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-sensitive, it is also not my intention to be wantonly offensive, so I hope you understand my words in the spirit in which they are meant.)
Indians can either live on a reservation, or in a town or city along with white people. Reservations (as far as I could tell, and on the testimony of fellow salesmen) come in two general categories: ones that are obviously poverty-stricken, and ones with a brand new pickup in every driveway. I'm not sure what determines that, but my guess would be the exploitation of some sort of valuable natural resource, such as oil or timber.
As for why Indians are so open to travelling salesmen, I'd be surprised if any research had been done on the topic, but I can give a few educated guesses. First, a characteristic that they share with rednecks is that they are generally located relatively far from major urban centres and their accompanying wealth of choices in retail establishments, as well as libraries. Remember, this was before the days of the internet.
Aside from that, I'm sure there were cultural aspects, such as a general desire for self-improvement and a chance for a better education for the kids, for which an encyclopedia was a powerful symbol and, potentially, a useful tool.
Whatever the reasons, very often if you knocked on an Indian family's door, they would act like they were lucky to invite you in, listen spellbound to the pitch, and then sign the sales contract and credit application gratefully at the end. Too easy.
Only two problems: one, they actually had to pass a credit check and two, you don't want to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs, so we were careful about not overworking the reservations. In fact, a night of knocking on doors on a reservation was used as a reward to be teased with for a particularly hard or motivated worker. There was no bigger carrot. As for the credit check (and, more generally, being able to afford the product at all), that's why we looked for the brand new pickup in every driveway. That's the right kind of reservation for a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman.
Sometimes, of course, one would simply get lucky and find an Indian family living among the rednecks. That's what happened to me in 100 Mile House, British Columbia. The first time Mitch told me we were driving there, I had to ask him if this was the real name of a town, or if it was some kind of inside joke. No joke: 100 Mile House is a real honest-to-goodness town. They even have a McDonald's.
(To be continued . . .)
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Travelling Door to Door Diversity Training
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, redneck, ex-soldier, pothead, high school dropout, college dropout, college graduate, Swedish immigrant, Jamaican immigrant, Bahamian immigrant from England (Jackie. She was so cute and perky!), an Indian (from Punjab) and an Indian (from a North Vancouver reservation).
Now that I mention it, remind me to tell you about the Indian and the Indian some day. What a couple of characters.
But as diverse as the sales crews were, I must admit that our customers were not quite so cosmopolitan. In fact, the vast majority of sales occurred in just two general demographic sets: rednecks and Indians.
By rednecks I mean white people lower-middle to middle-middle class living far from major urban areas, preferably in trailer parks. The trailer park angle is one worth exploring in a separate post. And as for Indians, you can look forward to a post called "Selling to Indians" coming soon to a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman blog near you!
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, redneck, ex-soldier, pothead, high school dropout, college dropout, college graduate, Swedish immigrant, Jamaican immigrant, Bahamian immigrant from England (Jackie. She was so cute and perky!), an Indian (from Punjab) and an Indian (from a North Vancouver reservation).
Now that I mention it, remind me to tell you about the Indian and the Indian some day. What a couple of characters.
But as diverse as the sales crews were, I must admit that our customers were not quite so cosmopolitan. In fact, the vast majority of sales occurred in just two general demographic sets: rednecks and Indians.
By rednecks I mean white people lower-middle to middle-middle class living far from major urban areas, preferably in trailer parks. The trailer park angle is one worth exploring in a separate post. And as for Indians, you can look forward to a post called "Selling to Indians" coming soon to a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman blog near you!
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Let's Meet Another Crew!
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 a brain aneurysm right there in front of me. I avoided talking to her about anything but dinner after that.
