pounding the pavement once again

With a swift, self induced kick to my own butt, I’ve forced myself out of the doldrums. This means that the bed had to be made, my razor actually had to make a few swipes across my face, and the bills had to get paid…most importantly the cable bill. Priorities, of course.

I also came to the conclusion that work had to be found very fast. And with this thought in mind, I did something that I had promised myself I’d never do. Namely, I seriously considered a job selling insurance.

An email alerted me to an information session being held one afternoon to join the wonderful ranks at Liberty Mutual, thus I pulled out a sport coat and, with resume in hand, headed off.

And now that I’m thinking of becoming a death preparation peddler, I figure that perhaps I could combine selling life insurance and death plots…the two jobs that continually seek my services by sending an email a day to my inbox. I’m already working on my sales pitch, “Gee Mr. Smith, since you’re going to die one day don’t you want your family to be taken care of? This life insurance will do the trick. And you may as well get a cemetery plot as well, since it would be a shame to have your kids end up dumping your body in a ditch somewhere and use the insurance money to fly off to the Bahamas or something.”

I arrived and found a seat among the fifteen other attendees…never realizing just how many people want to sell insurance. John Jackson, our information session presenter, waxed poetic about what a great company and satisfying job it would be if we were deemed worthy enough to become a part of the Liberty Mutual team. We then entered into the written portion of the information session.

“Just some simple scenarios about the sales process we’d like you to answer,” John told us.

The questions, which included ‘How do you close?’ and ‘What sales techniques do you use to seal the deal?’ forced me to start spewing massive amounts of bull shit across the paper. Having never actually ‘sold’ anything for a living, I could only speculate as to how I would ‘close’ and what techniques may or may not work well for me in ‘sealing’ any deals.

I was, however, sitting next to a guy with alligator shoes and slicked back hair. ‘Here’, I thought, ‘is a guy that clearly must know something about selling.’ So, craning my neck ever so slightly, I tried to glimpse his answers to the questions that were posed.

And as I was midway through reading his response to the question, ‘How would you convince a reluctant customer to purchase something?’, I heard someone clearing their throat from behind me. The throat clearer being, none other, than Mr. Jackson himself.

“Just a little crick in my neck,” I muttered, than feebly started rubbing where I thought the phantom crick would look most convincing.

John Jackson simply gave a disgusted snort and continued walking up the aisle.

Having just been caught cheating on my pre-employment questionnaire, I was quite certain that a career at Liberty Mutual was not going to be forthcoming. I slipped out during the break and threw the questionnaire in the trash can by the main entrance, wondering if Nationwide was as picky about sharing answers as Liberty Mutual seemed to be.