Rodney’s got a new bright idea for terminating me. I can feel it by the toothy grin he gives me when I enter for a closing Wednesday shift. It’s not that I’m psychic. He was on a Manger conference call with the Regional Vice President in his back office the day before. It’s located ten feet from the punch clock.
His piercing wannabe rhythm and blues singer’s voice penetrates the grey steel windowless door with slicing nasal tonality. The speakerphone made the VP sound like the corporate chainsaw he was. I couldn’t stand by and listen, but circumstance had it that I got to hear a pertinent fragment.
"I’ve gotten rid of almost everybody that qualifies for vesting benefits except one."
"Who’s that?"
"Wheeler."
"Isn’t he the one I told you to get rid of first?"
"Look, I got rid of everybody else. He’s been a little tougher to break."
"Rodney, I don’t think I’ve impressed upon you the urgency-"
"Oh hi, Robin."
I’m looking down into the onyx heat seeking eyes of my wonderful, petite, carnivorous assistant sales manager.
"How’s it going Darius?"
She never calls me Weasel. I guess that‘s honest. Only my friends and enemies call me that. She‘s neither. Just an assistant puppeteer. Nothing personal. I bounce into my usual theatre of the peon.
"Are you closing tonight, Robin?"
"No. I’m on swing. I’m out at eight."
"That’s too bad. I like closing with you."
That bald faced fib is a sure fire way to elicit her quizzical look. The one she usually saves for customers making a return of something she’s sold them. She’s smart enough to know that most people dread closing with her because of her meticulous attention to detail.
"Uh, Weasel, could you get a ladder and flip the tag on that Gibson on the top row? And while you’re at it, get a feather duster and dust it off. It’s probably growing a beard up there."
Multiply that by about twenty-five and it’s easy to see that even though the store officially closes its doors at nine, one considers oneself lucky to escape by ten forty five.
Nevertheless, she’s not to blame. If a Sales Manager wants to be considered for a full Store Ship spot, they have to get excellent Morning Reports from the Operations Manager, who walks the store every morning in search of flaws.
And, of course, the ambitious Operations Manager will find flaws aplenty when you’re walking a store that has one million dollars in merchandise, and has been closed by a demoralized, half exhausted crew that can’t wait to drink the soul sucking day away.
Also, being no dope, she’s never certain of when I’m saying what I really mean.
It’s mid-October, and the retail business is in one of its trough cycles. It’s been six weeks since the Labor Day hype blitz. We’re a couple of weeks from the first Xmas shipments. This means most of the stock is only a hair away from shopworn at best, to garbage at worst.
It’s the time where one really feels the chaos skulking behind the Disney World approach to retail. Every single one of the three hundred odd hooks still has to be occupied by a guitar, and there’s almost nothing to back it up in the warehouse.
"Floor model" is the customer’s negotiating mantra. And there are two kinds of these folks. Both deluded,but GSI's bread and butter. Monstrosity that GSI is to the vocational and professional musician, we need a different kind of customer to pay the rent. They can be divided into two pitiful kinds.
The ones successfully propogandized by the advertising department to believe that the place is like a huge shoe store, where I have thousands of everything somewhere "in the back." Not one seems to be capable of imagining how big that "back" would really have to be.
Of course, this is where "Salesmanship" is supposed to come into play. Impress upon the customer the unique characteristics of this mass produced piece of dead forestry.
Take a hit on your micro commission so they feel like they’re "getting a deal" and get on to the next rung down the ladder of contempt for your fellow human. Usually just throwing them a bone like strings and picks will do the trick.
You get a lot of these in October, because kids often start a program of lessons in September. They’ve been getting our catalgs regularly and procrastinating on the purchase. They also can afford it the least. We’re talking parents in Queens. We’re talking two incomes barely covering the nut of car, insurance, house, food, rent, and clothing for starters.