One night we all went out to a bar for dinner. Several months on the road with my crew had made me so crude that I shudder to think of how I used to speak back then. It took me several months after quitting and a number of notable missteps to reintegrate myself into polite society (and some might say that I still have a way to go). The feminist lady person had gone to powder her nose, and I leaned over to Ray and asked him what it was like to be on the road with her all the time. He kinda shrugged and smiled and said that she was nice but it was just important to avoid topics that made her angry. "What a b**ch!", I exclaimed. Ray was shocked into uncontrollable gales of laughter which the more he tried to suppress, the more he laughed. He just managed to get himself under control before Gloria Steinem returned.
The third guy from the other crew was Crazy Sheldon and the fourth, and his interaction with Andy Bailey, will have to wait for another post. Stay tuned!
Monday, April 4, 2011
Prince George was Smokin'
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 know how many different kinds of people end up as travelling door to door encyclopedia salesmen for at least a road trip or two.
Our first night at the Prince George motel, Ms. Crewcut pulled out her baggie and rolled a big fat doobie. We passed it around and I enjoyed it, but once again wondered if there was something I was missing. After a little while, I was felling a little hungry, so I decided to go to the gas station down the road to get a little snack. It's when I got down to the street that I realised just how profoundly stoned I was. I couldn't wait to get back to the motel room to share the good news, but of course I really had to get that snack. Where was I? Oh yeah, snack! Where was I going again? Ooh, look at the pretty sky! Needless to say, it took some time before I made it back to the motel room with a full belly and ready to boast to all who would hear about just how stoned I was. My crewmates shook their heads at my puppy dog naivete.
By the end of our week in Prince George, I was an old hand at that whole weed-smoking thing. Just wait till I tell you about how we moved on to Andy Bailey's bong.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Guilty Pleasure
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 junkers suggesting a slum, but simply old cars in decent shape that in most of the places I'd been would have rusted to dust years earlier. Lots of AMC Eagles and such. I was told it was because Kamloops gets very little rain or snow because it's in the Coastal Mountains' rain shadow, and they don't salt the roads in the winter. Certainly when I was there in April, it was hot and dry and seemed like a desert. It was fun to see all those classic middle class cars on the road.
One time, we were driving through a residential neighbourhood when I saw a hand painted sign in someone's front yard that made me laugh until I cried, while at the same time feeling like a lowlife for finding it so funny. I just saw it out of the corner of my eye for a moment, but that was all it took to burn itself into my memory forever. I guess it was the pathos, the innocence, or maybe the passive-aggressiveness (a term I had never heard yet back in those days) of the sign that struck me as so funny. Probably the pathos. Whenever anyone mentions "guilty pleasures," I think of my laughter at that sad little hand painted sign somebody took the effort to create and put on their front lawn in Kamloops, BC.
Please return our boat.
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 junkers suggesting a slum, but simply old cars in decent shape that in most of the places I'd been would have rusted to dust years earlier. Lots of AMC Eagles and such. I was told it was because Kamloops gets very little rain or snow because it's in the Coastal Mountains' rain shadow, and they don't salt the roads in the winter. Certainly when I was there in April, it was hot and dry and seemed like a desert. It was fun to see all those classic middle class cars on the road.
One time, we were driving through a residential neighbourhood when I saw a hand painted sign in someone's front yard that made me laugh until I cried, while at the same time feeling like a lowlife for finding it so funny. I just saw it out of the corner of my eye for a moment, but that was all it took to burn itself into my memory forever. I guess it was the pathos, the innocence, or maybe the passive-aggressiveness (a term I had never heard yet back in those days) of the sign that struck me as so funny. Probably the pathos. Whenever anyone mentions "guilty pleasures," I think of my laughter at that sad little hand painted sign somebody took the effort to create and put on their front lawn in Kamloops, BC.
Please return our boat.
Monday, March 21, 2011
On the Road with Steven Seagal
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 yadda I tried to defuse the situation, yadda yadda they kept *pushin' man, they just kept pushin', yadda yadda **I beat the crap outta them man, it took me like 30 seconds and they just couldn't friggin' believe it! They were both down on the ground, completely in awe, and ***I just wish it didn't have to be that way.
