I shall return (and have)
Right now I am somewhat unexpectedly siting in my home, in front of my computer in North Carolina. For those of you keeping track, that's about three months early. I quit the door-to-door book selling for moral reasons and returned home last night, more on that
I left for sales school last saturday and arrived in Nashville (the company headquarters) on Sunday. For the following two weeks I woke up at 6:00 am and fell asleep at 11:00 pm. During sales school the seventeen waking hours were filled with seminars, practices with our "Org", and many pb&j sandwiches. After sales school and arriving in Waterford (north of Detroit) my day consisted of breakfast, knocking on the first door around 7:45 am, leaving the last house at 9:30 pm and at some point consuming two pb&j sandwiches. Now, believe it or not, the work part was Okay with me. Even the cold shower in the morning to wake us up wasn't too awful. What got to me was the feeling I would get knocking on someone's door. I felt like I was doing something morally bad by intentionally bothering someone in their home. Yesterday morning after bothering a couple people I pulled into a golf course parking lot with the need to figure out whether or not door-to-door selling was ethically Okay for me and by my presence at home I think we can all surmise what my final decision was. I'm a little ashamed for quiting, but I'm glad I don't have to feel like a bad guy for twelve more weeks.
My Mom suggested that maybe I simply do not have the need and drive for money that my (former) fellow salesmen do. That answer doesn't really satisfy me, although one of my roommates who has been selling for five years is probably going to make around forty-three thousand dollars this summer (he made thirty-seven thousand last summer). I also do not believe that I am any more or less morally conscious than the others who are still out there this morning knocking on doors. Almost all of the people I met in the past two weeks were WASPs (white anglo-saxon protestants) and quite proud of their christianity (for those of you who do not know me, I am a content atheist). I know it wasn't because I was not good at it. My first two days I made a profit of about three hundred fifty dollars and I would only continue to improve. I really don't know why I see the door-to-door thing as bad and the other salesmen do not. It might be something as simple as how I was raised or something as complex as an interconnected series of events leading up the decisive moment in the far end of a golf course parking lot where I read a line from my sales school notes that said "treat every Mom the way you would want your mother to be treated". Either way, I'm home, content, and kinda wondering what in the world I'm going to do this summer.
This is Jed, signing off..
I left for sales school last saturday and arrived in Nashville (the company headquarters) on Sunday. For the following two weeks I woke up at 6:00 am and fell asleep at 11:00 pm. During sales school the seventeen waking hours were filled with seminars, practices with our "Org", and many pb&j sandwiches. After sales school and arriving in Waterford (north of Detroit) my day consisted of breakfast, knocking on the first door around 7:45 am, leaving the last house at 9:30 pm and at some point consuming two pb&j sandwiches. Now, believe it or not, the work part was Okay with me. Even the cold shower in the morning to wake us up wasn't too awful. What got to me was the feeling I would get knocking on someone's door. I felt like I was doing something morally bad by intentionally bothering someone in their home. Yesterday morning after bothering a couple people I pulled into a golf course parking lot with the need to figure out whether or not door-to-door selling was ethically Okay for me and by my presence at home I think we can all surmise what my final decision was. I'm a little ashamed for quiting, but I'm glad I don't have to feel like a bad guy for twelve more weeks.
My Mom suggested that maybe I simply do not have the need and drive for money that my (former) fellow salesmen do. That answer doesn't really satisfy me, although one of my roommates who has been selling for five years is probably going to make around forty-three thousand dollars this summer (he made thirty-seven thousand last summer). I also do not believe that I am any more or less morally conscious than the others who are still out there this morning knocking on doors. Almost all of the people I met in the past two weeks were WASPs (white anglo-saxon protestants) and quite proud of their christianity (for those of you who do not know me, I am a content atheist). I know it wasn't because I was not good at it. My first two days I made a profit of about three hundred fifty dollars and I would only continue to improve. I really don't know why I see the door-to-door thing as bad and the other salesmen do not. It might be something as simple as how I was raised or something as complex as an interconnected series of events leading up the decisive moment in the far end of a golf course parking lot where I read a line from my sales school notes that said "treat every Mom the way you would want your mother to be treated". Either way, I'm home, content, and kinda wondering what in the world I'm going to do this summer.
This is Jed, signing off..