I Was a Travelling Door to Door Encyclopedia Salesman

So there we were in Edmonton: two crews sharing adjacent motel rooms and hanging out together every night. In addition to the folks I introduced you to last time, there were also Bryan and Crazy Sheldon. Bryan was a former member of the Canadian military who talked about his stint in the army all the time. I was intensely jealous of him for one particular reason: he had been stationed as a UN peacekeeper in the Golan Heights, and I, a Jew, had never even been to Israel. But, aside from his interaction with Crazy Sheldon, I'll write more about Bryan another time. Crazy Sheldon. I wonder what his problem was. I mean, I wonder what his official diagnosis would have been. Borderline personality maybe. Still, a nice guy, and aside from the time I went along with him in almost getting us both killed, he was definitely a fun guy to be around, if you were able to make concessions to his craziness . One of the ways it manifested itself was in his utter lack of fear of dogs. Dogs are on...

When you're on the road with a travelling door to door encyclopedia sales crew, you gotta let off steam on a regular basis. And karaoke is as good a way as any. I'd say that in my six months behind the lines, we probably went to karaoke bars three or four times. And the star on our team was definitely Andy Bailey. He was fearless and shameless. One time he saw " Knockin' on Heaven's Door " on the song list and picked it. Of course, it was Bob Dylan's original arrangement, but Andy did a full-on Axl Rose impression anyway. "Aww, aww, aww-aww yea-eah!" I still smile when think of it. But without a doubt the funniest karaoke memory I have is from when we were at a redneck bar in some little town in the middle of nowhere. Most of the men there were wearing cowboy boots, and I believe there was sawdust on the floor. Ah, but the karaoke machine was off-the-shelf! In addition to country hits and standards, it had every other genre ever made for kar...

Note: This is more or less a sequel to Prince George was Smokin' . The same disclaimer applies. So there we were in Prince George and we'd finished Ms. Crewcut's swaggy weed. No need to worry however; Andy Bailey came prepared too. Not only did he bring a little bit of weed also, but he also packed one of the most unique and ingenious pieces of smoking paraphernalia I've ever seen. It began its existence as a large plastic travel mug with a tight fitting snap lid, the simple kind without any sliding closure or anything. The lid of course had two holes in it: one for drinking out of, and a smaller one to let air in. Into the drinking hole he had fitted the shell of a disposable plastic pen that he had heated and softened in order to make it fit snugly, as well as to bend it to a convenient angle for sucking without tipping the mug or straining the neck. He completed the seal with plasticine. To the bottom of the smaller hole he attached a similar pen tube so that ...

. . . Continued from Part I My bosses, crew leaders, and more experienced crew mates always said that Indians (not the kind from India) were in a special category for travelling door to door encyclopedia salesmen. The whole idea of profiling in that way made me rather uneasy, not to mention skeptical, but eventually I got to experience the reality face to face. So there we were in 100 Mile House, British Columbia. I was knocking on doors, and an Indian fellow in his late 50s or so came to the door. He lived alone. I wasn't sure exactly what to do. On one hand, our whole package and pitch was geared towards younger families with small kids, but on the other hand he was an Indian, which is virtually an automatic sale, especially if he owns his own home. I was leaning towards excusing myself, but he pretty much made me come in and show him the product. He said he had grandkids and was interested in getting something for them. Folks, if the customer tells you at the door that he...

Being a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman does not lend itself to political correctness. Unofficially and off the record, our bosses and crew leaders drilled into us the correct profiles of people likely to buy, and of those we shouldn't waste our time with. And a waste of time it was, since if you did a good job of getting in the door (which is a really big part of getting the sale) and spent a good hour or two on the schmooze and the pitch only to get turned down, you've wasted a good part of the night. Ditto if you waste hours knocking on doors in a neighbourhood where nobody will talk to you. So there were two general demographic profiles that we would focus on in our sales: rednecks and Indians. Today let's discuss the latter. (Natives, Native Canadians, First Nations. The politically correct term changes from time to time, but the ones I met were happy to call themselves Indians, so I will too. While I don't go too far out of my way to be super-sen...