We were in a bar one night having a beer after work. The place was pretty packed and Mr. Seagal and I were at a little table right in the middle of everyone. A slightly wobbly gentleman walked by and accidentally jostled our slightly wobbly table, making Steven's beer slosh inside his mug a little. A drop or two might have made it onto the table. Steven got up, put his hand on Mr. Wobbly's shoulder, and said "It's OK man. It's OK!" He nodded to emphasize how OK it was and how the wobbleman didn't have to fear the wrath of Steven Seagal. Because Steven Seagal only wants peace. I had to put a hand over my mouth to stifle laughter at so much earnest seriousness over what should have been a non-event. I wouldn't have wanted to make him angry.
Well, we eventually made it back to Vancouver, another road trip over, and Steven Seagal melted into the night like so many other one-trippers before him. I guess it was just time for him to move on, you know.
* Crescendo
** Climax!
*** Denouement
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 yadda I tried to defuse the situation, yadda yadda they kept *pushin' man, they just kept pushin', yadda yadda **I beat the crap outta them man, it took me like 30 seconds and they just couldn't friggin' believe it! They were both down on the ground, completely in awe, and ***I just wish it didn't have to be that way.
We were in a bar one night having a beer after work. The place was pretty packed and Mr. Seagal and I were at a little table right in the middle of everyone. A slightly wobbly gentleman walked by and accidentally jostled our slightly wobbly table, making Steven's beer slosh inside his mug a little. A drop or two might have made it onto the table. Steven got up, put his hand on Mr. Wobbly's shoulder, and said "It's OK man. It's OK!" He nodded to emphasize how OK it was and how the wobbleman didn't have to fear the wrath of Steven Seagal. Because Steven Seagal only wants peace. I had to put a hand over my mouth to stifle laughter at so much earnest seriousness over what should have been a non-event. I wouldn't have wanted to make him angry.
Well, we eventually made it back to Vancouver, another road trip over, and Steven Seagal melted into the night like so many other one-trippers before him. I guess it was just time for him to move on, you know.
* Crescendo
** Climax!
*** Denouement
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
That Funny Time When We Pretended to Rob a Little Kid
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 road trip. However fun and personable John could be at times, there was a very real mean streak to the guy. You see, he was an a**hole. I remember riding with him one day after a rain storm. There were big puddles on the road, and he went out of his way to try to drive through one in order to splash an old lady walking by. (He failed, thankfully.) He cackled uncontrollably like . . . well, like an old lady actually. I had never been an eye witness to such mean-spiritedness before.
As the months went by, I came to realise that even though I could get along with John, and have a reasonably friendly working and, on the road, living relationship with him, I really didn't like or respect him. This was not the case with any other member of my crew, or the members of the other crews with whom I would occasionally spend time. Some people were great, some were less than great, and some (remind me to talk about Sheldon some day) were certifiably crazy, but on a certain level I genuinely liked them all. That is to say, I like most people, and being fellow members of the cult of travelling door to door encyclopedia salesmen really does create a sense of fraternity.
Back to our tale. I decided it would be fun to play to John's meanness. But I wanted to make it believable. If we just said that I stole it from some kid, John and the rest of the crew would never buy it. I obviously didn't have it in me. So here's the story I worked out and rehearsed with Ann on our walk back to the motel:
Ann was really suffering in the freezing cold without a hat, and I decided that the situation simply had to be remedied. We saw a kid walking by wearing a touque. He seemed to be about eleven or twelve. I offered him five dollars for the hat, but he refused. So I told him, "Look, kid. The hat isn't even worth five bucks, and you're gonna be home and warm in a few minutes anyways, and tomorrow you can buy yourself a nicer one. So give me the hat and take the money, or I'll just take the hat no matter what". The kid got scared, so he just threw the hat down on the ground, and ran away. The best part is, we ended up getting the hat for free! But just to be safe, we should probably avoid that neighbourhood from now on.
