I Was a Travelling Door to Door Encyclopedia Salesman

Disclaimer:  as before . So, there we were in frozen Grande Prairie , Alberta.  It's minus 45 and not a whole lot to do after a day freezing out butts off knocking on doors.  The stoner in our crew, Andy Bailey, had inexplicably neglected to bring any weed on the road this time, and he was really regretting it (and we could certainly have used the entertainment too).  "Let's go score some weed," he said. "I thought you've never been here before," I replied.  Let me point out to you again what a relative innocent I was.  I had been a pretty straight-laced teenager until very recently, and the idea of trying to find a source of illegal recreational drugs in a strange city seemed about as realistic to me as panning for gold, only more dangerous.  Not to mention crazy.  OK, let's mention it.  "Andy, are you crazy?  Where are you gonna find weed in Grande Prairie?" "I noticed a strip bar when we were driving into town.  Let's go t...

I've liked backgammon since I was a kid, but never thought much of it until a book about backgammon theory found its way into my hands and opened my eyes to the depths of strategy and thought contained in that deceptively simple game.  One day on the road, I mentioned this to Andy Bailey, and he said, "Dude!  I love backgammon!  You should totally get a set next time we're in town and we'll totally play all the time on the next road trip!  Wanna make it interesting?  We can play for a quarter a game!" I had never gambled on backgammon (or anything else as far as I can remember), but a quarter a game seemed pretty harmless, and I did want to test the book's theory about the strategic effects of the doubling cube on multi-game series, and a stake was the best way to do it, so I agreed. The next time we were in Vancouver, I went to my favourite game geek store in Gastown and picked up, for 20 bucks, the set that I use to this day.  Not a cheap-o magn...

One time, back in the days when I was a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman, we went to Grande Prairie, Alberta.  It was cold. Grande Prairie, at around 40 thousand people, was one of the biggest cities we worked in my 6 months of purgatory.  We stayed there for a whole week in February of 1994, and I'll probably have a few tales to tell in future posts from just that week alone. But mostly, it was cold. Indeed, it's the coldest I've ever been.  One morning it got down to -47 Celsius (-53 Fahrenheit), but the first few nights we worked it was merely -45 (-49F) until it started warming up.  Folks, until you're outside knocking on strangers' doors in -45 degrees, you don't know what a tough day at work is.  I remember how different the physical world is at those temperatures.  When I would breathe in, the inside of my nose would instantly freeze, and when I exhaled, it would instantly thaw.  Ten times a minute.  And my coat sounded d...

I certainly never meant to be a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman.  I was looking through the job ads, and there was something about educational products, and I called for an interview.  I met with Richard, a 50-something gentleman, articulate and impeccably dressed.  He immigrated from Jamaica as a teenager, dirt broke, and had climbed to his current position of relative power all by himself.  I can only imagine how many encyclopedias he had sold, and he certainly sold me this job without my even realising it.  Of course, almost everything he told me was a flat out lie.  No travel ("Well, after training, we like the new trainees to go out with the crew leader for a week or ten days, to get away from distractions, you know"), no cold calling (lie!), and any number of other falsehoods and misdirections. But by the time we had invested a week or more in training, gone on our first road trip (Three frigging weeks in Saska...

I realised as I was writing the last story that  just getting to Courtenay was half the excitement.  Well, not really, but it is a story.  You remember John Schlesinger, my boss, the cheapskate from a  previous post .  Well, he came with us on the road this time too, so it was his Volkswagen Jetta we took.  As I believe I've mentioned before, the deal (if you can call it that) is that the driver pays all the transportation costs in exchange for a cut of the crew's commissions.  Everything else is on us; we split the cost of the motel, pay for our own food, etc. As you may have figured out, since Courtenay is on Vancouver Island, simply driving there is not so simple.  In fact, it is a two hour  ferry ride  from Vancouver (actually the major metropolis of Tsawwassen) to Nanaimo on the Island.  So as we drove up to the ferry terminal, John, with an air of insouciant  nonchalance  (quick, keep writing before the ...

Disclaimer:  As I've mentioned before, not everything on this blog is exactly child-friendly.  Be warned.  Furthermore, I am in no way condoning and certainly not encouraging anybody to smoke pot.  That being said, I was a 21 year old university dropout at the time and . . . oh, what the heck, there are gonna be some pot stories on this blog, and here's the first one: I'd venture a guess that if I were to ask a hundred people how much pot they think gets smoked on the road by travelling door to door encyclopedia salesmen, as many would be shocked that it happens at all as would be shocked that it's not ubiquitous.  I'd say that of the dozen or so road trips I went on in my six months, there was weed on about half of them.  It mostly depended on the crew members of a given trip.  Some would be opposed, in which case nobody did any, some were cool with it, and then there were the potheads. Like Andy Bailey. Bet let's talk about Andy and h...

