After feeling pretty pleased with myself that I got a job so
quickly, I decided after four days that it wasn’t for me! I like to think that
I’m not usually a quitter but this job really wasn’t worth hanging around for…
Commission only sales is one tough gig. Standing, with open
body language and a big smile, on the same spot for nine hours a day, trying to
get people to stop and talk to you is bloody hard! Also there is an hour and a
half training before and a meeting at the end of the day too. All in all I was
out of the house for 12 hours a day, leaving before James and getting back
after him, all for $0 if you didn’t make a sale!!
I’d leave the house before 6am and get to the kiosk in
whichever local shopping mall I was in that day and think ‘yes, I can do this’.
Then after a few hours of people ignoring me, telling me they already have it,
are on holiday, don’t watch TV etc I would start to think ‘what the hell am I
doing here?!’ On the fourth day, after arriving home with aching feet, knees
and back, I googled minimum wage and saw that just to break that I would need
to make two/three sales a day. That did not seem to be a likely occurrence so I realised it was time to jump of a sinking ship and write it off as an 'experience'!
One think it did give me, besides blisters, was the opportunity to meet one of the most irritating people in existence. The guy that trained me for the first two days, lets call him Peter, was, without a doubt, one of the most annoying people I have ever met. Just before I quit I told the boss that the thought of spending another day just with Peter made me want to hurt myself. And I meant that.
To give you a visual of Peter, picture Wayne Rooney, with a permanent look of self-satisfaction on his face, in which he would purse his lips, look down his nose, narrow his eyes and nod. It's an expression that haunts me, along with the phrase 'It's gonna happen' which he would say about 100 times a day.
Peter had a pretty good sales record, and was the most experienced on the team. I can tell you what Peter earned each year for the last three years, what his highest earning week was, how much his new catamaran cost, how much the earrings he got for his fiance for her birthday cost (she only got him a popcorn machine, Peter wasn' too impressed with the difference in price there), I know what his rent was each week, I know what his parott cost, blah blah blah it's safe to say that he liked to talk about money and himself. I would venture to guess I know more about Peter that I do about some of my friends. The ironic thing is Peter struggled to recall anything about me, even on occasion (in front of customers), my name! I am not called Marissa.
On Friday he asked me five times what I was doing that night, five times I told him I was moving house. When he asked me if I had been to Caloundra before I explained that I had a great-aunt that had lived there but she had passed away, he interrupted me to point out some antennas on top of a building that reminded him of a computer game he plays. If I'm being nice I would guess Peter has ADAH, probably why he is suited to that job, if I'm being honest I would say he's just a self-satisfied prick. God knows how he ever got someone to agree to marry him, poor girl.
On to better things... I am now refocusing my job search in Mooloolaba, looking at retail and cafes, I'd like to go back to bar work so think I''ll take my RSA which is a qualification you need over here to serve alcohol. I'll keep you posted...
