Job search October 2009 [now I know why people bag groceries]
In the breaks of the reggaeton I could hear the synchronized shouting reminiscent of a cult reciting its vows.
I had walked in two minutes early, which in my book is late for a job interview. I was there for my second interview. The job was a manager for a company that was a bit unclear in my head. I had found the job under a strange listing in Craigslist.
“HIPPIES WITH THE FLOW (Kirkland)”
The search was during a particular time of freaking out over monies. Monies and following a career in the arts. [I admit that at times I question my path. Its only healthy...I've heard.] I had sent out a million or so queries and resumes and cover letters and phone calls and responses to adds for work, this was the one that got back to me.
The office is located 40 minutes from my now home in north Seattle. The add was suspect in its wording, but since it was the only one that got back to me and wasn’t a cookie decorating third shift for minimum wage I put on a clean shirt with buttons and drove my resume over. The address was a difficult one to locate and I had to call and ask again, making it there just in time. The lady on the phone who turned out to be the front desk lady was super sweet. I am not sure I have had occasion to speak with someone so personable on the phone even just for directions. Once inside the office-plex [the strip mall of higher commerce] I was greeted by the lady from the other end of the phone, topped with a bouquet of dreadlocks and the sounds of Damian Rice from the stereo audible and melodic, a good sign for their tastes. The art on the walls were prints of artists I know from my museum wanderings, showing me that they were tasteful and contemporary. There was an office dog. A good sign for me since I am a dog enthusiast as well as good with them, so it made me happy to know that there was a K-9 in my future place of employment as well as a way to show my skills of communicating and nurturing vicariously through the pet. I was there with one other applicant lady whom I could tell was no match for me, just by the look of her. From her posture to her clothes choices I had the top hand on that baseball bat. She was there to make me look good. Something her pink blouse didn’t do for her.
The first interview took upwards of five minutes. The interviewer was terse and asked her few questions that would weed me out, and then concluded before I could ask any questions intended to forever endear her to me, or use my conscious interview language that includes saying “we” a lot and offering suggestions to aid the company using my skill set. After our session I was informed that she would get back to me the next day if she wanted to schedule a follow up interview to make sure I was right for the position. All they had were positions for managers.
What I knew of the company was that they sold art. I was hooked. Manager at a company that sold art, and primarily to businesses! This was the right answer to my query over how to support my self as an artist and yet not indenture myself into the service industry. I could sell art [maybe even my own!] and at the same time learn the ways of working with professionals in the art industry.
Oh boy was I wrong.
I spent the next day waiting for the call anxious over my few words in the interview. Did I hold myself right? Was my resume formatted right? Was my skill set matching those that they were looking for? Since they trained the managers in house, they informed me that they like no experience in that field so they can train the employees in the fashion they choose to best fit their business model. [word to the wise: experience is always good, if they don't want it they are either looking for a lower pay grade or are shady. Often both.] Since I was not that wise at the time, I thought it looked good for me, I had all the tangential skills and was open to learning and working hard in a field I respect.
I was going to manage selling art. I was going to oversee workers and the dissemination of the wares that I have chosen for the rest of my life to peddle. The pay seemed good. It was win-win.
I arrived there to an empty reception room, music blaring. Blaring. Something about shooting the sheriff but not the rest of the staff at the police house. There was a whiteboard on which was scrawled something to the effect of: “ wait a moment we will be right out. Make yourself comfortable.” that charge proved most difficult. In the waiting room sat two other applicants, including that atrocious pink wearing lady from the week prior. Foreshadowing. The little cockerspanial Phoenix wasn’t even there to ease the palpable silence of the three of us waiting in the deafening cacophony from the satellite radio turned to the ‘island’ station. I took my place standing by the window. I didn’t want to be caught sitting, approached from above demure to the benefactor of my future career in Seattle Washington. Most of the people I know and had talked to in the week separating the call till the interview, knew I was in the running for a position as a manager in a firm that sold art. The frequent retelling enhanced the idea of the job even in my brain, such that when I was there standing front of the corner window looking out at the concrete planter median I was ready to start my new life as an art consultant. Ready to take on the selling of fantastic works of art and working with the large budgets of corporations and lobbies of skyscrapers and sculptural adornments for office parks. Ready to lead this charge into battle against the recession and the cutting of decressionary spending! Me and my quilts and knowledge of the world of fine arts was about to go into battle for this company and so be it if this blazed trail took me and my work with it to fame then ultimate fortune. Who was I to stop the train of my destiny?
46 minutes of waiting by the window took some of this flame out of my shorts.
Through the gaps in the song, and between the ringing in my ears I heard some loud chanting from the back room. Sounds associated with a locker room’s spirited war cry reached us in the front room. The two who were there with me as well as the third lady who had come late didn’t seem to notice. Either to entrenched in their revery or to dazed by the world outside of their parents basement they sat there waiting for further instruction after the dictum by the whiteboard, not making eye contact or sharing my amusement at the whooping from the rear of the pastel painted collection of rectangular rooms and halls.
