Winders! Part One: The Hours

Back a while ago I made some terrible images to accompany my tale of woe with Lundberg Windows and Siding. This was during my "humorously bad Photoshop phase," from which I have not fully recovered. I will, as my high school German teacher would say, salt and pepper them throughout this retelling.

First, let's set the stage. A 19 year old boy returns from his first summer at university jobless. He puts in applications at all the usual spots - Starbucks, uh... actually I think that was the only one. But he picks up applications for all sorts of crazy places. Oh yeah and Target. His friend got a job there but he applied too late or something. Right, so he naturally starts scouring the paper and finds that Cutco hires all the goddamn time, but this guy's no sucker. Okay he's not that kind of sucker. He finds one that sounds promising... "Demo representative" for $10/hr plus commission. He thinks "demo" will be the sort of thing where he tells people about a product & shows them how it works. He is wrong. Oh so wrong. He shows up for an interview dressed in his best Sunday slacks and polo within a Sam's Club, where he is not a member. He is not so much given the job as he is immediately asked to man the booth for the next four hours. He politely declines. He meets the man again (for the penultimate time) at a K-Mart... and the odyssey begins. He receives no vest, I repeat, no goddamn vest. Then he stops using the third person present tense because, frankly, it's getting irritating.

The K-Mart gig was actually not so bad. See my job was to stand at this booth for four hours. It was this little rolly thing, like a big box, with a sign and a sample window on it. At first I tried to glean what sort of information I was to be giving the customers, but I eventually determined that the answer was a tidy amount of none. In fact, it almost seemed like I was being aggressively denied information about the product... but I'll get to that later. Anyway I was beginning to wonder what exactly "demo" stood for, since the only demonstrating I could do was open and close the window display. "Tilts open for easy cleaning!" The beauty of the K-Mart gig was that there were people there, you know, buying things and walking by. I was also right by the front door with a girl selling cell phone plans (never buy from these people - it's a big ol' ripoff), so you better believe you were gonna get harassed when you walked in. Just by the sheer number of people I got a decent number of leads. And by the way, what the fuck is a lead? I just ask everybody "Do you have any home improvements coming up?" and, if so, take their name for a "Free in-home consultation!" That's a lead in the home improvement biz. Call me a traditionalist, but it seems to me a lead involves some kind of inside information, not just bluntly asking people. So I guess that's why it was called something other than "salesman," because I didn't actually do any selling. And oh, while we're there, let's talk about pricing. That's right I still don't know how much anything cost. Not even a ballpark figure. Sure, I can't go quoting prices to people without seeing their house or whatever, but cost was 9 times out of 10 the first thing people asked about. And when denied any kind of range, most just walked away. I mean I had that line about the free consultation, but you have to figure most people don't just go replacing their gutters on a whim. I'll talk more about the customers later though.

K-Mart only lasted about a week when Lundberg's contract with them expired, so I was relocated to a Sam's Club in Matthews that was being remodeled. From the outside it looked closed for remodeling, but there was a sign up that they were still open around the side. There were... not so many customers. I was positioned near the back in one of the main aisles. Let me please tell you that I can still recall how it smelled. Like a warehouse floor... with sawdust. I saw, by my best guess, about one person every half hour. Within my four hour shift, let me also tell you that the frequency (with those 8 people) that were in the market for home improvements was tragically low. Originally I claimed that I would be interested in working 8 hour shifts... I needed the money after all. But let me tell you further that a single 8 hour shift at this job would render one in a similar state to that kid who saw his whole family murdered with a croquet set (only $14.99!) - irreparably mute with a thin lock of white hair. So boring. Here is a list of some things I did to keep myself occupied:
1) Recovered the combination to the lock on the box by trial and error. It was 776. I started at 000.
2) Not reading. It was so boring that anything further relaxing would have put me in a coma.
3) Not writing. With the exception of a letter I wrote once, the experience was so mind-numbing I couldn't come up with anything. Imagine, if you will, trying to get a group of 10 year olds excited about balancing a checkbook, and you will catch a rare glimpse into my brain at that time.
4) Cataloged the things I could see. A list, I mean, of the various products and their prices within my proximity.
5) Engaged in a cold war with the Sam's Club staff (you'll have to wait until installment 2 for that!).
6) Created dialog for customers in the distance. I think somebody only heard me once, and they didn't say anything about it.
7) Sung to myself quietly.
8) Scanned the pamphlets in the box, only a handful of which were for products Lundberg carried. I was never told which handful those were.
9) Walked to the bathroom or for water, about once an hour.
10) Worked out increments for how long I had remaining on my shift. For instance, "I am 3/10 of the way finished."

Every one of these tasks was like a little reward I would give myself to stay sane. I might, say, scold myself for going to the bathroom too soon or pat myself on the back for not looking at the clock in five minutes. Actually the last time I saw my supervisor was when I had been in the bathroom, but he didn't seem to mind. Still, I lived in fear that he might show up when I wasn't there or something, so I always arrived and left exactly on time. I even accounted for the time it would take me to roll the box into and out of the aisle from the front.

Alright I'll wrap this segment up. Next I'll talk a little about the Sam's Club staff.