Instruments of torture
Black Friday always reminds me of when my vision of my own personal hell was forever altered. For more than a decade, it was being forced to sit in a room and listen to the Bee Gees’ “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack on an endless loop.
Then I started working retail.
Although it’s true that hell’s legions would flee in terror from holiday shoppers, bargain seekers never really bothered me. It was the day-to-day assault of hagglers that tortured me. No matter how low a price may be, customers always claim to have seen whatever item they want – say, a monogrammed macramé Willie McCovey pillow – for X number of dollars less somewhere else. Haggling drives me nuts. Maybe it’s a valid part of the shopping experience in other countries, but the bargaining gene skipped my generation. I’m not going to haggle over anything – except, maybe, the cost of hiring someone to do my haggling for me.
Trapped in retail hell for a number of years, I managed to escape by becoming a writer. I thought I had successfully busted out forever, but then lost a job unexpectedly. No one was hiring in my chosen field, so I went back to the thing I swore I would never do again – dealing with customers, this time in a music store.
After a year of working the counter, straightening guitar picks and dusting bottles of valve oil to stay awake, I took a sales job as a road rep for the same company, mainly to break the monotony and make a little extra cash. The store rented band and orchestra instruments to parents, who shelled out a not insignificant amount each month in hopes that little Johnny or Suzy would be the next Yo-Yo Ma, Chris Botti or Ringo Starr.
I and my fellow reps were supposed to receive a commission per instrument rented. Commissions, the sales manager assured me, would be paid in a lump sum at the end of each school year. We tracked our own rentals, of course, and we trusted the store’s accounting department to do the same.
Part of repping required that I pick up instruments at schools a few months after the school year began, by which time parents had discovered that clarinets, trumpets and violins – especially violins – in the hands of most 9-year-olds are instruments of torture. And that little Johnny or Suzy had absolutely no chance of becoming even the next Yoko Ono.
I split my territory with another rep – we’ll call him Fred – who almost never went to retrieve instruments left at the school. Many was the week that I picked up Fred’s abandoned instruments because he couldn’t be bothered. After nine months of this, I was ready to be rewarded.
Commission day came. The sales manager called me in to his office.
“We screwed up,” he said. “Last year we accidentally didn’t pay Fred. So we’re giving your commission to him this year. We’ll make it up to you next year.”
It was then that I realized that hagglers are merely annoying – ants at a picnic in hell, if you will. But sales managers are Satan’s shock troops.
My manager became perplexed when I asked him why I should be penalized for the company’s inability to manage a checking account. He seemed even more baffled when I quit six months later.
So, here’s my revised vision of hell:
Judgment Day comes, and I don’t make the cut. Satan grins, throws his pointed tail over a shoulder, and says, “Your choice: We have a spot working in our gift shop 24/7, or you can listen to ‘Saturday Night Fever’ for eternity.”
Ya know, “Stayin’ Alive” is kinda catchy.