The cosmic shift in my life was to leave 25 years of lawyering for an uncertain future as a writer. It’s easy to forget that I had many other jobs which were much less fun than writing. Here’s number four of a series:
One high school summer I didn’t get the job I coveted, lawn maintenance at a golf course. I wanted to spend the summer on a sit-down lawnmower, working on my tan. I was shocked that the position was already filled on July 1st when I applied. It never occurred to me that the smart guys applied for that job the previous winter, and the dumb guys waited until school ended in June.
My job search consisted of reading the classifieds every day. Since I wasn’t qualified to be the Senior Project Designer for an Award-Winning International Engineering Firm, Salary Commensurate With Experience, I lowered my expectations to become a Filter Queen Vacuum Salesman, 100% Commission.
I trained at Vacuum College with two other teenagers, and a woman who’d lived in Canada for three days, in a low-ceilinged, windowless room in a dingy strip mall. I couldn’t say the training sucked, because the primary rule of selling vacuums is to never say the word “suck.” It’s always, “the vacuum draws in the dirt….” I learned the Filter Queen sales script by heart, and could manipulate the vacuum’s various hoses and attachments like I was speed-assembling my rifle in an army training exercise. Filter Queen was the most expensive vacuum on the market, and I was to receive a healthy commission for each one sold. At summer’s end, I had sold ONE. To my mom.
What stupid job have you had?