It never ceased to amaze me the different kinds of folks who would find themselves knocking on strangers' doors to try to somehow get invited inside to pitch a set of encyclopedias. If you're imagining there's some sort of background or personality type that would correlate with such a career choice, you are wrong. If you're a faithful reader of this blog, you've already met Mitch , Andy , Andrew , Ann , John , Richard , Ray, Gloria , and others. Believe me, in my six months in the trenches of travelling door to door encyclopedia sales, there were many more, and they were all so different . I guess most were from middle class families, but of course Richard had been a penniless Jamaican immigrant. The only generalization that is somewhat accurate is that about 80% of salesmen were men. But other than that, the lovely rainbow of Vancouver's diverse city was pretty much covered. Chinese, Jewish, evangelical Christian, angry feminist, long-haired rock musician, ...

One time back in the days when I was a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman we went to Edmonton, Alberta.  The trip was atypical for two reasons: first, it was a big city, which travelling door to door encyclopedia salesmen tend to avoid.  Second, two crews from the Vancouver office met up there at the same time.  I'm not sure what the thinking was, except maybe to give us a chance to compare notes and pitches and see how other people do their selling. I remember four folks from the other crew in particular.  The crew leader was a short skinny friendly athletic kind of guy with a big laugh.  He kinda reminded me of Ray Liotta in Goodfellas.  Then there was a  girl   woman  die-hard chip-on-the-shoulder angry feminist.  (How do these people end up as travelling door to door encyclopedia salesmen?  For that matter, how did I?)  I remember I asked her once what she thought of  Camille Paglia  and she almost had...

Disclaimer: as  before . One time, back in the days when I was a travelling door-to-door encyclopedia salesman, we went to Prince George, British Columbia.  Good thing somebody brought weed. Prince George is an old logging town that grew into a small city, and occupied that perfect middle ground where it lacked both the excitement of Vancouver (and other cities) and the charm of all the little towns and villages where we did most of our work.  We were there for a week or so. It was only my second or third road trip, so I was still just getting the hang of it, and I was still basically a pretty innocent kid.  In my two years of University before taking this job, I had smoked weed a total of two times, and had never really gotten stoned ("got stoned" for the British readers of this blog). As luck would have it, a one-tripper that I remember almost nothing about except that she looked like a sitcom lesbian and brought a baggie of twiggy swag.  Betcha didn't kno...

One time back in the days when I was a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman, we went to Kamloops, British Columbia.  In fact, many times. Kamloops is about a 4 hour drive from Vancouver on the way to most of the places we would go in Alberta and Saskatchewan, so it was often a convenient place to stop to eat, and more often than not do an evening's worth of door knocking while we were at it.  I remember it as a kind of unexciting working class town, which made it a perfect place for travelling door to door encyclopedia salesmen to ply their trade.  Its population of not much less than 100 thousand would generally work against it (cities hate door to door salesmen), but its isolation in fact meant that au contraire, it could simply be worked over and over without killing territory. One of the things I remember best about Kamloops is how many really old cars one would see on the road.  Neither collectible antiques suggesting a wealthy area nor nasty old ju...

As I've indicated before, most travelling door to door encyclopedia salesmen (silently) quit after their first road trip, never to be seen again (by us, that is, and what else matters?).  There were a lot of these one-trippers in my six months "inside", and most have been forgotten to the mists of time. The only one my mind occasionally still turns to is the one who I always thought of as Steven Seagal, to the extent that that's the only name I have for him today.  He was a very serious young man in his early 20s.  Steven felt like he was living life as the hero in a Bruce Lee movie.  He was a black belt in karate (a fact nobody could know him for 5 minutes without learning).  He was a pacifist; all he wanted was to live a quiet dignified life and bring love an harmony to everyone, but dammit people kept making him fight! Every story from him was the same.  Yadda yadda peace hope love, yadda yadda coupla dicks wanting to start trouble, yadda y...

