You know what I hate?

So, after an eight-hour-long extravaganza of an interview with the "marketing" company, it occurs to me that there is a very fine line between marketing and sales. This job is not so much a marketing position as a sales position -- a door-to-door sales position. But, when you reach a certain level you don't have to do that anymore -- you get a cushy desk job. I like the cushy desk job part okay, and the sales part isn't really all that bad, as the service that we sell is shipping with UPS. That's right -- the guys in brown. So, it's not like I'm trying to sell Granny's Great Gift Wrap or anything.

Anyhow, at the end of a battery of interviews and running around downtown with an irritating girl from Texas I'll call "Leslie", I had definitely decided that 1) she would offer me the position, and 2) I would carefully turn her down. Somehow, though, this was not possible. The money was really good, and I thought, well, I can't turn it down really.

I started at 8 am on Monday. All work is on a commission basis -- there is no hourly wage. I was placed with "Leslie" again for Training Day 1. Great. I can't believe my good fortune. I must be the luckiest girl in the world. This explains the phenomena of what happens when I go to Vegas. Yippee.

We drive to the middle of Bumfuck, Massachusets, get out of the car and set up shop, which means we start going door-to-door. Even to the "No Soliciting" doors. "Leslie" laughs at me as I hesitate to go into one such door, "We're not solicitors: we're giving these people another option to something that they already need." Stop me if I'm wrong, but isn't that still solicitation? Are we not working on a commission based on how many sales we make? Whatever. The point is that not only is she clearly deluded and possibly insane, she's a megalomaniac from Texas. It seems that there may be more than one Texas village that's missing an idiot.

We somehow make it through the day. She tells me halfway through that if she makes three sales today, she'll give me credit for one. We make two complete sales and she fucks one up. I don't get a dime. Lovely.

Finally, at 5:30pm, after telling me that if I think that we're done, we need to knock on 5 more doors, it's time to head out -- not back home, like I'd like to after a nine hour day, but back to the office for an ominous sounding "Atmosphere Meeting." Fanfuckingtastic. I get back into the office, ready to be in and out of this meeting lickety-split so that I can get home and eat some supper. I go into a back room, and there's a gaggle of people all excitedly talking in pairs and writing on whiteboards attached to the walls. I chill out in a corner, hoping no one will talk to me, as all these people are unsettlingly chipper. As I wonder what's in the Kool-aid, one of them approaches me. Great. Here we go again.

"Hi, I'm 'Ben'. How was your day out there?"
"Uh, good."
"Oh, well.... We actually should grab a pen and talk through it on the whiteboard while it's still fresh in your mind. Then we can set four goals for you to achieve tomorrow."

Wait a second. Goals? What? Anybody who knows me knows that as a proud underachiever, I have never had any more goals than 1) to get through the month, and 2) to remember to eat. That's it. I can't have four goals a day. Not fuckin' happenin', bucko. Maybe, though, I'm just not as enthused as I should be because I'm tired and hungry, and maybe these people are fucking insane, I think to myself. I don't say any of this to "Ben" as he has disappeared to locate the all-important magic dry-erase marker of doom.

While he's gone "Sabrina" walks up to me, and asks me how my day was. I tell her it was good. She wants to know what was good about it. As I am lying about the "good" part, and am tired, I have trouble coming up with a decent response. I finally tell her that it was joyous to meet all the dear deserving people of Bumfuck, MA. I think that she bought it too, so I'm sure that there was something in the Kool-aid. I privately wished that it was Jack Daniels.

Then it got really weird. At an unknown to me, but somehow predetermined signal, everyone moved into a circle and started clapping their hands. At this point I was hiding in the corner, hoping to go unnoticed. "Leslie" reappeared and banged a small-sized gong and ran around the cirle and slapped five with everybody (excluding me -- I have a touching thing -- I really don't like touching people, especially the dreaded high five, which truly is the lowest form of human contact ever devised, but I digress). Others now do the same, always banging the gong and running around getting their filthy hand slapped by others with equally filthy hands. (I may be neurotic, now that I think about it...). Suddenly, "Leslie" grabs me, pushes me toward the gong, and says, "Go for it," all too encouraging for my liking. Oh, balls. I bang the gong, but I'm told to do it harder. I comply. And then, I trotted around the damn circle, the misanthropic curmudgen that I am, and slapped people's hands. Apparently, I missed one. I know this because the owner of said hand chased me around the circle and stopped me to get a redo. Just fuckin' kill me.

Moments later, "Leslie" whisks me out of the door, and offers to walk me to my car. I decline, politely, but she follows me anyway, wanting to talk business the whole way. She offers the names of people who I'll undoubtedly want to "get with," and I sincerely hope that she's talking about talking with them about work and not "getting with them." Fianlly she leaves, and I can go home. I call my parents on the way home, as they are eagerly awaiting my news of my first day. I tell them all about it, after which my mother says, "But Dev, you're Daria. You don't slap five." No shit, Sherlock. I had decided to quit by the time that I got home.

And all night, after I fell asleep, I had unsettling dreams about Kool-aid, a sales pitch and doors, tons of doors. I worke up to go to work and called in with "food poisoning." I'll quit tomorrow.

Thankfully, while I was looking at the want ads, Dot from Gap called me and offered me some hours for the evening. I can have my old availability back, with a possibility of more hours from other local stores, and they mentioned wanting to bump me up into management soon. I guess all's well that ends well, but man, I still hate gongs and fives.

That is all.