Love Is a Choice by Robert Hemfelt

Author:Robert Hemfelt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

The Roles People Play

Sean McCurdy could talk the skin off a grape. In a people who boasted the Blarney stone, Sean stood forth as an Irishman among Irishmen. Named John at his birth in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, he legally changed over to the Gaelic form of the name the day he turned twenty-one. He had honed and polished his golden gift of gab his whole life. In his early years the wiry redhead sold more magazines and candy and personalized stationery than anyone else in his school. The band obtained uniforms, the library bought books, the debating team traveled to the state competition—all financed in part by his glib tongue. In high school he sold advertising space in his school paper, almost single-handedly turning it from a single-fold news sheet into an eight-page weekly tabloid, replete with the fancy inserts and photocopy that only money can provide. Now here he sat in our office for vocational counseling, the Texas sun streaming through the window, his career as a salesman on the rocks, and his twenty-seventh birthday only a few days past. What was going wrong?

As he wagged his head, his bush of unruly copper hair glowed. “I’m so frustrated I can’t stand it. I’m the best salesman you’re ever going to meet and I can’t stay with a job more than a few months. Six months max. It just . . .” He waved his hand. “It just falls apart. I can’t see how most of the things that happened were my fault. And yet, they keep happening to me.”

“What do you sell?”

“Whatever’s in the warehouse. No computers. I’m not what you call computer literate and there’s too much to learn—the customer’s bound to know more about the product than I do. Anything else. I’ve sold shoes, used cars, new cars, food processors. Everything. Even baby furniture. You know, I really enjoyed that job, selling baby furniture.”

“What happened that you quit?”

“Didn’t quit. Fired. Nursery section of a major department store.

Minimum plus commission. We handled two national lines of cribs, playpens and such, and carried our own store brand. Selling the national brands was where the money was, of course; they cost up to a fourth more. And yet, even while you’re pitching the expensive stuff, you don’t dare bad-mouth the house brand. You see the challenge? I sold seventy percent name-brand merchandise and the sales gross in that department jumped a hundred and six percent the four months I was there.”

“But they fired you.”

“My immediate supervisor fired me. He promised a bonus check in addition to commissions for anyone exceeding the monthly quota. The first month I got a slow start because I was still learning the lines. Second month I exceeded quota and got a dinky little check, but it was okay. The third month was really hot. But no check. I gave him three weeks to come through and then filed a formal complaint. Bam! Gone.”

“What was his reason?”

“Said he couldn’t work with somebody with an attitude.

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