Wednesday, August 03, 2011

Rebirth of a Salesman

Pierce nodded as the telephone voice droned on and on in his right ear. It didn’t occur to him that the woman on the line could not see him nodding, and, in truth, it didn’t matter anyway. She hadn’t taken a breath for what seemed like an hour. By nodding, he knew that it would appear as if he was paying attention to the caller.

He was not. Today was the last day of Pierce’s career as a telephone salesman. Telemarketer was the term the firm preferred, he knew, but there was a powerful, negative association with the word in the minds of most decent people. He was a salesman, and it just so happened that his medium was the telephone.

Pierce could not remember when he began hating his job. It had been a gradual erosion of satisfaction, but the ruts in his psyche now were very deep. For the past month, he hadn’t made any sales, and increasingly his time was spent silently nodding as the people he had auto-dialed rambled on about...well, who knew?  

It was time, he decided, for a little dose of reality.

As he walked through the door for the last time, Pierce smiled. There was an entire world out there, and no call waiting.

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Postscript: What the hell was that? Excellent question. The text above is an attempt at Flash Fiction, directed, in particular, to the Three Word Wednesday blog.

6 comments:

Daydreamer said...

My goodness I really do not like telemarketers. They just don't know when to quit.
Good use of the 3WW prompt

Sheilagh Lee said...

Gee I don't blame him it's an awful job and no one really wants that call.

Rinkly Rimes said...

Both my children tried telemarketing when they were 'finding themselves'! They said it was ghastly!

TodBryant said...

I've never tried it, but I imagine it would suck...

Old Egg said...

Great to see the job from a different perspective...the marketeer. Clearly he was too human for the job!

Thom Gabrukiewicz said...

In the aftermath of The Mesquite News, I tried telemarketing. I lasted one day. You've captured the feeling well.