We got our story straight and promised each other not to chicken out. We would stick to the story through hell or high water, and pretend we didn't care whether anyone believed us.
As we walked into the motel room, the first thing everyone noticed was Ann's head covering. Any distraction from the daily monotony is eagerly welcomed on the road, and the obviously well used hat on Ann's head was definitely going to be a story. Little did they know.
So we launched into our well rehearsed act, each of us picking up where the other left off, and I think we did a pretty convincing job of it. "Bull***t!" cackled John. "Sasha, you are too nice to ever do that! You're just trying to impress me."
Please notice that it says something about his personality that an implied threat of violence toward a child actually would be impressive to John. Anyways, we had expected some skepticism and initial resistance. "Well, I only intended to pay for it, and a much more than fair price too. If there were a store nearby, I would have bought a new touque there for less, so it's not like I was robbing the kid. How was I supposed to know he would panic and bolt without the money?"
Cackle, cackle. "I can't believe it! Sasha, I must be rubbing off on you!" Cackle, cackle. The rest of the guys just looked on with bemused smiles, not really sure what to think.
Come to think of it, neither did I.
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 road trip. However fun and personable John could be at times, there was a very real mean streak to the guy. You see, he was an a**hole. I remember riding with him one day after a rain storm. There were big puddles on the road, and he went out of his way to try to drive through one in order to splash an old lady walking by. (He failed, thankfully.) He cackled uncontrollably like . . . well, like an old lady actually. I had never been an eye witness to such mean-spiritedness before.
As the months went by, I came to realise that even though I could get along with John, and have a reasonably friendly working and, on the road, living relationship with him, I really didn't like or respect him. This was not the case with any other member of my crew, or the members of the other crews with whom I would occasionally spend time. Some people were great, some were less than great, and some (remind me to talk about Sheldon some day) were certifiably crazy, but on a certain level I genuinely liked them all. That is to say, I like most people, and being fellow members of the cult of travelling door to door encyclopedia salesmen really does create a sense of fraternity.
Back to our tale. I decided it would be fun to play to John's meanness. But I wanted to make it believable. If we just said that I stole it from some kid, John and the rest of the crew would never buy it. I obviously didn't have it in me. So here's the story I worked out and rehearsed with Ann on our walk back to the motel:
Ann was really suffering in the freezing cold without a hat, and I decided that the situation simply had to be remedied. We saw a kid walking by wearing a touque. He seemed to be about eleven or twelve. I offered him five dollars for the hat, but he refused. So I told him, "Look, kid. The hat isn't even worth five bucks, and you're gonna be home and warm in a few minutes anyways, and tomorrow you can buy yourself a nicer one. So give me the hat and take the money, or I'll just take the hat no matter what". The kid got scared, so he just threw the hat down on the ground, and ran away. The best part is, we ended up getting the hat for free! But just to be safe, we should probably avoid that neighbourhood from now on.
We got our story straight and promised each other not to chicken out. We would stick to the story through hell or high water, and pretend we didn't care whether anyone believed us.
As we walked into the motel room, the first thing everyone noticed was Ann's head covering. Any distraction from the daily monotony is eagerly welcomed on the road, and the obviously well used hat on Ann's head was definitely going to be a story. Little did they know.
So we launched into our well rehearsed act, each of us picking up where the other left off, and I think we did a pretty convincing job of it. "Bull***t!" cackled John. "Sasha, you are too nice to ever do that! You're just trying to impress me."
Please notice that it says something about his personality that an implied threat of violence toward a child actually would be impressive to John. Anyways, we had expected some skepticism and initial resistance. "Well, I only intended to pay for it, and a much more than fair price too. If there were a store nearby, I would have bought a new touque there for less, so it's not like I was robbing the kid. How was I supposed to know he would panic and bolt without the money?"
Cackle, cackle. "I can't believe it! Sasha, I must be rubbing off on you!" Cackle, cackle. The rest of the guys just looked on with bemused smiles, not really sure what to think.
Come to think of it, neither did I.
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