A Sharp Salesman Can Sell Toothpaste To Chickens
The FBI made sure the arrests from its two-year investigation into telemarketing scams made the evening news. I thought about my childhood friend when I watched FBI officers leading telephone scam artists away in handcuffs. He was busted in a similar operation 36 years ago. I barely escaped.
After a couple of years in college I decided to explore the real world until the draft got me. I hooked up with a childhood friend who had an itch for the road.
We were going to Alaska but ended up in south Florida. We started out with a converted school bus, switched to a hot rod V-8 and finally made it to Florida in an old four-door family sedan.
When we ran low on money, we pulled into a town and got jobs. We could always find work. I specialized in jobs that required heavy lifting, sweat and dirt. My friend specialized in sales. He could, and would, sell anything. He had the gift.
He sold siding, awnings, cookware, vacuum cleaners, encyclopedias, Bibles, water purifiers and more stuff than I can recall. He quickly found a sales job, then he sold the product. As Ross Perot says, it’s that simple.
I promised prospective employers that I would work like a lobotomized mule. My friend told sales managers that he would put money in their pockets by noon. We both held up our end of the bargain.
Several times my friend, who was a little, fast-talking guy, helped me land a sales job. He told me what to tell the sales manager. Within minutes he could get us both hired. He avoided training sessions. “Just tell me the pitch,” he said. He might accept a sucker list, but mostly he liked to use his own instincts on cold calls.
I’ve seen him stake out the front door of a telephone office at quitting time and sell expensive china sets to young switchboard operators on the premise that this beautiful hope chest would win the heart of Mr. Right. I, on the other hand, couldn’t sell ice water in hell.
When we pulled into Miami Beach, I decided that I wanted to be a bellman in a fancy hotel. We got a room in a downscale hotel that catered to hotel workers. The next day I hit every major and many minor hotels. No luck. That night my friend said he landed a job in a boiler room, which sounded like my sort of job.
A boiler room, I found out, is a place where a lot of telephones, card tables and fold-up chairs are crammed into a small office. People in the boiler room work on a telephone pitch designed to transfer money from the person called to the caller. Boiler rooms, my friend said, can be legit, semi-legit or outright scams. His boiler room was on the up and up, he said.
Unable to score a bellman job, I took a job sanding rattan furniture in a 120-degree loft across the bay in Hialeah, not far from my friend’s boiler room. He made a lot more money and was not covered with sawdust from head to toe. So I switched jobs.
We used a double-team, high-pressure pitch to sell ads in the Hialeah Speedway Journal to local merchants on behalf of the Police Athletic League. Somehow I felt dirtier doing this than I did sanding furniture. I quit and soon landed a bellman’s job on Miami Beach.
One day my friend’s new girlfriend became concerned when he failed to show up. I promised to look for him. He was in jail. The boiler room had been raided. The ads weren’t being published.
I went on to join the military, return to college and go into the newspaper business. My friend went on to become a multimillionaire. He retired years ago.
I think of him when I get a phone call from someone trying to sell me something. I quickly say I’m not in the market and politely hang up. There are people out there who can sell space heaters in hell.
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