quit with a capital K

i should have known it wasn't right when at our morning meeting josh, our leader, announced, "amy just turned down a teaching job to work for Kirby. let's give her a cheer!" hip hip Hooray! yes, i turned down a job as a teacher's aide in a kindergarten classroom to become a demonstrator/salesperson for the Kirby company. i guess everyone tries to get rich quick in one way or another, and the Kirby company was my ticket to financial security.

i didn't really know what i was getting into when i called on the ad in the paper for carpet shampooers. carpet shampooing i could do. door to door sales? another story. but they make it sound so simple, and the product really is amazing. let me tell you about the Ultimate G sometime, the diamond edition. i actually sold one over my practice weekend when we set up our own appointments with family and friends just to get us used to the equipment and the demonstration. i quickly found that selling to people who a) you know, b) willingly and not reluctantly let you into their home c) want you to feel good about what you do is a lot easier than trying to fast-talk your way into a house by trying to convince people that you're NOT selling anything, when the minute you're in you tell them otherwise and start a sales pitch.

i was not cut out to be in sales. let me tell you why:

1. i have too much empathy for the people i'm trying to sell to. money is the prime motivation for sales people and they will lie and cajole and turn on the old charm to get their money. i have a hard time even stretching the truth, and secretly i'm hoping the people will be strong and not give into the pitch.

2. positivity. i didn't have it. we started off every morning with Kirby songs. there's a whole cd of them, knockoffs of popular tunes with inspirational kirby lyrics--songs like "that old time religion" (that old kirby feeling), "yesterday" by the beatles (i believe in kir-irby), and some similar version of "i've got the joy joy joy joy down in my heart" (i've got that old kirby feeling deep in my heart/down in my feet/all over me). they all sing at the top of their lungs while clapping and shouting. i tried, but i couldn't quite muster that old kirby feeling.

3. professionalism. i prefer to work in a professional environment. even though the guys i was selling with wore dress slacks, dress shirts and ties, they were still (every last one of them) twenty-something guys, most of them early twenties. twenty-something guys (not the ones i know, but the ones out in "the world") have a certain way of speaking that includes the f-bomb, shit, and the occasional sexual reference. i tried to turn a deaf ear as much as possible, but i still wasn't comfortable. the van we rode around in was a 1987 plymouth voyager piece of crap: filthy inside, full of trash, and smelled like smoke. all five guys in the van with me smoked, and sometimes all five of them were smoking at the same time, inside the van. you can imagine how i smelled at the end of the day. it was a health hazard. oh yeah, and twenty something guys like rap music. so at the beginning of the day, they put in a cd to get them revved up and i have to listen to lyrics about masturbation, sucking dicks, and of course getting it on in a variety of ways. i felt like crying. where is the positivity here?

4. the hours. the hours of a kirby salesperson are 9am to 9:30 pm when we get back to the office. then i had a 45 minute drive home. that's five days a week, my friends, not just occasionally. the first night i got home at 9:45 because josh brought me back to the office early. the second night i got home at midnight. if i had been able to cut it for a week or two they would have made me a recruiter with regular office hours, but i lasted two days. i guess i value time with my husband too much. and my sanity. and my place as a wife. i wanted to be able to cook and clean and go grocery shopping every now and then. tim did a wonderful job those two days, but he didn't like the situation either.

so anyway, to make a long story short on the second night of my kirby career i went into a house at 8:00pm, got a reprimand from the boss for not being positive enough on the phone, had a breakdown and couldn't stop crying, and knew it was not for me.

now i'm going to give that teaching position a try.