There is usually almost nothing "in the back" except returns from September. Some of the guitars on the walls of the acoustic room have been hanging unsold since Xmas of last year. What this all boils down to is that October is slow, and your profit margins on purchases are at their lowest. They will not improve until November at the earliest.
"Darius Wheeler 200. Paging Darius at 200."
Uh oh. That’s Rodney Cracker paging me to his back office. I walk through the store to the warehouse entrance by the guitar counter and pretend not to notice the furtive glances of my fellow employees. I carefully maintain the grimly erect posture of an officer walking to a stake before a firing squad. I wrack my brains for what possible infraction I’m going to be nailed for, and how to evade it. Trouble is, I’ve been pretty flawless. I can’t think of anything. So when I knock on the gray steel door, I feel utterly defenseless.
"Hi Weasel."
He’s using his voice of studied casualness. I wonder if he’s going to terminate me. I’m already cataloging desperate measure I may have to take to make next month’s rent.
"What’s up, Rodney?" Casual met with casual.
"Sit down. We need to talk." He gestures towards the plush beige barca-lounger style easy chair that Jeff used to use to mount his harem of twelve year old girls. I sit. Good doggy.
It crowds the the eight by twelve office with its bulk and rides so low that I feel like my butt is on the floor and Rodney's smug visage looms above me from his side of the steel desk. The upholstery is blotted with random grey round stains of origin best left unknown. Store legend has it that all who sit here get fucked. Initiate foreplay:
"As I think you know, Mulligan, the Guitar Matrician, is going to transfer to the Connecticut StoreShip. He’s chosen to advance his career with GSI as a key holding assistant manager."
"Actually I didn’t. I’m happy for him though." Lying, of course. I, along with the rest of the store, am not supposed to know anything, until we’re told we’re supposed to know. Mulligan had been bucking for it for all of the last six months.
"Anyway, I need an interim Guitar Manager, and you have the most seniority. I know you already are aware of what the position entails, so I think you’ll be perfect, until we can sort things out."
"Why, I’d be honored and delighted, Rodney."
What am I going to do? Say no? That would put a noose around my neck, and pay for the rope, to boot. But the plan is perfectly clear. Rodney’s building a paper trail. Promotion will lead to demotion, which will justify under productivity. Better start looking for a new job now.
This is GSI’s favorite approach to bypassing having to cough up Unemployment benefits. It is also the de facto management screening process. Managers are selected in what Corporate Planning calls an Evolutionary Model.
The more you sell, the better qualified you are to manage. It sounds good on paper, as long as you are willing to deny any concept of a maintenence ethic. The most of the laborious aspects of the process end up not being part of the payroll at all.
This same "evolutionary" process admits a steady stream of new hires. They are paid minimum wage or some little bone better. This is an advance against their commission on any sales made. The commission for the new hire is 10 percent of the Gross Profit of the sale coupled with 2 percent of the Gross on the sale itself.
Theoretically this is very fair. But, like Communism, human nature enters the equation with stunning malignance. Every rule set since old Moses broke the Ten Commandment Tablets has had a terrible track record with the human animal in full beast. Most blame this on Moses himself, since now we don’t have hard copy.
Enter the tacit rules-the rules behind the rules. The rules by which the business actually works. The more rules you have, oh how those tacit rules grow fruitful and multiplicative! For example, new hires are assured to be careful to punch out before overtime kicks in, despite the Handbook rule that they punch in on entry and out on exit for insurace purposes. This lest "you get no commission check at all."
Another rule is that should an employee fail to "fade" for two months in a row, i.e. at least equal their salary advance in sales commissions, they are subject to termination for under productivity.
These rules add up to the understanding that one must under punch one’s hours as a matter of job preservation. The idea is that the store does not really pay any of its sales people, the sales people are independent entrepreneurs, who really only pay themselves out of their sales transactions.
My numbers in that department have never been stellar. In fact, I barely make the grade. In order to keep my job I have routinely under punched. If I were to divide my paycheck by the number of actual hours I work, I doubt that I make more than twenty cents over minimum wage. But at the end of the day, I’m making my bills, and I’m surrounded by guitars. Good enough for me.
