Oh Jessie J, how wrong you are! It's the final day of my week and I'm sat here in my car waiting for the rain to stop so that I can begin my canvass of this estate in a northwest Dublin suburb. I'm a door to door salesman who's three shy of his weekly target and your warbling from the radio about how it's not “about the money” is doing nothing for my mood. For me, today most assuredly is all about the money.
The key to understanding this job is to appreciate the cruel arithmetic of sales garnered divided by households canvassed. For example, last week it seemed as if I could expect one sale from at least every twenty doors knocked upon. The result was that the bonus for that week was particularly lucrative.
I began this week with similar hopes as I started canvassing in the next estate over from the one where I'd finished the week before. By Wednesday such dreams had died on the hard and unforgiving suburban pavement, my meagre figures for the first days bearing little resemblance to the fulsome numbers that had preceded them the week before. Today my only realistic strategy is one of damage limitation as I seek to get the lowest bonus attainable so that the pay packet for my 20 hour week is greater than what I would ordinarily get had I just signed on instead. Never before have I felt more keenly the absurdity of the phrase “running to stand still”.
The rain stops and I can begin. In truth, the actual work itself isn't that bad. People are generally patient and willing to listen to the opening gambit at least: “Hi I'm just doing a canvass on behalf of Mr X to see if you're interested in Y”. And then they smile in response to my slightly manic grin and say “sorry, not interested”.
In terms of interacting with the customers the most demoralising times are when you knock at a row of houses where nobody comes to the door. Some of these are vacant properties but others actually have occupants who see me coming with my clipboard and simply decide to play a game of reverse knick knacks at my expense by not answering the door. On one or two occassions some inhabitants have even made ostentatious displays of not budging at all in spite of the fact that I've just rung their doorbell and it's obvious that we're both looking at each other.
It's hard to resent such attitudes for long though. As a salesman hoping to capitalise on his cheerful disposition it's important not to obsess over these things by remembering that these are in fact unsolicited house calls that I'm making. On a row of empty houses this can sometimes be difficult however. More typically I find myself cultivating an appreciation for the aesthetic qualities of doorbells (there are some truly wretched doorbells out there) or simply being thankful that the weather's fine rather than obsessing over such perceived petty slights.
The day drags on and the monotony of garden-doorstep-garden establishes itself; the suburban sameness of it all only broken by the slight variations in the design of each row of houses and by their proximity to the estate's communal green area.
After an hour I come onto a road of houses that ends in a cul de sac and my heart leaps. For the service I'm selling young families, three or four kids to working parents under the age of thirty, are undoubtedly the most lucrative market and houses situated on closes are generally the preferred dwellings for such families. I put my shiniest smile on and begin. On the sixth house I get a sale. Things are looking up. The smile now beams of its own volition. On the second last house I've left on the road the customer replies “Yeah, I suppose I am interested.” Not expecting another sale in such quick succession I almost say “Ah well, thanks for your time” and walk off but catch myself in time. I make the sale. All I need is one more before I can happily call it quits for the day, content in the knowledge that there is actually some tangible reason (a reward greater than what I could hope to get on the dole) as to why I'm doing this.
Things don't go well for the next two hours though. Fewer people answer their door and the smiles become rarer and rarer when they do. Another aspect of the cruelty of the sums is that of previous form and expectation management and how this, more than any unpleasant customer behaviour, can seriously serve to undermine one's cheerful disposition.
Today's experience is a nice case study in how this happens. I begin the day with vague hopes of hitting my target but, after an hour, I become resigned to the possibility that perhaps this wouldn't occur. Then I get two sales and the hopes revived stronger than ever before. The mind races; between two and a half and three hours to get one sale? Easy. I'd never gotten zero sales from any previous canvasses (four hour periods) so with three hours left I'm more or less guaranteed one sale at least, I believe. Armed with this inspiring but deeply suspicious mathematical proof that my success is inevitable I set off with a new urgency in my stride. The sooner I got this sale, the sooner I got to go home.
Abstract reasoning is a bugger to dislodge from one's thinking though, regardless of whether it's right or wrong. “I'm certain to get one” becomes my mantra and with every failed housecall I repeat it more vociferously to myself. The fact that I'm now talking to myself should be a warning sign on its own but the frustration continues to build as I focus on my mantra to the exclusion of all the other signs indicating that perhaps I probably won't get that last one.
With thirty minutes left I come onto a familiar looking road facing the communal green area. This is the one I passed on the way in and avoided until the end. For reasons of safety young families generally tend to avoid living on the first road into an estate due to traffic volumes. There aren't many cars in driveways and most have their blinds drawn. I've no more houses left after this row. I begin.
40 minutes later I'm sat in the car again listening to the radio. I'm in a Eurospar car park eating the roll I've just bought and reading the newspaper. The article's interesting, the song playing is one I like, the sun is shining and the drive home will be a pleasant one. I didn't get the sale. Maybe Jessie J was right.
