Off the seat of a bicycle
Chapter 49   My personality fails

My new job working at Century Supply allowed me to recognize a talent for sales, and I became successful at counter sales, but ultimately my personality failed.

When Century Supply hired new counter-salesmen they usually washed out quickly. It was commissioned sales, and the veterans sharked all over the 3-D grid playing ‘one-up’ to buffalo customers out of your pocket into theirs, and they swarmed over me like a pack of worms.

One salesman told me to leave the ‘door open when I started my car’ so the bomb-compression wouldn’t kill me.

Two other guys skid their car at me across an icy parking lot when I walked to lunch. (and the occurrence made me laugh, the fact I didn’t tear off their side-view mirror).

But I couldn’t capitalize on the social cues. Instead of charming the ‘rock-throwers’ from my second grade experience, and making friends with the veteran salesmen, I reached further inside to the only instinct I knew, rage and revenge.

The more they pushed, the harder I got … it was the primary skill from my family’s abuse: take it, don’t talk about it, and never cry. My father hit us for crying, and I wondered why? Did our cries awaken a memory of his crying as a boy? But nobody asks questions in an abusive home … nobody is allowed to feel … you just stay alive.

At Century Supply I worked around my emotional shortcomings, relying on straightforward honesty, thinking it would be worth more than an inability to bond with people. But that’s a false assumption; honesty means little and companionship means everything. Best friends lie to each other all the time … it what people do.

The top salesman every month was Norman, a squint-eyed cigar chewing pragmatic who earned respect from everybody with his gruff business-like manner. The years nearly beat the shit out of his body but he walked with the balanced dignity of a dancer … what an image: that old fat fart whirling around on the hardwood beneath the twinkling lights … but, hell I wouldn’t ask a personal question … he was there to sell, and I liked that about him, and so did the customers … but quietly he was very clever, and knew how to charm the contractors into buying from him.

Despite the distractions, I made top salesman on my second month and held the position for 8 straight months until I quit.

The other salesmen were puking barnacles and accused me of stealing sales … but that was a ruse. I was good at spotting ‘buyers’ and welcoming them to the counter, where I ‘closed’ quick and moved-on to the next sale … I was aggressive and didn’t wait in line, and wrote more sales-tickets and added more high-commission ‘extras’ because I effused confidence the customers liked. I was fresh and young and the work was easy … and it got boring quick.

Those salesmen were making good money, but none of them was happy. They had families that locked them into the job; not educated to go further, and too fat to start over. They were ‘neighborhood’ boys made good, and I didn’t want that. I just couldn’t share that or anything else with them … but my stupidity throughout life is my failure to understand that sharing is paramount to people.

Only in ‘make-believe-world’ does performance count more than personal gesture … why else did the salesmen politely ‘take turns’ greeting customers? For crying-out-loud, even the most aggressive basketball player has to ‘fit in’ with the team at some point.

Despite the salesmen’s ritual pose that they were too tough to share counter-space with me, it was soon apparent I was a greater black-eyed shark than any of them … and I outplayed the players at their own game. I really was a lot rougher than they turned out to be … and that became the problem. A couple of the guys asked me to slow down so they could make their quota, but I thought it was part of the bullshit.

I was a power-forward driving in for the slam dunk, and my body was hard from burning long miles past fatigue.

The store owner’s kids were ‘of age’ and they entered the family business. Their royal squabbles over who had the easiest job filled the day … I cared more about a runny turd, but it was a huge banner when they paraded to the sales floor … and a clear distraction to business because they were suck-salesmen. You either have the brassies for ‘sales’ or you don’t, and the sales-gene skipped a generation there.

Their arrival spelled doom to those high-paid sales jobs … but none of the salesmen could see those kids were going to take it all, and then my father told me, ‘no matter how hard you work, they won’t make you an owner.’