"But Weasel, we have to talk about your numbers. I’m making a commitment to you, and that means I need a commitment from you to show more leadership. Right now your numbers average about 6000 bucks in gross profit per month. That's unacceptable. I need eight from you."
"Hey, no problem. I can use the money."
"Exactly. All I’m asking you to do is give yourself a raise. You’re a veteran. You know how to do it. Go get ’em."
"Thanks, Rodney."
"Later."
I’m out the door. Within hours Rodney sends out the obligatory store email announcing my good fortune. I’m congratulated at every turn. I feel like I should be wearing funeral black.
A Department Manager is a marginal promotion. If there is growth in the department, there is about a seventy five dollar a month bonus. This is offset by extra hours, which one will not punch in. The job is a stepping-stone to one of the several Assistant Manager positions.
Usually it falls to one of the top sales animals. I’m lucky to be in the top ten writers three months out of the year. And this month is not one of them.
Most of the Assistant Managers, one step below Robin, all focus on the guitars themselves, although theoretically they can sell out of every Matrix.
I have a crippling personality quirk. Customers love to talk to me, and they trust my opinions. I’m notorious for telling the truth about a piece, if for no other reason than the truth is hilarious. Unfortunately the truth is not conducive to selling, nor does its telling ingratiate one with one’s co-workers.
"Darius, what do you think about this Zion guitar?"
Roger is a tall husky nice enough fellow in his mid fifties. His long gray ponytail extrudes from the back of his shiny bald head. He is a veteran of the Vietnam disaster, and a compulsive buyer. Typical of this sort, he is not very good, but he is well versed in the history of the instrument. I am certain he knows much more than I.
"Well, Roger, we both know that Zion is a premium brand and one step away from a custom built piece. New I’d figure they go for about twenty four. So let’s take a look at the corpus delecti."
The guitar is used. The store took it in for eight hundred fifty and has it marked at seventeen hundred. I check the computer. Minimum set at fourteen hundred. Roger is a bargain hunter. This is steep for him.
"Do you mind if I play it?"
"Mind? I’m counting on you."
I’ve sold stuff to Roger before, so maybe I’ll get lucky today. Plug the piece into a Fender Super Reverb, which is my usual litmus test for instruments. The amp is reliable and honest. Its transparency provides me with a clear snapshot of an instrument’s vices and virtues.
Which explains why they are poor sellers. Who wants to buy an amp that will remind them of what areas of their musicianship need work?
The guitar proves to be a decent one. The body is a Stratocaster clone. The pickups are double rails providing a hum bucking sound, but not so hot as to distort too early. The neck is a bird’s eye maple, which is a tough, resilient and expensive wood. Hardware is high end.
"What the hell is up with that pick guard?"
"Roger, I think this is genuine pigskin. Do you think the Rabbi will mind?"
That gets a chuckle.
It really is a grotesque touch on an otherwise high end and attractive instrument. Once I start playing it the experience goes downhill with train wreck velocity. The fingerboard feels stiff under my fingers. I sight the neck. The thing has a bow on it that would make it better for fitting arrows than playing blues.
Double rail pick-ups should not hum. This thing sounds like angry hornets inhabit it. I check the ground switch on the amp. No avail. This thing is a dog.
"Hey Roger let me check something on the computer."
I want to know who bought this pig in a pigskin pick guard. Yep. Robin took it on a trade in. Made herself a nice tidy profit on the transaction. That’s how the top people do it. And that’s why I’m simply the wrong stuff.
Nevertheless, I might still not have wasted my time utterly. A decent honest price for the piece would be about a grand. It wouldn’t be much of a problem to get manager approval for the reduction. And since she bought the piece, Robin will still get twenty five percent of the sale. Everybody wins.
"Well, Roger, what do you want to pay for it?"
