A Sales Career was my Destiny

I got my first real job in sales at age 16 as a salesperson for a nationally known men’s shoe store in 1980. I loved it. I wore a bad blue blazer, poorly fitting khaki pants and a horrendous knit tie. I thought I was hot stuff. By the way I also looked like I was 11 years old. My sales manager was a creepy guy in his early 30's. He sounded like the worst used car salesman you ever heard. It didn’t help his image that he wore real shiny suits and had an awful 1970's adult film star mustache. He was a real piece of work.
I do have to give him credit in teaching me some selling basics like top down selling and handling objections. After a few months I got the hang of it and was selling like crazy. I was easily the #1 part time sales person and doing as well as some of the full timers. I definitely had a feel for sales and knew I enjoyed the challenge. The money wasn’t bad either.
My ego was the size of the Goodyear Blimp and I thought I knew everything. So one Sunday I was the only one in the store. I was feeling really good about myself. Imagining myself as sales manger, regional manager and then maybe CEO of the company. I had to stop myself and focus on the task at hand which at this time was reading the Sunday Sports Section of the newspaper. As I’m sitting in a chair in the showroom, I notice an elderly couple in their 50's walk in( people in their 50's are elderly to a 16 year old). They are looking around and I peer over the newspaper and say “Folks, if you need anything, just get me”. I continued to read my newspaper.
The next day I come to work and my sales manager is livid. He asks me how my day went in the store yesterday. I said fine. He asked if I noticed a couple in the store asking for help. I told him I didn’t remember( I absolutely did). He went on to tell me that a the Vice President of our company’s Eastern region was in yesterday with his wife and the sales person was just reading the newspaper. Uh Oh! He went on to give me the lecture of a lifetime and said he did everything not to get me fired. (He didn’t fire me because I was making the store’s monthly numbers look good which helped him keep his job).
I did learn a valuable lesson and at very young age. You will never know everything and never take any customer for granted. I was lucky to learn this lesson early on in my sales life. By the way, I have a feeling that my old sales manager is trying squeeze a size 8 onto a person who wears a size 9.