Long before professor Victor Davis Hanson classified California as “America’s First Third-World State”, I was a student at the University of California. This was over 3 decades ago. Times were different then. Back then, I had to leave college for a while. My wife became pregnant with our first child. I needed to find work. But short of steakhouses and pizza parlors, no one would hire me. You see, I was still in my teens.
I still remember having landed a successful interview for a job that would train me as a plumber. I qualified in every regard and was about to receive the offer when the HR manager intervened. Calling me aside, he pointed to my application.
“Art, everything looks fine except this. Is this a mistake?”
“No,” I said. “There’s no mistake. That’s my correct date of birth.”
“But this makes you 19,” he said. “I’m sorry. Our insurance won’t cover you. You must be at least 21.”
Though that was my first experience of how regulatory intervention atrophies market dynamics, this was no theoretical exercise for me. I was in bad need of a job. I couldn’t take care of a wife and a soon-to-arrive child on a McDonald’s wage. I needed something that would allow me to scale my earnings according to my determination to grow.
So, I answered another want ad and became a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman. (I told you this was a while back.)
German centenarian company Vorwerk was the first training program I went through in my career. It unintentionally taught me one of the most valuable lessons of my life: how to give up gold for glory. This was not part of the program. I inadvertently learned it by following their required steps to the letter.
Sell Me This Pen. It’s German!
The Vorwerk District Manager would gather us early every morning for what amounted to a revival meeting. The team trying to introduce the “Mercedes Benz of All Vacuum Cleaners” into the San Francisco Bay Area had been sent to California from Atlanta, Georgia. At the time I was in San Jose and would not receive the equipment to demo until I learned every single one of its features and accessories and how to present them each to what I soon realized were nonexistent housewives.
The daily meetings began with a ritual. We were handed nothing short of a hymnal, and were required to sing together a series of morning ballads to get us enthused about hitting the streets. Here’s one I still remember that went to the tune of Barbra Streisand’s “Hello Dolly”:
Well, well hello, Money
Yes, hello Money
It’s so good to have you
Just for me to spend
We love your smell, Money
We can tell, Money
You’re still rolling
You’re still growing
You’re still going strong
Yes, we had to memorize these along with how to claim that “Hoover smells, Kirby smells. They don’t really work. Sprinkle on that Kobosan. It picks up all your dirt. Hey!” (That one went to the tune of Jingle Bells.)
Pressure tactics were one of the most important lessons we were required to learn through rehearsal. Picture yourself coming to that critical moment when the purchase decision must be made. You presented the price. In today’s money, it’d be $2,800 and change. Just put it on your credit card and you get a 10% discount.
“The couple in shock will stare at you,” we were told. “Don’t be stupid. Just shut up, stare at one of them in silence. Then, slightly turn your head thus, and stare at the other. Keep this pattern up until either one speaks first.”
I’m glad to report that I never had occasion to have to put any of these pressure tactics to the test. After selling my first and only vacuum cleaner to an elderly couple willing to help me with my first success, I quit under one month’s pressure from my wife to get a real job.
But on my way out that very last day, knowing well beforehand it would be my last – as my wife made me swear by everything that was holy that I would quit that very day or indeed it would be my last – I was placed under the eagle eye of one of the District Manager’s minion supervisors to perform a complete sales presentation and product demo to wrap up the month.
The management made the inane decision to send us north to the city of Oakland. Now Oakland is where my in-laws are from. I was well familiar with that city. Long before we got there, and certainly once we left Highway 80 off of 98th Ave. and turned left, I knew some moronic market analyst back in Atlanta had made one major lousy screw-up.
Not only this part of Oakland wasn’t easily going to yield a single household willing to plunk down over $1000 to buy a carpet cleaner, but I was more likely to get jumped and lose my demo equipment plus a cracked skull than to get a single referral. It did not help that we got there by late afternoon, thinking we’d be okay interrupting people’s dinnertime amusements.
I managed to pull two demos that evening. My second and last one was something to remember.
Not Everything That Glistens Is Gold Worth Picking
I knocked on the door of a modest cottage and an elderly Black lady peeked through the crack with a worried look.
“Evening, ma’am. My name is Art Munoz. I’m with Vorwerk International visiting the neighborhood and presenting you with a great opportunity to have your living room cleaned for free, using our top-of-the-line, powerful yet light-as-a-feather European vacuum cleaner. It’s from Germany! The ‘Mercedes Benz of Vacuum Cleaners’. Could I have 30 minutes of your time for a demonstration.”
I’m sorry. I’m out of crackers to give you with this cheesy intro. But that’s how it went.
Surprisingly, the lady acquiesced. Later I learned why.
Knowing this would be my last presentation and realizing I was under observation that would be reported to the person I’d be speaking directly with the next morning to hand my resignation to which, by the way, given my age at the time was not a stress-free experience, I pulled all the stops. I went all in, delivered my entire repertoire to this poor, old lady. An entire month’s worth of training handed in a deluge of one-line zingers, playful remarks and low comedy antics coming out from a black bag literally together with all kinds of air filters, rotating brushes, nozzles, and extension cords.
Two hours later, after cleaning her entire living room, dining room and bedroom, and putting on a show that left her laughing, teary-eyed with delight, and terribly entertained, I ran out of material. My inspector had checked out an entire hour earlier. He never told me, and no one ever did, when to stop. I just went on momentum until I had none left.
Spent out, literally sweating, and convinced this lady wasn’t going to buy even one stick of air freshener scent, I finally grew quiet. The show was over. I had nothing else to say.
The old lady graced me with her eyes, a sweet smile on her lips, and asked me, “Would you like some cold lemonade?”
Against my very training and rightly sensing there would be no sale here tonight, I replied, “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”
For the next 20 minutes, I shared time and space with this recent widow opening her heart to me and letting me know how her husband had recently passed away, how lonely and afraid she’d been, how much she had been praying that God would send someone to pay just a little attention to her, just in order to know that He was still there listening.
She had been afraid to open her door. But she had agreed with God to do so the next time somebody knocked, which wasn’t often. And so, my unexpected knock came that evening. And likewise did arrive an entire live performance, from a young, energetic, semi-standup comedian, vibrant with life and more scared of her neighborhood than she of him, to leave her place clean and her heart full; her prayers answered.
Before departing, she learned of my situation and gave me her blessing.
Hearing her door close behind me that night –knowing that sales demo had blown up in my face and yet it hadn’t– as I stared at a clear sky that stary spring night in Oakland, California, and pondered the end of my fledgling sales career, I realized that I would never forget that moment. This lady who I would never meet again, who had not one penny to give me, who never would I have ran into except for the most unintended of circumstances at a neighborhood that I’d never be caught dead visiting, had no less bestowed onto me a treasure that lasts.
That treasure is to know to give up gold for glory.
For “Where your treasure is there your heart will be also.” And that night my heart indeed was with what I treasure most.