The train came, but it wasn’t the train of destiny it was the train of sales people to shake our hand and exude the spirit of what ever pep talk they had just group high-fived over. They toured around the room shaking our hands in turn and telling us their name. Then out the front door went most of them leaving the two women I had met, the nice reception lady and the succinct owner, and two other people, as of yet unknown.
Oh to have lived in that blissful ignorance for ever….
They were introduced.
Bo and Mel.
The four interviewees were split two and two to go on shadow day with the two sales people. I was paired with Bo and Mariah Mariah I was to learn was a recent high school graduate with no aspirations but piercings and a steady job. Steady being the only criterion for said job.
Off into the world in the back seat of what is left of a Volkswagen.
[Note: I am still under the spell that a week of daydreaming had cast over me. I am only now in retrospect able to add the details with their true clarity and contextual eye raising.]
I opted for the back seat to allow Mariah the first hand at being the aggressive applicant, knowing full well that I had it in the bag. I waited for her to start in asking the questions I knew to be pertinent, starting with inquiring into him personally to establish a repore and then to find out his position in the company and how deep he is in the running of it. She sat there. From the back seat it was my turn to run the interview, learning as much from his answers by his tone and attitude. Asking about the job and his tenure at the company. About his personal habits and the requirements of taking on the responsibility of managing employees.
Break for gas. I remember the moment vividly. As we pull into the filling station I ask from amidst the cardboard wrapped frames of tacky poster quality art if we[they] worked with any original art.
“No, I wouldn’t feel safe with that kind of valuable art just rolling around the back of my car.”
Red flag #136 [but the first one I noticed]
That was the moment I should have stepped from the car thanked him and walked back the miles to my car. I didn’t. Personal delusions are powerful things.
“We sell quality art prints, the same quality as you can find in any mall across the country.”
Said with a straight face and a hint of pride in his voice. I hope never to use America’s capitalist mediocrity machine as a datum of quality in my work.
I even think “..any mall across the country” was accompanied with a sweeping motion of the hand to indicate the horizon and the breadth of mall dissemination across this fair land as if to say “as far as the eye can see”. Kind of scary if you think about it.
I didn’t jump from the moving vehicle [which in retrospect would have been the best choice.] so into town we went. I finishing up my questions and Mariah holdin’ down the quiet introspection corner in the front seat.
We arrived in our territory and us two future employees decided that it would be best to take turns going inside with him on his ventures. Which at this point we knew nothing about.
We walk into the rental office of an apartment complex. Bo jumps right into his diatribe. Which I am informed later is one of the 5 keys to success.
“Can I interest you in some art?”
“I brought a few pieces to show you today.”
Bo has a framed print of a picture of Seattle in the 1940s and a framed print of an old wine add that looks as though it were designed by a high school art class looking at the effect of placing an object in the dead center of a field of color with the intent to bore the viewer into a standing coma.
“We are the company that sells these old prints of Seattle.”
While Bo is giving the run down to the person trying to inch away from his sales pitch he uses his gut to hold up one corner of the picture. Which I think is a good use of problem solving myself. This frees his other hand to make gestures and quick change the images he has to peddle if he senses the sale going south.
The first place we went in the manager was a nice fella. He didn’t buy anything. Dear Bo was undeterred. On the way to the next venue of door to door sales he explained the law of averages to us in the car. The more people you talk to the more likely there will be a sale. He cited 20%. So out of a hundred people he harasses 20 will purchase his goods. A sound business model it seems to me, and Bo has been at this for 8 years.
8 years.
Impressive.
He could have become a doctor in that time.
“I work for an interior decorating firm that is offering these prints for 45$ they are usually 160$
or this one for 40$ that is usually 135$!”
It took me several stops to understand that he is living the life and all the glory of a traveling salesman, saying anything that would encourage someone to take one of these quality prints so he can take home a commission from each sale.
After about 4 times of going in to any office we see in the area we were assigned it was time for lunch, being Thursday I had a suggestion: “BBQ. I know a place.”
He had his task to give us a speech and pieces of paper with inspirational lists of sales techniques and the plan outlining the pyramid scheme of the company. Where the term ‘manager’ was made clear to us as the top of the pyramid where one can reach after completing the last several tiers of sales progress and in house sales training.
This was the moment I zoned out. Folded the paper and put it in my pocket foreshadowing the toss into the waste bin later.
To wrap this whole endeavor up I sat in the back of the car for the next few harassment sessions asking Mariah to go with him to save me the mortification of going into a business and standing next to this man as he asked if anyone wanted a framed picture of a wine bottle. As the drone of this interment went on I was getting more and more frantic, so I called in help to come save me from this and pick me up and drive me 45 minutes to my car. [good friends are so handy] to save me the next few hours of my life. Well worth it. Afterward we went to the ballet. Which I think almost evened out the resulting cultural depravity of driving around a four block radius for 6 straight hours knocking on doors embodying the physical manifestation of spam e-mail.
