There are many careers I feel I could have excelled at: surgeon (except for the part about having to touch someone’s insides–yuck); test pilot (except that I hate to go fast); even model (at least from the ankles down–I have lovely feet). In fact, I can honestly say that I have never lost my childhood belief that I could be anything I wanted to be when I grew up. Or, at least, almost anything: from an early age, I always knew I could never do retail.
I’m terrible at selling: I don’t even like to get a receipt when I drop off stuff at Goodwill, because it feels too much like I’m engaging in some sort of a “transaction”. In fact, probably the only person in the whole world who is worse at selling than I am is my friend Tom, who is such an inept salesman that he couldn’t even hold a job at the local theater’s concession stand, a place that comes with a built-in client base. (It seems that every time some poor kid would try to buy a box of overpriced candy, Tom would lean back, shake his head mournfully and say, “You don’t really want to buy that do you? It’s terrible.” Before you start to make assumptions about Tom’s noble quest to save the youth of America from dangerous chemicals and preservatives, you must know this: in college he also used to hand out unfiltered Camel cigarettes at Halloween.)
Some people just aren’t cut out for sales, and I count myself to be among them. But that’s ok: everyone has their limits, and I know this is one of mine. (For the record, Tom is not now involved in either sales or public health education). How is it then, that even with knowing this about myself; even after spending years avoiding the high school salesgirl job at The Gap, the college salesgirl job pushing magazine subscriptions door-to-door, and the twentysomething salesgirl job working at the local call center, I now find myself up to my neck in the retail biz? Two words: school fundraiser.
I know: it’s supposed to be the child who is selling the products, but let’s get real–how many 9-year-olds do you know who can count amongst their inner circle the type of person who wants a talking “Battlefields of the Civil War” picture frame or a tin of carob-covered Hanukkah pretzels? Realistically, it is the parents who end up schlepping these catalogs around to playdates, offices and book clubs, always on the lookout for someone gullible enough to believe that there actually exists a wrapping paper that is worth $12 a sheet.
And therein lies the real rub: it is not so much that our children’s schools are “encouraging” us to sell-sell-sell, it’s that what they’re “encouraging” us to sell-sell-sell is such crap-crap-crap. After all, I don’t mind helping Clementine with her yearly Girl Scout cookie sales: with those babies you are not so much a salesman as a dealer (the problem isn’t getting people to buy them, it’s getting people to stop coming over to your house at midnight trying to get their thin mint fix). As far as the school catalog products are concerned, though–well, let’s just say I would have better luck (and feel less guilt) if I was trying to convince people to help me collect my Nigerian lottery winnings than I do trying to convince them to buy something called a bucket o’pizza. (In my experience, unless the third word is beer, bucket o’ has never helped to sell anything).
Actually, though, judging by Tom’s popularity with the neighborhood children (if not their parents), maybe a bucket o’ciggies wouldn’t be such a bad fundraiser–they might even give the Girl Scouts a run for their money. Maybe I’ll suggest it at the next PTA meeting–if nothing else, I’m sure it will get me out of being asked to sell anything ever again.