Knock briskly. Look straight into the narrowed suspicious eyes behind the screen door. Extend your arm, as though to shake hands, and say, “Hi, got a minute?”
They’ll open the door to shake your hand. As they do this, you clasp their hand and step inside. Our instructor told us it works 99.99% of every time it’s tried – guaranteed.
No one believed him.
But he was right.
Well, actually, it didn’t work 99.99% of the time, (salesmen always exaggerate), but it did work most of the time. Why, I don’t know. Maybe it had something to do with culturally reflexive responses; the offer to shake hands was automatically returned. If a screen-door was in the way, it was opened without thought. When we stepped inside at the same time the ritual was confusingly altered – and we were allowed to enter without resistance. Anyhow, that’s how people reacted in 1961, when I learned the trick. Today, who knows?
This miraculous procedure was called a door opener. It was the most simple, and successful, of several we learned in our morning training sessions. We would start at 9:00 A.M. and continue until 3:00 P.M., with a half hour break for lunch.
After that we’d get to work – selling encyclopedias.
Oops! Placing encyclopedias, that is. We never sold encyclopedias, we “placed” them. But, only with families that had been properly qualified – by us, of course. How to qualify a family was another thing we learned in those morning sessions: 1. Look for a phone. If they can’t afford a phone, they can’t afford encyclopedias. 2. Assess (guess) their gullibility. Do they look hapless enough to believe that someone would give them a set of encyclopedias? 3. Are both mom and dad present? If both aren’t there for the decision, the deal will fall apart. Those were the real qualifying points, but while we checked those off mentally, we physically checked off the families answers to a printed list of questions.
What was the last book you read? What magazines / newspapers do you subscribe to?
Do you take an active interest in your children’s education? Blah, blah, blah, etc. – to which we would receive many earnest lies.
Following this, we would go though the rest of the spiel we’d been drilled in, over and over, from 9:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M. – six days a week. (For years afterward I could recite this litany verbatim, in my sleep).
The gist of the whole deal was this: The Collier’s Encyclopedia Co. was looking for a few special families to endorse their product. Families who qualified would receive – absolutely free – an entire set of Collier’s Encyclopedias. All the company asked in return was a testimonial letter that Colliers could use in their advertising and other promotional materials. “Would that be acceptable to you, Mr. & Mrs. Jones? It would? Well, please understand, your letter would then be the property of the company, to use indefinitely, in any way they choose. Are you sure you’re comfortable with that? Very well, let’s proceed to the questionnaire.” 20 minutes, or so, later we would solemnly announce that they certainly appeared to be qualified for the program. They would shift position in their seats, and relax a little in the comforting knowledge that they had made the grade.
Then we would start to pack-up to leave – while casually tossing out the information that Year Books would be available every year to keep their set current.
What Year Books?” they would ask.
“Oh, encyclopedia companies always put out a Yearbook, every year, to include all the new technological developments, advances in science, important news events, and so on.” Most folks like to get the Year Books, so their kids won’t be using out of date facts in their school reports.”
“Well, do we get the Year Books, too?”
At this point we would pause, (in a way that suggested just a little exasperation), and say, “The company really can’t afford to give away an entire set of encyclopedias and the Year Books, too.” Slightly shame-faced, they would reply, “Sure, sure, of course not. We understand.” Some foot shuffling would follow as we continued to pack our stuff. Then, invariably, they would ask the question that this whole elaborate charade had been designed to produce – “Say, how much are those Year Books?”
Seemingly distracted with our packing, we would rummage around in our papers and say, “Oh, let me see... Ah, here it is... Mmm... well, not much, I guess they’d cost about the same as a pack of cigarettes a week.” This would usually provoke some grumbling from mom about how dad smokes too much, anyway – and the trap would swing shut. From here on in we would lead them step-by-step to the point of signing up for 10 years’ worth of Year Books – which came to an even $300.
Actually, the company never sold encyclopedias without the Year Books, and the price of both, together, was $300.) They never had that much cash in their checking account, so they would make out a check for enough to cover the first payment on a subscription.
When done properly, this last stage would seem to be an imposition on our real job – which was to place sets of encyclopedias with appropriately qualified families. Resigned to this extra duty, we would write up their order for the Year Books.
They would often thank us for being so helpful.
That’s how it was done, and when we were successful at it, we made $80 on each sale. But it wasn’t easy money.
If they didn’t go for the Year Books, we’d have to make an excuse for disqualifying them and try for another presentation further on up the street. Making a sale required knocking on a lot of doors. Getting inside didn’t mean you’d get to a presentation, and not every presentation resulted in a sale. It took about 80 doors to get to a presentation. Two presentations a night was about average. If you made two sales a week you were doing good, and, a sale didn’t count until your customer made it through a credit check. Sometimes a sale would fall through days after it seemed cinched.
And, even then, the joy of a successful sale was ruined by the accompanying guilt.
