JANUARY 20, 2024 – I walked overland to the nearest westbound freeway entrance to hitch-hike to Moore’s Lane. It didn’t take long before a driver stopped. He said he was headed for the next exit after Moore’s Lane, but after he heard my story, he was kind enough to take me to the front entrance of the Southwestern Company headquarters.
With my “gas can” sales kit in one hand and my duffle bag in the other, I could be easily identified as a quitter, a loser. The receptionist led me down a corridor to the desk of Joe Martin’s secretary. She was expecting me, and buzzed Joe, who then appeared from inside a nearby office.
I was surprised by his initial cordiality. He shook my hand, invited me into his office, and offered me a chair. He appeared radically different from the surly individual who’d talked to me two days before. What ensued was one last effort on his part to save me from the loser fate I’d chosen for myself. He emphasized my success and told me I could be one of the company’s top salesmen that summer if I just turned around, headed back to Buffalo with a positive mental attitude, and completed my job selling books. “Act enthusiastic, you become enthusiastic,” he said.
I’d lost my enthusiasm for the Southwestern version of enthusiasm. No amount of sweet talk—no amount of PMA—could recover it. The last thing I could contemplate was returning to Buffalo. West Sobieski Street in Cheektowaga had been near the usual flight path of departing planes from the Buffalo airport. Hardly a day had passed when I hadn’t eyed those jets and wished that I’d been aboard, taking my leave of the city and the job. If in the end I’d taken a bus instead of a plane to get myself away from both, I was not about to go back by either mode.
I’ll never forget Joe Martin’s abrupt reaction when I said firmly, “I’m not changing my mind.” He changed his mind as if it were an on-off electrical switch. In an instant the hard sell turned to humiliating condemnation, and I went from “winner” to “loser.”
“Get out of my office,” he said with a foreboding scowl. “You’re not going to disgrace it for another second.” He rose from his desk, told me to finish up my account details with his secretary, then leave the premises. His door would be the last of the summer to be slammed in my face, or more precisely, on my heels.
I refused to be cowed by his vitriol. It served only to affirm my judgment about him and the company’s tactics and exploitation of its summer salesmen. My decision was fully vindicated.
After completing the paperwork and leaving my sales kit on the secretary’s desk, I couldn’t vacate the building fast enough. With my duffle bag I fled across the open field behind the company facilities and hiked toward the Interstate. Upon reaching the chain-link fence along the right-of-way, I pitched my bag to the other side, then climbed over. I’ll never forget my next move: turning around, raising both arms to flip the bird in the direction of the Southwestern headquarters and shouting full force, “F-you, Joe Martin!”
I must’ve presented quite a sight hauling myself and overstuffed duffel bag across the westbound lanes, the median, and on across the eastbound lanes. I then did what had become second nature: I thumbed a ride. That part of the experience, actually, I’d miss.
My ride took me into the heart of Nashville, where I found a bus to the airport. My parents had sprung for a plane ticket.
I remember well the relief that swept over me once the plane was aloft. Peering out the window at the earth below, I felt as free as I’d ever been in my life. If I wasn’t homesick—by that point in my life I’d already spent more six school year away from home—I was nevertheless eager to see my parents. In many ways by our long periods of separation, we’d formed a closer, more secure relationship than we would have had I not gone away to school. They understood how hard the job had been, and I knew they would prove Joe Martin wrong: they would not think I was a disgrace, a loser. With open arms, smiles, and relief they would meet me at the arrival gate at the airport and for the entire the car ride home, engage in supportive conversation about my experiences.
The biggest affirmation, however, came from our good neighbor Fred Moore across the street. Fred had been my “booster back home.” When he saw him the next day, he wondered what I was doing back home early. I told him I’d been officially designated by the company as a quitter and a loser.
“No you’re not,” he said.
“Tell that to the regional sales manager, the guy who sent me on my way with a good swift kick in the butt,” I said.
“He doesn’t know you like I know you,” Fred said with a scowl. “And if he calls you a quitter and a loser, he’d have to call me a quitter and a loser too, even though I’m not.”
“How so?”
“Remember that job I you about? The one selling books to farm families, going from farm to farm the summer after my first year of law school? There reached a point where I realized that none of those families needed or really wanted or could even afford what I was trying to sell them. Under those circumstances, I couldn’t keep going, so I quit. And after my second year of law school, I quit that too. Couldn’t afford it. Then the war came, and I never went back. But does that make Fred Moore a quitter or a loser? You decide.
His question was rhetorical. By absolutely no measure was Fred a quitter or a loser. He’d been hugely successful in life and had my respect and admiration.
It would take many letters and phone calls over a good six months before I saw any of my money from Southwestern. When the check finally arrived, it was for $378.00—far shy of the $1,000 I’d estimated I’d earned, even taking into account the portion of my commissions I’d had to sacrifice to the salesman to whom my sales had been assigned.
But it didn’t seem so at the time, the overall experience of “the sales job” turned out to be priceless. Despite my negative attitude toward the positive attitude slogan, “Act enthusiastic, you become enthusiastic,” I would eventually embrace PMA wholeheartedly. In some of my darkest moments in the course of cancer diagnosis and treatment, I found myself saying aloud, “Act enthusiastic, you become enthusiastic.” I have no doubt that this crazy mantra was as strong and effective a medicine as any prescribed.
THE END
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
