Monday, March 16, 2009

Death of a Salesman

Growing up, my parents didn't believe in giving us an allowance. "You get to live here," was how my stepfather, Gary, explained the "allowance" we did get, which required that we perform a litany of chores that included maintaining the swimming pool, taking out the trash and cleaning the kitchen every night after dinner. But being a kid with a lot of material needs, I needed cash -- and lots of it. For starters, Mark, my best friend in Michigan, and I had made a deal when my family moved to Phoenix in 1979 that we would visit each other each summer, taking turns who was host. Airfares weren't cheap, so between saving up for that and my obsessive need to buy tennis equipment and record albums, this tween had to get creative.


At 10, I was already collecting quarters in exchange for advice (a la Lucy van Pelt) sitting at my desk in Mr. Kamila's fifth-grade class. (Sure, I wasn't licensed. But my straight-A average surely qualified me for something.)

At 12 I was putting on plays in my garage and charging admission. By 13 I had started my own babysitting service (the unfortunately named KKK, as in Kenny Kid Kare, which advertised heavily in the Dobson Ranch monthly, the Ranchers' Roundup) that allowed me to collect a fee for placing friends in babysitting jobs when I was not available for the assignment.

Around the same time I started delivering the Mesa Tribune, the newspaper from which my brother Terence was laid off during the 118-year-old institution's collapse late last year. While my daily route paid a steady "salary" ("The Mesa Tribune will pay you the sum of 40 dollars," as it was explained to me during my initiation), It didn't take long before I realized the real way to make fast money was through sales. Each weekend one of the district managers would round up a bunch of us paperboys and drive us to an untapped neighborhood to go door to door selling subscriptions. (Looking back, probably not the safest thing to do as you'd end up alone in strangers' houses all the time. I can still vividly recall the guy with a blow-up doll as his "date.") Each "start," as they were known, would pay a buck and every time you finished with the most starts in a weekend, you'd also get points toward fun prizes in a catalog. I'm not sure why, but I really excelled at this (greed, perhaps?), almost always coming out on top and easily making enough money to pay for my plane tickets and other luxuries. My parents -- who normally didn't get overly involved in their kids' affairs -- couldn't help but take notice and started to talk about what a big future they thought I had ahead of me as a businessman. But even then, I came to detest the whole act of selling because it started to become apparent to me that I frequently had to fudge the truth (read: lie) to close the deal. You see, we were always selling in neighborhoods where the paper was just setting up new routes, where I wouldn't actually be the carrier. But the people would agree to the subscription only because they liked me and thought I was going to be their paperboy. Or they'd say they only wanted the paper if I promised to deliver it in such and such a place. I'd usually just smile and not correct them. I knew it was wrong, but I'd just play along because I wanted the money.

Feeling increasingly uncomfortable with my business practices -- and with delivering papers in 110-degree heat -- I decided to go into business for myself. I had just entered junior high in the fall of 1979 and my lifelong obsession with office supplies had reached a fevered pitch when my mom started letting me order things from her catalogs. My classmates at Rhodes Junior High were always asking me where I'd gotten this pencil or that folder, so I got the idea to start my own office supply business.

Inspired by the famed Hanover House catalog and with a tip of the hat to Wacky Packages, I christened my business Handitover House. Talk about a success! I'd order stuff in bulk from my mom's catalogs, then I'd stock up on other items from Longs Drug Store over by Peter Piper Pizza. Then I'd repackage everything with a small markup and watch the items fly off the shelf -- from an office I'd set up in my family's loft, where I housed my considerable inventory.

My labelmaker was a particularly wise investment, as kids would pay me to punch out labels for everything from their books to their records. After school, my friend Tammy Wagner would sometimes help me sell stuff door to door, with the real housewives of Dobson Ranch going ga-ga over the latest stationery I'd gotten or newest gadget I'd found.

Tammy and I were catching up on Facebook recently and while she doesn't recall this, my brother Terence and I still haven't stopped cracking up about the time a customer mistakenly thought Tammy hadn't given her her change and Tammy snapped back, "Shut up, lady. It ain't your money!," in what can only be described now as an unorthodox "Good Salesman, Bad Salesman" technique.

"Personalized" stationary -- which consisted of my brother Bill's nice handwriting on pieces of white paper -- was another big seller. (Bill was also responsible for the catalog's more mature look in Year 2.) Handitover House lasted most of seventh and eighth grade (by ninth the freshman tennis team and adolescent drama had taken control of my young life), but I can still vividly remember how crushed my parents were when I declared journalism -- not business or hotel and restaurant management -- as my major in college.

Like I said, they rarely weighed in much on their kids' lives. But I swear I was in my early 30s before I stopped hearing about how successful I "might have been" if only I'd majored in business. ("You were soooo good at sales when you were young.") These comments never really bothered me, but they did strike me as a bit odd. I mean, I ran around in Daisy Dukes all the time with my nuts hanging out and my mom never encouraged me to be a S.E. Washington stripper, so I couldn't understand why they were so sold on my being a salesman. Looking back, I can't help but wonder why they didn't think it was equally remarkable (or at least prophetic) that I'd been an editor since I started my own school paper in the fourth grade. Of course, maybe they knew something my brothers and I didn't. The Hiller News took A LOT of time to publish and, with no advertisers, was a money-losing proposition from the get-go ...

7 comments:

Chad said...

Fascinating!!! I loved reading that part of your history. Such an entrepreneur! WOW! Amazing stuff...

Anonymous said...

This has got to be the most amazing post ever. I was never that much of an upstart. Always trying to fend off the whole gay thing and never popular enough to amass anything.

I loved the part where you charged 25 cents for advice.

BW said...

Tragically, we have long since lost touch with John Schmuck.

Reviews For Jake said...

I don't even have my yearbooks anymore, WHERE DO YOU KEEP ALL THIS STUF!?!??!AND IN NEW YORK!!!!!???

Marc Lallanilla said...

What a great post! Now I no longer feel like such a grade-school John Schmuck for selling flower seeds door-to-door, or for publishing my own books -- complete with illustrations, frontispiece and corporate logo -- when I was in second grade. Or for running around with my nuts hanging out of my shorts (then again, I still do that from time to time. Airs them out, you know.).

Anonymous said...

What a sweet, thoughtful string of memories. Jeez, talk about innocent times from the past. I think, Kenneth, you would have been an excellent businessman AND a hot stripper. :o)

John in Palm Springs

John said...

OMG Kenneth, I don't think anything I read on your blog would surprise or shock me LOL! That was a great post...and you were so clever as a kid! You were Greg, Peter, & Bobby Brady all in one, and a dash of Lucy from Charlie Brown! She only charged 5 cents for her advice.