To my knowledge, the only people that ever bought our encyclopedias were poor, ignorant, but decent folks, that hoped somehow, some way, the mere proximity of these books would educate their children – and give them a better chance in life than the one they’d been given. We weren’t actually cheating them. The books were worth the price, and, who knows, their kids might even use them. But we were certainly taking unfair advantage of the innocent expectations and trusting nature of these people. Before we showed up, they were hardly sitting around thinking to themselves, “By golly, we’ve put it off long enough. We really ought to get a set of encyclopedias for the kids.”
We misled them into believing they were being offered a rare opportunity – a chance to provide their children something they wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford for them. And, once we had them in that frame of mind, we led (shamed) them into believing that for just a small investment (no more than the price of a pack of cigarettes a week), they could make that opportunity even better.
It wasn’t untrue, and it wasn’t illegal; but it sure wasn’t right.
It was depressing work. And, that was just the day-to-day routine part of the job. The adventures with the local police were even worse.
We always worked the boondocks – little towns 30 to 40 or more miles out from Cleveland. Probably because all the Cleveland neighborhoods were wise to the scam by this time. The local officials of these small towns didn’t buy our line about “placing encyclopedias” for a second. So, our crew leaders were supposed to get a solicitation license before we hit the streets, but, sometimes they didn’t – and sometimes there were problems even when they did.
We all spent a few hours in jail from time to time, waiting for someone from the company to pay our fine. The worst incident, for me, at least, happened in Ravenna. Ravenna is a smallish town right next to Kent – home of Kent State University. I guess Ravenna is also the county seat. The office we went to for our license had two desks. One was for the town, the other was for the county.
We got our license at the town desk and went on our way.
Half an hour later the sheriff’s deputies rounded us up and escorted us to the county jail – which was also the city jail. We protested our innocence and produced our license. “No good,” we were told, “You need a license for the county, too.” “But the guy from the county was setting right by us at the next desk and he never said a word?”
“You should’a’ asked.” And that was that.
No fine this time. We got a court date for Monday, and this was on a Friday night. Anyone who could make bail – $50 – was free to go. That was everybody but me. No one had any money left, but they promised to come back the next day and get me out.
They put me in a large cell with a wall at the back. The other three sides faced a walk space that went all around the cell. Amenities were limited to two solid steel bunkbeds and one commode – without a seat.
Four of the local criminals were already in residence when I arrived.
One was a kid, 18 or 19 years old. He was in for robbing a gas station. Well, actually, for robbing several gas stations. He was due to leave next morning for an extended stay at a state prison – and looking forward to it. He was sure he’d learn a lot from the real pros there. Another guy was lying on the floor at the foot of one the bunkbeds. He was bleeding a little from a cut on the side of his head. I was told that this was the result of being thrown into the cell and sliding smack into the steel bed. But, as he was unconscious at the time, he didn’t appear to be suffering too much from the injury. Apparently, he was the county dog catcher – as well as the town-drunk.
The cops had long ago lost all patience with him, but they’d let him go in the morning when he was sober.
The third guy never said a word; I had no idea what he was in for.
The fourth guy in the cell never stopped talking. He said he was the editor of the local paper – jailed on trumped-up charges because he was writing an exposé of town-hall corruption. The longer I stayed in that cell, the more plausible his story seemed. He claimed to have been there for the last 10 months. Never saw the sun in all that time.
He looked it.
Well, I’d seen a few movies. I knew my rights. I called out to the guard for the phone call I knew I was guaranteed by law. Big mistake. He told me to pipe down or I’d never get a call. The editor suggested that piping down really would be a very wise course of action.
I piped down.
The call I had wanted to make would have been to my parents. (This all happened in the summer following my high school graduation, so I hadn’t yet moved out on my own). I wanted to let them know where I was, and what was going on – and I knew the company guys would never think to call them – but what could I do?
The next morning came. The company bail-out didn’t.
They forgot.
Breakfast was cold tea in a tin cup – no sugar, no cream – and a roll so hard it cracked into several pieces when bitten. According to the editor, the cops bought the rolls cheap, many days old, and pocketed the savings. Lunch was a thin gruel, with slimy chunks of something unidentifiable floating around near the surface. The editor called it mystery stew. I wasn’t that hungry – I guess the kid who robbed the gas stations wasn’t, either. Everybody else ate heartily. In fact, the editor asked if he could have mine.
Right after lunch a group of third-grade school kids on a field trip was ushered through. They stared wide-eyed at the hardened convicts. Their teacher cautioned them about getting too close to the bars, but judging from their expressions, it was probably unnecessary advice. Right after they left, the state prison people came to pick up the gas station kid.
We all waved goodbye and wished him good luck.
A couple of hours later I got my phone call.
I called my parents. Of course they would come with the bail money to get me out, but it turned out to be not that simple. No one would be around to accept the bail money until Monday morning.
All told, I spent three nights and two days in the Ravenna jail house. I quit the encyclopedia business the same day I got out. My entire career in encyclopedia sales couldn’t have been more than a few months long, though it seemed like forever.
I was tired, disgusted – and wiser.
It wasn’t college, but it was an education.