Coffee Is For Closers. And Dudes With Pants.
Never does a man stand so tall as when he stoops to make a sale.
David Mamet’s changed my mind about a few things. More after I found out he was digging on my FIGHT book but still, if there was anyone who led me to my first job after college, I’m going to have to credit/blame Mamet. Before Mamet if you ever thought about sales and you wanted to use a literary antecedent it was Arthur Miller and Death of a Salesman, and there was nothing of the conquering hero about that. The title is telling you all you needed to know really.
But Mamet’s sales cats were slick talking amoralists. World beaters. Which is how you need to think about the world when you first get out of college. So it was that I ended up at Perry White. And what we sold? People.
You see it was technical recruiting and it was the most crucial gig ever.
“HOW COULD YOU BE SO GODDAMNED STUPID?”
The boss, whose foot was on Andy Wu’s desk, leaned into his face, over his now-bent knee, spittle dancing in the air between them. I was unsure of what Andy had done but of one thing I was sure: it was goddamned stupid.
Andy, drawing from a list of my least likely responses to our boss’s query, picked one from the bottom, and began sobbing. I looked at our boss with a look that I hope spelled it out as clearly as possible: “if you think doing this to ME is a going to be a good idea, you should really think again.”
I could feel the cool of the air-conditioned car seat against my ass crack and I started having a long, hard think about how this was actually going to go…
Andy later ended up getting arrested while in law school. For? For pulling a gun on a tow truck driver who had just towed his car. I don’t say these events are connected. I just say Andy pulled his gun six years too late.
In any case this was the milieu where I had planned to go all Glengarry Glen Ross. Thank Mamet for that. But I lasted three months before I ended up where I always should have been: media. See, what you think you can take/do is sometimes what you should least take/do.
But the idea endured like any other kind of macho ideation. In the animal portion of my brain. That is, dreams of being a detective, a Navy SEAL, a brain surgeon, all sort of sit in the same place. A place that if the opportunity should ever present itself you should be prepared to embrace it fully. Because: the Easy Rider ethos. That is: when you’re in the right place with the right people? It’s a GO.
“We have a sales call in Arizona. Book your ticket.” No idea where my new boss had gotten the idea that his top editorial guy needed to go on a sales call but as a top editorial guy it wouldn’t be the first time I had been dragged on a sales call. Sometimes, the thinking went, it paid to see the people who were putting pen to paper. At the very least for comic relief.
The tickets were booked. But booked in a way that I never would have booked them. There was no flex room, and therefore zero room for error. The plane landed. The driver rushed us to the headquarters and a day of meetings started. If a plane was late or a tire was flat, we were fucked. Which is to say we were going to need not an insignificant amount of luck to pull this off.
For which I would need my Czech Republic underwear.
See, some guy once sold me five pairs of underwear in an underground station in Prague when I was there catching a train somewhere or another. For a single Euro. I don’t know what it was about me that screamed “this man needs underwear” but as it so happened I DID need underwear. The ass of the underwear was also emblazoned with I [HEART] MONEY and they came in five different colors. So I bought them all.
It really couldn’t have gone any other way.
And for this sales call I’d wear the luckiest of the bunch: the hot pink ones. FTW…I was GFTG … going for the gold.
“Could we see some ID please?”
Checking in to the flight with my boss I produced my ID which, between my hand and the flight counter, fumbled its way to the floor and when I bent to pick it up I could hear/feel the ass of my pants tear. From belt loop to inseam. You’d think the Czech underwear would go first. But no, it held. The Hugo Boss suit pants though? Done.
I passed over the ID.
“I just tore my pants.”
My boss stared at his phone, texting, grunting. This didn’t seem like something I needed to repeat. Not to his “game face” and certainly not now. We’d make a quick store stop to get some new pants when the plane landed I figured.
But when we landed, what I had forgotten was, there was no time and in the cab to the clients I could feel the cool of the air-conditioned car seat against my ass crack and I started having a long, hard think about how this was actually going to go now. Couldn’t ask the client for a new pair of pants or a robe. Couldn’t tie my suit jacket around my waist. Couldn’t wait in the cab.
I figured I could do this by staring deeply into their eyes, never breaking contact, never standing up, and never not having my back to a wall.
But I could Jedi mind trick whoever I was dealing with into not noticing. And I figured I could do this by staring deeply into their eyes, never breaking contact, never standing up, and never not having my back to a wall.
“Hi! Glad you all could make it!” The PR person ushered us into the corporate campus while I stared into her eyes. For a very, very long time.
Indeed, through multiple presentations and even being called on to speak, I realized something significant and crucial: who would ever have stones big enough to say to a man wearing hot pink I [HEART] MONEY underwear that they could actually see his hot pink I [HEART] MONEY underwear?
I mean to say, my conundrum was now the world’s conundrum so the best thing to do was doing as I did: make believe my ass was NOT hanging out.
Which means the day proceeded without further incident. Beyond that: we were a hit.
“What’s your name?”
“FUCK YOU, that's my name!! You know why, Mister? 'Cause you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight, I drove an $80,000 BMW. That's my name!!”
And THAT was rolling in and through my head in the cab, flight and drive back to the office where my car had been parked. Alec Baldwin. David Mamet. The Shit.
I [HEART] MONEY…THAT was my name.
We also didn’t close the sale. So that was also my name.
I’d like to think it had nothing to do with my ass. But who knows?
“I subscribe to the law of contrary public opinion... If everyone thinks one thing, then I say, bet the other way...” So said Pacino as Ricky Roma and it’s as true now as when Mamet first started fucking up my life.
Anyway I’m now out of the sales end of any business but this one you’re reading now. And as I write this I’m still wearing my lucky underwear, and even if they’re presently faded, as it’s as true now as when the Czech subway salesman first sold me on them: I [HEART] MONEY.
Now if I could only get my hands on more of it.