I'm Sweet Enough...

Years ago I got a job in sales for a large candy manufacturer in the UK. (Actually they called themselves a "confectionery manufacturer", and the first lesson on day one was how to spell confectionery). I bet it sounds like a great job - all the candy I could eat, plus a company car - but the reality was more down to earth. For a start we had to make fifteen calls in a day, which meant you just about had time to walk in, survey the outlet, have the customer attempt to hand you a box full of out-of-date product, tell him you weren't going to accept it this time any more than you were last time, and leave again. Fifteen times.

Of course they didn't let us loose on high quality customers while we were training; instead they sent us out to practice on small customers who were usually handled only by a contract merchandising organization. Unlike our competitors we didn't actually sell anything direct - customers had to buy through wholesalers instead, which put us at something of a disadvantage as customers generally hated this arrangement. It also meant that we were the sales equivalent of eunichs since we couldn't actually sell anything; instead we attempted to improve the merchandising of our products so they were in all the best "selling spots".

My sales career didn't exactly get off to an auspicious start when I rolled up at my first training call with my boss. We walked up to the door but the storekeeper was somewhat preoccupied with fighting off an apparent thief. There was a lot of blood involved and the thief was inside while the store owner held the door closed outside. On the whole we decided that he was perhaps not going to be receptive to our pitch about improving his revenues by re-merchandising his counter-top confectionery display, so we left.

Generally the reactions of customers varied between disinterest and mild hospitality. Disinterest was noticeably safer, since hospitality could result in offers of food or drink that might be a subsequent source of profound regret. Few customers were even remotely hostile, although the areas in which they did business sometimes resembled minor war zones, with thick protective glass in front of the counter. On one occasion I parked as close as I could to one store on my training route but quickly established that this was not a place one frequented wearing a suit unless one was a defendant on the way home from a successful court appearance. I considered the sum which I was being paid to make this call and the alternative (and attractive) option of chicken kiev and chips back at my hotel, and turned around.

In spite of the fact that I ate candy every day, took bags of it home and spent just about every lunchtime at McDonalds, I lost about eight pounds doing this job. It was a miserable existence, mainly because I had to pretend to give a flying fuck about the dirty, whiny bastards who constituted the majority of my customers. It takes a very special type of person to run a CTN (confectioner, tobacconist, newsagent) or corner shop in the UK; more specifically it takes a miserly semi-literate with borderline sociopathic tendencies and poor personal hygiene. (Such as my part-time employer during my teenage years). You call on fifteen of these every day and pretty soon you'll be wanting to beat their (tiny) brains in with a rock. In fact that may well have been what I witnessed on my first day on the job.

The day I realized that I hated my job I was calling on a store that rented videos, sold candy and also offered paan. A lot of my customers were of Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin and paan is a palate cleanser or breath freshener made from a mixture of assorted seeds, wrapped in a big green leaf. As I stood feigning interest in this process, watching them select seeds from a huge number of pots and combine them on a leaf made moist with what looked uncannily like Elmers glue, they made me one to try. I cannot fault them for kindness (unless they were only pretending to be kind in much the same way I was pretending to be interested) but I was left with little choice but to eat it. It's not that I was worried about the implied insult - I just didn't want to be a pussy.

The thing about eating something made of seeds in a leaf is that it tastes exactly like a bunch of seeds in a leaf. And if you think back to the last time you had a craving for a leaf full of seeds (presumably never) you will understand the sheer disgustingness of consuming one. The leaf was of the sort you might find on a rubber plant, only larger and "greener". The seeds had the consistency of woodshop floor-sweepings with an admixture of grit. The glue merely tasted like glue. I ate half and left the store with my head held high, my pride intact and my tongue and cheeks coated immutably with tiny bits of seedy shit.

"Fuck it" I thought "I can't keep pretending to like people. There's no telling what crap they're going to feed me." Since then I've never looked back. And now, in 2008, I'm finally hoping to get the last of the fucking seeds out of my teeth. Maybe.


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison