Sales

“Do you know how to turn this on?” my new coworker asked, her head peering from behind the gray, flimsy panel that separated us. She seemed to be in her mid-twenties, like myself. It took me a moment to process the unexpected query. Putting my smartphone down, I deduced she meant the computer.

“The on button is underneath the screen on the right,” I responded, facing her.

“Alrighty, let’s see,” she said, her head disappearing into the cubicle. Perfect silence followed. Curious, I was going to swing around to check when she exclaimed, “Found it! You’re a lifesaver!―um, Jesús, right?”

“Correct,” I replied, directing that word both to her good memory and the manner in which she made the effort to pronounce my Hispanic name.

“What was yours, again? I’m sorry,” I said, swinging around after all.

“Louisa,” she replied and extended her hand. The handshake we then politely shared would be the extent of our interaction that day. Not that there was any immediate asperity between us, but I was centered on hitting my quota before the end of the week, and she, as far as I could tell, on getting her script down from training. I could hear her lumbering through it, as well as her sighing when a customer would not be understanding of her first day’s nerves and promptly hang up. A chuckle might have escaped me multiple times. When she arrived the following morning, I asked her how she had fared.

“No sales or appointments.”

“It was just your first day. But I did hear a lot of tries. Forty, fifty dials?”

“Sixty calls,” she said without any emotion, adjusting herself in her seat.

“Good stuff!”

“Thank you. What time do you usually get here by the way?”

“Six thirty. I like to prepare my head with some music and coffee.” ― Finding that the coffee in the mug I was holding was black, she raised her brows.

“You don’t do coffee?” I asked, seeing that.

“Coffee doesn’t do me. I like the taste but not the crippling anxiety it gives me. I prefer having it on the weekends in the form of a frappé, especially when I’m not under the pressure to close.”

I smiled, and she turned herself towards her desk. Her down-to-earth attitude and sense of humor recommended her to me, and I predicted that we would become really good friends. What could never have occurred to me then was that, a month later, we would walk ten miles together in the middle of the night towards Austin.

The rest of the week passed by much the same. We made small talk on occasion, often first struck up by her asking me how this or that worked. Because the cubicle on her right was empty, it was logical for me on her left to be her next best step in the event of a persistent stumbling block.

I was happy to help anyone, believing strongly in being a resource to my fellow workhorses, but I was much the happier to help her, because she did everything to help herself first―that is to say, her work ethic was something to behold. For example, on the worst of days, she never fell below fifty calls, and, on the best, she would end up in the upper sixties. Everyone in outbound sales knows that, above all, it’s a numbers game. You could be the smoothest talker this side of the world, but the phone doesn’t dial itself. The more calls you make, the better your chances are to run into a customer who was just looking, or was thinking to go look, for that something you happen to be selling. All which things Louisa seemed long since to have read, re-read, and understood.

At the end of her first month, she was the top salesperson among all the new recruits. Not that she was announcing this herself, but our general manager mentioned it halfway through his presentation at the monthly office meeting, somewhat to her embarrassment. From two rows behind her, I could see her blushing like a teenager as she rose from her seat to accept the applause afforded her. ― “You sit next to her, right?” asked Joshua, coworker and buddy of mine whom I had been sitting with and chatting up as the several sales teams gathered into the conference room for the meeting.

“I do,” I replied.

“You should invite her to The Zeppelin. She’s talented.” ― I nodded in agreement. Hired around the same time as I, Joshua had bloomed into a formidable producer, surprising everyone as the months wore on because, in the very beginning, he struggled to overcome his timidity, and could not begin a sales call without an obvious stutter. I figured, having just been promoted to team leader, he wanted to begin courting Louisa to join his team since all new recruits must choose a team after three months on the job. Back at our desks, I mentioned the Zeppelin to her right before lunch.

“What is The Zeppelin?” she naturally asked.

“It’s a bar and steakhouse about three blocks up the street. The sales floor heads over there for a drink or a bite after five on the Fridays we have our monthly meeting. You’re hereby invited―but, of course, no obligation, while going moreover doesn’t mean you have to drink alcohol or eat anything.”

“Are you going?”

“I am. I do go most months. They serve their beer icy cold, in chilled glasses. And the beer itself is always this incredibly fresh draft. But overall it’s a nice place.”

“Interesting. I don’t drink, but I’ll let you know after work if I can go.”

“That’s cool. I’ll let you know when I’m headed over there,” I replied, making a finger-gun at her in jest. She made a return of the same gesture and we went opposite ways for lunch. We didn’t talk much afterwards, so I was half-expecting her to take a rain check, when, noticing me putting on my windbreaker, she asked whether we were still going to The Zeppelin. I nodded.

We walked there in a group of half a dozen from the office, during which walk Joshua and Louisa were introduced. Sharing laughs and thoughts, the group made its way through the chilly November air up three streets before finding warmth and refreshments in the restaurant. Other coworkers already there, we were all immediately swept up into cordial introductions and inquiries after the health of one’s family or the nature of one’s pastimes. An hour thus passed, but not without my taking the liberty twice to demonstrate to Louisa the extraordinarily icy, fresh drafts which The Zeppelin never failed to produce. Besides taking the first sip from my second beer to determine whether my excitement was warranted, she just had water. Agreeing then to return to our cars by means of a quick mutual glance, we met with the chilly air once more and began walking down the street.