One time, back in the days when I was a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman, I went to St. Walburg, a town of about 650 people in northern Saskatchewan. Now, let me preface this by saying that I'm Jewish, but 16 years ago, when I was selling encyclopedias, I wasn't that  Jewish, if you know what I mean.  I might have gone to synagogue once or twice a year, did something or other Jewish on some of the major holidays, but not much more than that.  But I certainly felt  Jewish, and one Jewish thing I did every single day was to wear a silver Star of David necklace, and had been doing so for years. But I'm no idiot.  When out in the rural areas of BC, Alberta, and Saskatchewan (not a lot of Jews out there), I kept the Star of David under my shirt.  Until, that is, I walked up to a door in St. Walburg and saw a mezuzah . I must have stood there staring at it for a whole minute.  I hadn't seen the slightest hint of a Jewish presence in my 5 m...

Allow me to introduce you to Mitch Clinton. Mitch was my crew leader for most of my six months as a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman.  When not selling, Mitch was one of the crudest, rudest, most foul-mouthed and dirty-minded people I've ever known.  Now, I mean that in the nicest possible way.  He was actually a pretty decent guy: lots of fun, occasionally quite funny, a pretty good friend, honest and reliable about money matters, and occasionally endearingly protective of his crew.  It's just that he was a pig. For example, when the five of us would share a motel room with a single bathroom, Mitch was not into taking turns.  If several people needed to urinate at the same time, as far as Mitch was concerned, they could simply gather around the toilet and do their business.  Now, I suppose if we were from a country with mandatory military service, this might have been less shocking, but to me this was so uncivilised as to be not only incon...

Sometimes, just a few words are all it takes to completely alter one's perception of something . . . One time, back in the days when I was a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman, we went to Plamondon, Alberta. Just a little village of a couple hundred people, there was nowhere near enough "territory" for a crew of five salespersons to work.  No problem; this was a common situation for us.  One person would work Plamondon itself, and the rest would drive out each day, dropping one person off in each neighbouring town.  We would all meet up again every evening at the motel in Plamondon, shoot some pool and drink some beer at the motel bar, go to sleep, and do it all over again the next day.  We did this for three days, and I was the one who got Plamondon. On the first day, I knocked on about three quarters of the doors in town, but didn't make a sale.  At the bar that evening, I saw all the same people whose doors I had knocked on, and drank and pla...

I was going to share the story of my visit to Plamondon, Alberta, but I realised that what got me there would make an worthwhile introduction.  It was the spring of 1994, and I was well and truly burned out from selling encyclopedias. You see, I had been living in Ontario and had attended a major University there from 1990 until 1992, when I got kicked out (grades).  One thing led to another, and I found myself unemployed and directionless in Vancouver, which led to my stint as a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman.  After a few ups and downs (more downs) over the months that followed, I had an epiphany during what would turn out to me my second-to-last road trip that I was ready to go back to University and not mess it up this time. I liked being in Vancouver, so when we got home, I applied to UBC, and then set out for the road again with a lighter heart.  I felt like I was back on track for the first time in years. My good mood lasted about 2 weeks,...

Gotta start somewhere, so here's a story for y'all. One time, back in the days when I was a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman, we went to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. We . You see, we travelled in teams.  That is, crews.  Typically five people, one of whom would be the "crew leader".  The crew leader was the owner of (almost invariably) a Volkswagen Jetta and was responsible for all transportation costs, in exchange for a cut of his crew's commissions.  For most of my road trips in my six months in purgatory, it was Mitch Clinton.  More about him in future posts.  Sometimes, the boss would also come.  John Schlesinger. Ah, John.  What an a**hole.  Cheap, petty, and mean, but usually a lot of fun, and almost always good company, as long as you were getting the job done.  It's John I want to talk about today. Now, people who've never been anywhere really cold might not know what a block heater is, but if you ever want to...

"Back in the days when I was a travelling door-to-door encyclopedia salesman..." That's how hundreds of stories told to my friends in the last sixteen years have begun.  Who woulda thunk that a crappy high-stress job taken out of desperation at a directionless time in my life would have supplied me with a lifetime of memories?  Well, my friends (and wife) certainly seem to appreciate my reminiscing about those days, and since everybody and his dog seems to have a blog these days, I figured, "Why not me?"