The First Job

It's 1987 and just out of college. I got hired by a Fortune 500 Office equipment company to be a Sales Representative in the Chicago area. Things couldn’t be better. Great company, Salary plus commission and I think there are a few cute girls in the office. Well, I was hired on June 26 and told I would start on July 5th. How great is this? New job and enjoy the upcoming 4th of July festivities. All my new Sales manager told me was to learn a 2 paragraph sales pitch that he provided to me verbatim when I started on the 5th.
Oh yeah, as if I’m going to learn this sales pitch while I’m having fun attempting not to blow my fingers off with illegal fireworks. The guy loved me in the interview process or he wouldn’t have hired me.
So I enter my new office on July 5th bright and early, ready to become a sales god.
The sales manager calls me in and says “Let’s get the sales pitch out of the way, go ahead whenever you’re ready”. Well, I don’t think I looked at this sales pitch more than once. No problem. I’ll wing it. Bad move. I was stumbling, stammering and butchering this sales pitch so badly that my new sales manager said “Stop. You don’t know this do you? You didn’t work in this did you?” I said “ No, I guess I don’t know it as well as I thought”
Next thing I know, my new sales manager says “ I think I made a mistake, you can go home now.” FIRED. Fired on the first day. Not the first day, the first 5 minutes! I went into panic immediately and begged this man for my job back. I told him that I would know this sales pitch like the back of my hand by tomorrow morning. I offered him a future child to give me another chance. Well, he did. I did have to leave the office right then to go home and learn the sales pitch. Walking through the bullpen of sales representatives was like walking through the gauntlet of shame.
That day I locked myself in my bathroom for about 8 hours and learned the sales pitch perfectly. The next day I came in and blew the sales manager away. All was well and I started my journey into office equipment sales. The irony is that my sales manger got fired 2 weeks later. Guess he didn’t know his sales pitch to well!