“How many of them inside do you consider your friends?” asked Louisa, her hands tucked snugly into her leather jacket.

“There’s Joshua, whom you know, and Katie, the first of the girls you met, and Eric as well, who left a little before we did. I hang out with them on occasion, so those for sure.”

“They seem pretty cool.”

“They are!” I said. Some silence followed, which I interrupted with the question: “So, how are you keeping up? I haven’t had a chance to ask you.”

“What do you mean?” she replied, in genuine confusion.

“We all know sales is not easy. People can easily burn out or sink under the pressure. Even in the best and most supportive of environments, high turnover is a reality. What I’m asking is, how is your mental health? You’ve done at least―fifty times five, equals two-fifty, times four―at least, if we’re being conservative, a thousand dials in a month! So it’s a fair question, I believe.”

She took a moment to reflect, looking down at her steps. Then she said: “You know, in all the time I’ve been in sales, this job and my previous one, no one has ever mentioned mental health specifically. You’re right. In this, as in most other facets of life, mental health is a topic worth bringing up and considering―and mine, mine is doing ok. Thanks for asking. However, I am not absolutely sure that that will always be the case.”

“And why do you say that?”

“Speaking to Joshua earlier, when I met him, I was made fully aware of his drive to excel. Quite inspirational the way he spoke. He said he couldn’t help stuttering in calls at first?”

“True, he couldn’t. And some in the office were not too kind to him about that, making silly jokes and all―what I think was what pushed him deep inside to practice and practice until he was closing these big accounts one after the other, and all the team leaders were clamoring to have him on their team. Incredible to see.”

“See, that’s where I’ll be lacking eventually. I fear the drive I have now will soon fade.”

“And why do you fear that? Don’t you want to succeed and make money, yesterday, today and tomorrow?”

“I do―but do you think you can do those things without being in sales?”

“Sure you can. Many people do.”

“I ask because maybe―and this has already occurred to me, but I vocalize it now for the first time for having occasion―perhaps I’m not motivated, truly motivated, by sales, by the act of selling.”

“Okay, then what does motivate you, Louisa?”

“When I graduated college, I helped out my stepdad for the summer. He is a carpenter who specializes in kitchen and bathroom cabinets. At first I was just taking phone calls and organizing his tools, but over the days I learned more and more of his trade. By the end of August, I was measuring, cutting wood and putting pieces together myself. Was it hard? It was. It was manual labor requiring a great deal of patience and precision, the polar opposite of my major in college, which was business administration. And the thing is, though several years have passed since then, I still look back fondly on that summer, not only for the sake of my stepdad, a kind, hard-working man, but also for the sake of the trade itself. No other job ever made me feel the same. ― Are we back at our building yet? It seems we’ve been walking awhile,” she said, stopping.

“We actually walked past it about ten minutes ago. You were having a heartfelt, self-aware moment, which I was loath to interrupt.”

She laughed. ― “But let’s keep walking,” I suggested, “It’s Friday, and we’re having a good conversation.”

“You sure? I don’t want to keep you from anything you have to do.”

“It’s fine. It’s not like I have my wife waiting for me or anything.”

“You say that like you used to have a wife,” she remarked, reading me terrible well. I chuckled before bowing my head in resignation.

“A full year divorced in two weeks,” I admitted.

“Whoa, okay, tell me about how that’s going.” ― I pointed down the road, raising my brows. She nodded in reply, and we took off as I began to relate my late marital woes. We continued our conversation into the night, without minding the light southern gale that had picked up. I made the decision to turn around when it was clear to me that the path in front of us was becoming less Round Rock and more of an interstate. Arrived at our cars, I used my smartphone to determine our ultimate distance: We had walked five miles one way and five miles back! In the meantime, we had talked about everything under the sun, including our families nuclear and extended, our friends current and former, our sources of joy and of woe, our lessons learned and worldly cares, our perceptions and interpretations, our strengths and our shortcomings.

The weekend would transpire without any communication between us. Monday arrived, and I would not see her come in. The following day, she wouldn’t come in either. Whatever concern I may have felt was vain, because I had no means of contacting her. The rest of the week would pass without the least sighting or tidings of her, and the next week likewise, her absence producing in me not a little consternation. At length I concluded she had quit, and my heart was indeed heavy for a day or two. I would go on to accept it of course, only faulting my naïveté. I had never asked for her personal contact information because I presumed she could not leave so soon; she had just gotten the hang of the role, and we were getting along rather well, I believed―but that is the nature of the trade I was in. High turnover is the reality. I did not know the entire story besides.

The only consolation to me was that I probably helped her find a more suitable path in life by means of our ten-mile conversation. People enter our lives only for a week or a month sometimes. We will exchange a relative handful of words with them, and then they’ve gone their way. But it is these brief encounters that make all the difference in our lives. Hands crossed, I was ruminating much along these lines now three weeks after Louisa had gone when I heard the keyboard being hap-hazardly tapped of the computer in the cubicle to my right. I sat in silence for a second before a head peered from behind the gray, flimsy panel. It belongs to a young man, ostensibly in his mid-twenties. He asks: “Do you know how to turn this on by the way?”