We know each other well enough to skip the preliminaries. He fidgets, surreptitiously looks around the floor, and looks down at his fresh brushed suede hiking boots like a school boy getting ready to ask to go to the bathroom in the middle of a final exam.
"I just want to know what you think."
"Well, rather than say anything-"
I walk over to the wall full of Fender guitars and grab a mid-priced one. A top of the line Mexican. I plug it in and play it. Then I plug the Zion in and execute the same passage with the same right hand attacks. Game’s over. The four hundred dollar Mexican wins. Has a better feeling neck too.
Roger’s got a look of particular vacuity in his beady eyes. I know it well. It’s greed. He wants to resell it.
"So? What do you think it’s worth?"
"What are you trying to sell it for?"
"I think I can get twelve for it and Robin said she’d sell it to me for ten fifty out the door with the case."
Oh great. This whole exchange has been a waste of time. I’ve been bunny hopped again. The sale’s already been qualified, but the customer didn’t trust whom they were talking to. So like a frightened little bunny, they hop over to the honest old guy for a little candor. I won’t get a penny.
"Roger, I’m not going to tell you anything I figure you don’t already know. The neck needs a major adjustment, and the wiring is in desperate need of grounding. The pots are dirty, and the jack is loose."
"The piece has seen more hands on this floor than a crack hooker at a fraternity party. If you can get twelve for it, it’s probably worth the work. If it was my money, I’d hot rod the Mexican."
I feel a burning sensation on the back of my neck and turn around to see Robin glaring at me from about ten feet. I hand the piece back to Roger, pitching my voice three notches louder-
"This is a great piece man; I wish I could afford it myself."
Virtue is indeed its own reward, but a lousy paymaster. Roger leaves shortly thereafter without buying anything, and I am certain that Robin regards that as entirely my doing.
The bunny hop phenomenon alone has cost me God only knows how much lost time, but what else is there to do? Start charging for advice? Explain to the customer that all they have to do is talk to an employee, and that the sales person feels proprietary rights on their very being?
Or just remember that nobody else in this game has any sense of musical vocation, and that the price they pay from their souls far exceeds the grubby little number affixed to their name at the sales meetings?
Despite their poor remunerative value, I got some chuckles when I got a bunny hop-a-teer come a long a few days later. A tall, fat, regular with a terrible toupee, he looked down through his gold-rimmed designer glasses and asked me what I thought about the Zion. He gave me his best disingenuous fifty year old geek grin the showed his perfect teeth with wonderful effect. Too bad the face around them was a study in round, bloated greed, tainted with envy.
He didn’t know that I knew Robin had staked him out and given him a bone price. In a way he deserved some measure of mercy, because he was a better than average doodler in the Dwain Allman mode. Unfortunately for us all, he also regaled us with his b grade talent for hours at a time at peak amplifier volumes on the Saturday sales floor. He who giveth no mercy should expect none.
He had to be tolerated because he was a big spender in terms of gross sales. However, he was a relentless grinder on every piece he bought. By the time he was done, the store was lucky to make fifty bucks on a two thousand dollar purchase. His money came from some kind of dentistry, so we called him "Doctor Death." He also happened to be Jewish and very smug about it.
"I’ll tell you, I can’t play the thing. So I don’t know what to tell you."
"What’s wrong with it? I’ve been playing it all afternoon, and it has an amazing dark mahogany tone tempered with lacy voluptuous upper midrange filigrees-an enigmatic underlying ash resonance."
He‘s quoted chapter and verse from the Book of Robin. I heard her practicing the lines earlier today. A tough but effective mouthful for the ever multiplying know nothing know it alls. Got to give her credit. That’s a talent I’ve often wished I had, but remain glad I don’t. The Haiku of bullshit.
"Well, Saul, I’m a little uncomfortable talking about religion on a sales floor, but my Rabbi advises me against it."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, it’s the pigskin pick guard. It may be a Kosher issue. See, if you tend to sweat through your hands when you play, this might hydrolyze the proteins on the pigskin. If you play long enough, you’re probably consuming some small amount of pork transdermally.
