Money can't buy you happiness has got to be the funniest joke anyones ever told everyone. Sometimes, I used to think that the rich would laugh about how some of us actually believed that shit. I mean, what do people do when they love each other? They buy each other gifts, they make reservations at the fanciest restaurants they can. Then, if all the dates add up to enough, they’ll spend the last of it on a big wedding and a honeymoon.
Sure, there's ways around not having a lot of it. I remember I used to bring girls to eat on some benches by the river park towers. I didn't have enough for the train and certainly not enough for a car to take the girl down to Manhattan to see Times square or any other area too pretty for my budget. So we’d just look at the best thing in our area. It was an illusion of wealth, or rather wealth relative to what we had in the moment. We want the best of what we know to be the best .It's why we buy iPhones when the cheaper ones still work just fine, or Nike and Polo when the bootleg brands cover us just the same. Then the mega rich have brands that normal people never even heard of.
In essence, I'm really not that special. I want the same thing everyone else wants, to buy some more happiness. What might have set me apart was that I thought and I knew I had the means to do it.
Since the second I was old enough, I got a job. My first job was 10 or so blocks to the left of my house. I was only 14, so off the books. I was a cook in a Deli. I made cold cuts, fried up bacon egg and cheeses, and sold chips and sodas. It was $7 an hour, not too bad for a 14 year old.
My first job, I learned one thing about myself. I hated having a boss.
I just couldn't do it, there wasn't an obedient bone in me. The only thing that kept me from breaking the law just about every damn day were the thing my mother used to tell me. Its all she wanted, it was her only wish, that her son wouldn’t end up in jail like the man she had him with. Thats something I’d do for the sake of her memory.
I got fired from that deli 6 months into employment for not taking extra hours for no pay. Bosses do things like that. It's like they think we work for fun.
I didn't get another job until I was 16. From that point, it was all on the books. Target, Walmart, Supermarkets, waiter at restaurants, McDonalds, burger king, etc. I would get laid off or quit, usually within a few months. When it came to talking to a boss, I was total shit. I didn't like using Sir or Ma’am, I only ever called my Dad and Mom and uncles and such Sir or Ma'am. I didn't like giving respect away like that. Much less to someone who's a total asshole to me. I wasn't really the best with coworkers, though that varied. At target, there was this one Pothead I kicked it off with.
But hell, when it came to customer service, there was no one better. Small talk with strangers was my thing. Those hispanic women with little kids buzzing around them, those were the easiest to talk to. I would talk to them like my mom talks to her friends. Always talk about the son, usually the eldest, talk about how hard work is, and ask how their mothers are doing back at home. They ate it up.
I knew all their names and all their stories. The tall white dudes- talk about something that's been happening on the news. Sports or the most recent political scandal. They say ladies are the ones that like drama, but I'm telling you, it's the guys who can't get enough of it.
That 15 dollars an hour was more like 20 at one point from the amount of tips I’d get. At one restaurant I worked at, my coworkers called my Charlie Charmer. My name’s even charlie.
Still, I was trying to fit on gloves that just couldn't fit perfectly. I could talk to customers, just not with bosses or coworkers. What I really wanted was a job for a young guy like me, no degree but a whole lot of hustle, and a knack for charming a crowd.
I landed on sales.
Selling phones specifically. At the point I started, I was 18. I sent in all my applications online, proudly displaying my numerous hitches at pretty much every other place in the bronx. They called me in for an interview, and the first thing they asked me was what the hell was going on with all my job hopping. So, I told them the truth.
“Well,” I said to the interviewer, “I really just wanted as much opportunity as I could get. I wanted to try every single thing to figure out what I was good at, and learn my skill set. I realize now I'm really good at talking to the customers. So, that's why I think a job in sales would really help me.”
They put me through some so-called, “Customer Simulations” where I was in the store real time and tried to get me to sell a specific pair of wireless headphones.
I watched plenty of videos on how to sell. Really, you want to make the customer think they need your product, and that the only option they really have is to get it right there and then. Seems easy enough, but the premise isn't the hard part. It's how you go about doing that.
I asked this one lady how she was going. I talked to her about her current headphones, an older model.
“Little to no base sound, right? Oh, and after the first few months of having it, it doesnt play as loudly anymore?”
“Yeah, exactly!”
Research was another important factor. You gotta know what you’re talking about.
“What do you usually use them for? Do you work with headphones a lot?”
Turned out the woman was a musical producer.
I gave her this whole speech about the headphones actually being an investment, and how working with the old pair would cost her in the future. That was about 35% of it. The rest was all about her. I made her feel like she was smart and secure, I let her explain to me all the little nuances she needed in a pair of headphones.Dont use too much jargon, the last thing you want to do is make a potential buyer feel dumb and insecure.
At the end, she left with a bag, a monthly finance plan, virtually the same headphones, and yet a smile on her face. Hell, when you're doing it right, you only do 35% of the work. She convinced herself she needed those headphones.
I received a notice that the position was mine 2 weeks later. A year has passed since I started working at Verizon in Manhattan, and 75 grand a year as a 19 year old with no college education wasn't a bad gig at all.
