I Could Never Sell

Week of March 18

There’s the head of Cost Accounting sitting in a hotel bar. Nice hotel. Late Saturday night. Front row table on the main aisle. The red carpet seat. Young women pass in shimmering party clothes. Lovers would sit far to the back, away from this mahogany and brass rail.

The Cost Accountant can’t quite fit into his nice jacket. He tugs at it. His smile looks a little forced and wobbly.

Beside him, laughing, is a tall man who looks born for this. His IBM salesman. The salesman pays for the drinks and the entire weekend conference. The conference is long on golf and boating, light on computer briefings. Like those free trips to Florida if you’ll sit through a timeshare presentation.

What makes this work? Would it work just as well if the salesman were, say, your cousin’s mother-in-law? Why have IBM salesmen (only men, in the early decades) been consistently taller than the national average?

If you’re a careful thinker, you won’t like the answer. The answer has little use for all your careful thinking.

What’s the Cost Accountant buying when he picks certain vendors to compete for his big contract? Their attention, to begin with.

Glamour trips, glamour nights out. The Cost Accountant could get his own glamour trips. He takes the whole family some of these same places every year. He even plans a babysitter for Saturday night, and a glamorous night with the wife. But somehow he can never get into the thick of it. At best he watches the fun crowd from a distance, like TV without the close-ups.

But his salesman gets him into the fun, the thick of it, the close-ups. Or as close as he will ever get, in this lifetime.

These were the glamour people the Cost Accountant couldn’t get near in high school. They were headed for a different life, he could already see. After the night of high school graduation he wouldn’t see them again.

But he worked hard and worked his way into a budgeting position in a company. He earned the right to spend company money. And there were the glamour people again. Coming to him, wanting time with him.

Sweet!