case) would be the crew leader, and he would be responsible for the car and all associated expenses. Normally, five of us would pile into his Volkswagen Jetta and we would drive off from our home base in Vancouver to wherever we were going, typically a thousand kilometers or so, into the boonies of British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan.
Since we shared accommodation expenses equally, it was in our interest to find the cheapest fleabag motel in whatever town we were staying at, and let me tell you we stayed in some nasty ones. When there's a broken window and a draft under the door and the temperatures outside are in the double digits below freezing, you know you're not at the Hilton.
There was one model of motel room that was the only kind we always went for: one double bed and a kitchenette. The latter was so we could cook, thereby saving money by not eating out all the time. Included in a motel kitchenette were generally some plates and cutlery, a couple pots, a frying pan, and a salt and pepper shaker. Pasta and cold cereal were our staples on the road, and we cut corners wherever we could. We would buy generic tomato paste and turn it into sauce by whatever cheapest means were available to us. If someone would splurge for basil and/or oil, we were in business. Otherwise, it was mostly the complimentary motel room salt and pepper, plus maybe an extra ramen flavour packet. At any rate, since a couple of us were fans of spicy food, the management would generally find their pepper shaker close to empty after we left.
You may be wondering, however, if I made a typo above when I wrote "one double bed" if there were five of us. No mistake. We would drag the mattress onto the floor, and we would sleep two on the mattress, two on the box spring, and one on the floor. We would rotate the "honour" of sleeping on the floor, though occasionally the crew leader would exercise his "droit de seigneur" to skip his turn on the floor. Certainly, if John was on the road with us, he would always have a spot on the mattress. B***ard.
Obviously (but only if you think about it, which many people neglected to do), since the motel room was only intended for two people, there were only two towels provided. This could on occasion be a source for some friction and ill will between crew mates. I would generally bring a towel with me just in case, but still try to snatch one of the motel towels as quickly as possible, in order to avoid having to pack a wet towel in my backpack. Some foresight-lacking crew mate would usually complain, basically suggesting that his neglecting to bring his own towel should give him first dibs on the convenience of a motel towel. I would typically offer him my own towel on condition that I get it back clean and dry. One of the mottos of travelling door to door encyclopedia salesmen is "People don't plan to fail. They fail to plan."
Amazingly, in six months of living this life, we only actually got kicked out of a motel room once. I believe it was in Prince George, British Columbia. We were never brazen about stuffing five people into a motel room intended for two, but I can't imagine the management never noticed. But that one time, we were just settling in and unpacking when the phone rang. I picked it up, and the lady screamed in my ear, "Y'all got five minutes to clear outta that room!" before hanging up on me. I told John the jig was up. We took it all in stride, packed up, and found another fleabag a block down the road.
It was all in a day's work.