So there we were in the frozen Great White North, and Ann Nilsson didn't have a hat.  The weather was -20 or -30 and windy.  She was either too cheap or too broke to buy one, so she suffered. One night, our "territories" in town were adjacent to each other's, and after a fun-filled evening knocking on strangers' doors and trying to sell them encyclopedias, Ann and I met up to walk together back to the motel.  As we were walking, I spied a plain black  touque lying in a snow bank.  I pointed it out to Ann and she picked it up, dusted off the snow, and put it on.  Some folks look good in anything, and Ann was one such person. I began to have the stirrings of inspiration.  "Ann, what do you think we should tell the guys about how we got it?"  Ann wasn't really sure what I meant.  This was not an uncommon occurrence. Let us pause this exciting and suspense-filled tale to point out that John Schlesinger was with us on this particular...

Would you believe it: I was only a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman for six months, and my memories of those wacky times have now been filling the pages of this blog for . . . six months!  I don't know exactly how many more stories there'll be, but my feeling is that we're less than halfway done.  And I've still got some good ones up my sleeve :) At any rate, thank you, kind reader, for following me thus far.  Maybe you'll follow me just a little farther. And bring some friends :)

Being a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman is man's work.  Well, most of the time. I didn't know very many travelling door to door encyclopedia saleswomen, and there was only one in my crew:  Ann Nilsson.  Ann was quite a piece of work.  Somewhat enigmatic, whenever I thought I had her figured out, she would show a heretofore unseen side of her. Ann was Swedish and blonde, with a figure women die for.  If that creates the image of an airhead walking through life in a haze, that was definitely one aspect of her.  She was 24 years old, and had been living in Canada for three years.  She claimed to have known no English when she moved there, but by the time I met her her English was almost flawless, with barely a trace of an accent. She did pretty well at selling, which is amazing because she had no sales skills to speak of.  She couldn't remember the pitch, would get confused and correct herself, and pretty ...

(Continued from Part I ) Even though on the road we saved money by getting a motel room with a kitchenette and cooking our own meals, we weren't fanatical about saving money.  We were young and wanted to have some fun too.  So more often than not we would go to a bar after work and have a beer or two, and maybe shoot a couple games of pool.  Sometimes, we'd splurge for dinner at the bar also. So it wasn't enough that Andrew mooched from us at the motel; he insisted on coming out with us after work too.  And it's not like we were gonna say, "No, Andrew.  You may not come out with us."  When it's just five of you on the road together, you can't afford to alienate anyone.  Plus, we were Canadians.  You know, like Americans, only nicer. But we didn't have to like it. Mitch had said something to him uncharacteristically diplomatic and delicate (two adjectives not generally associated with Mitch).  Something like "You know Andrew, you're...

In my six months as a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman, a lot of people came and went.  Most are forgotten or half-forgotten, because they just came on one road trip, and then silently disappeared as soon as we got back to Vancouver.  You see, one generally does not announce beforehand that one is leaving a religious cult. One road trip.  That's the " mode " average for a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman.  If you came back for the second road trip, you were usually in it for the long haul.  The only 2-tripper I knew was Andrew the Mooch.  He was one of the worst salesmen I ever met.  He was geeky, awkward, misanthropic, and he mumbled.  Not big on eye contact.  I wonder if he had Asperger's syndrome.  And did I mention that he was a MOOCH? The thing is he was so shameless about it.  As I've mentioned several times, except for transportation, every member of the crew was responsible for paying...

Poor Mitch Clinton. His trip with us to Port Alberni and Courtenay on Vancouver Island was neither enjoyable not profitable. We had just had a rare few days off at home in Vancouver between road trips.  I killed time by doing semi-independent and totally useless door knocking in town.  Big cities like Vancouver were ruined for door to door encyclopedia salesmen long before I ever got into it.  City folk are hostile and suspicious, go figure. The day before our upcoming Island Adventure we all met up at the office for our periodical meeting/pep talk/cult ceremony.  Uncharacteristically, Mitch stayed in the background, but I didn't give it much thought.  We went out for lunch together, and I noticed he was hiccuping.  And that he was miserable. Turns out he had had the hiccups since we had gotten back from our last road trip a few days earlier.  If not for my childhood obsession with and constant reading of the 1981 Guinness Book of World Record...

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 o...