Well now, doesn’t that sum up America? The high-paid jobs are club-housed for the white male insiders, and they’ve closed the ownership locker … and the whole time they beat on you for more output, they’re busy bleeding your social security to pay for their boat.

After moving into the Mt Prospect apartment, I wrote my former girlfriend and she flew in to visit. Her father was dying of cancer and it was a sad time in her life. He had given his best years to liquor and now the revenge was on him. I never got to meet the man, but heard he was the spirit of any party and had done well for himself and provided for his family even in death.

She took a teaching job in Indiana so I was flying there weekends to see her.

My manager joked that I was going off to get married. He was a nice guy but I didn’t like joking around with people … I couldn’t read the social cues, and it seemed everything I said came back flipped over with somebody saying exactly the opposite of what was intended.

After a while, it was shit-house misery working there, but I didn’t help my case either.

I was having problems. My mood was increasingly flat and dark. And my drawer kept coming up short, but the guy catching it was the owner’s son-in-law, Mark … and he hung around the cash drawers all the time. It was a dollar here and a quarter there, but it was always short and never long, so it looked like I was stealing. But it was fat-mark, the owner's son-in-law who was fucking with my drawer.

The owner came in one night and told me ‘the drawer better be to-the-penny tonight.’ Fortunately it was, but Frank was fed up with my nickel-and-dime shortage and everybody at the counter heard it. But that wasn’t the problem … I was dislocated socially and had ‘intimidation’ issues. I was disliked by everyone.

People were commenting that I was making good money but had no ‘bills’ to pay … and in all honesty, that was true, but there was no defense because I couldn’t bond.

Growing up in my family, we only heard negative things … I never heard one good thing about myself … oh, I knew there were good things since I wasn’t roiled-over about everything … but nobody hugged or loved or shared experience except to cite the worst thing the other person had done … and never could a parent be accused of anything. We were a typical abusive family, everyone bolted to silence by the conditions we lived in … and that was me standing at the counter every day … bolted into meanness and hearing every nuance from the other salesmen as a life-demeaning insult.

It was horrible being hated in my family and horrible being hated at work … but there was nowhere to stand … it was the high-school locker-room failure all over again … I wanted to break it apart, crush it and throw it down, but I couldn’t vomit out enough rage, and if I did, there would be nothing left of me except to live under a bridge.

Fart-mark diminished my every move. He angled for a physical confrontation to get me fired, but I was too wrecked from my abusive family to stand up to him.

Today in the same circumstance, I would wither the man verbally until he was beyond repair … and I would do it every single time I saw him, and follow him around the store provoking him over his fat belly and dirty shirt, but in 1978 I didn’t have words to revenge my dignity.

Yeah my father refused to let me into the spotlight except to be beat down, but it was fat-mark who shut the cash register drawer on my fingers … and I didn’t stand up to either man.

Today if fat-mark shut the drawer on my fingers, I would tear the shirt off that mf using my words.

The final deal at Century Supply happened in March on a Tuesday when I came back to work after two days off. The previous Saturday, I took the late flight to Indiana and didn’t get to the bank for cash. Instead I substituted a personal check in my cash bag to cover the $40 I borrowed. Fat-mark dug out my check and showed it to the manager. My check was good as gold, and I brought the cash with me that day, but they saw me using company money, and that was true. It was pretty serious, but they weren’t going to fire me …

… but that was it … I didn’t fit in.

At the end of the shift, I told the manager it was over, and he held open the door. Later I mailed a cordial letter to both owners thanking them for the opportunity, and concluded, ‘if a person doesn’t fit in, then it’s best to leave.’ They gave me a glowing recommendation on my next job.

The Chevette was packed that night and headed to Indiana in the biggest blizzard of the year … and my body practically leaped with joy every time another item got crammed into the car. And suddenly I was free to think and feel again, but it’s amazing during those moments of bliss how my paranoia never beat a lick.
Chapter 50) Bike trip from Tampa to New Orleans
Index of chapters