"The same way sometimes people have been dosed with powerful hallucinogens. We forget that not only is the skin the largest organ in the human body, but it has both respiratory and trace digestive functions. It’s not like eating a ham sandwich, but you’re still ingesting pork It’s probably silly, but I don’t feel right about it."
I give him a disingenuous smile back, radiating a rainbow of gray, yellow, and black. The tricolor standard of rotting apocalyptic dental agony. The harsh florescent light coupled with his descending visual angle is probably cutting deep lines into my haggard hanging sack of loosening cadaverous flesh.
He's looking vaguely green around the gills. Probably figuring he'll have to increase some charitable donation to assuage the miasma of religious guilt.
I hope he’s getting a real moment of truth here in the arena if illusion. That ugliness you see in my face is the receipt on the price I paid in unpaid hours to be more adept. A poverty case of Federal proportions. A famished jackal after a scrap of his monetary offal.
And yet, who is the successful one? Neither of us can ever say we know. Insight swings from gibbets in the Palace of Envy.
So I have to pull an extra two thousand in profit from the likes of this. That means selling something close to ten thousand more in merchandise. No matter how hard you work the phones, there’s only so much money on the street.
I’ll have to take it from some of those who have been taking it from me. As I have heard from so many managers, I have to be more aggressive about staking out customers as proprietary claims. This is an aspect of sales that you cannot simply put on. You have to genuinely want to do business with the Doctor Deaths of the world.
I may want it, and I may need it, but I’ll be about as genuine as a bartender’s smile when a well-heeled, obnoxious drunk walks into the saloon at three o’clock in the morning. The customer will smell it. They did not get the real money they earn by being insensitive to that kind of nuance.
And I tend to lose a lot to the new hires. I don’t know exactly why, or I do know and do not want to admit it to myself, but I simply do not have the stomach for saying a transaction is "mine." I don’t feel the possessive aspect. Of course, Assistant Managers are more than happy to oblige this foible.
There’s always one sure-fire way to kick your sales numbers up. More hours. Unpunched, of course. I figure that if I pull eighty-hour weeks, that should do it, and take are of the manager‘s duties in the bargain. Of course, I’ll be paying myself about three dollars an hour this way. But at least I keep the job, as long as I don't make myself sick in the process.
Regarding the department’s current condition: enter the dragon of chaos. Retail is a messy process. Like most top writers, Mulligan was indifferent to maintenance other than a bare minimum of the cosmetic.
It’s quite understandable. Business enters the store in rushes. Nobody knows why. Customers about to buy are in a fight or flight mode. Often a sales person spins several customers during these rushes. Most closes draw these rushes as well.
I’ve seen this movie here before. A successful sales person is promoted due to his or her "leadership" of the department to new sales heights. As soon as a grim looking month kicks in, they are promoted halfway through. The new manager has to "rise to the challenge." This means conning the new hires into fixing the department, so you can grab the lion’s share of the floor.
So, who are these newbies? Basically the rest of the department. Rodney’s fired everyone with experience, except for those who saw what was good for them and transferred from the store. Inventory time.
Ronnie Buenavista belies his name. He’s not a very pretty sight at a paunchy nineteen with fashionably short cropped hair and two eyebrow piercings. He stands about four inches taller than I, his walnut shaped and tinted face perpetually wear a vacuous grin.
The eyes behind his gold-rimmed aviator glasses match it perfectly. His soft little paunch persists in forcing his shirt tails out, and he persists in waiting for Mom to tuck it for him. I am not she.
He has the lumbering gait common to the spawn of the well off in Manhattan, who have spent much of their free time in front of either the TV, a computer or a video game. Not quite a waddle, it is more like a tipsy penguin.
He has the vapid agreeability of a natural salesman, however. No matter what you tell him to do, he agrees to do it cheerfully. Three hours later, when it has cheerfully gone undone, he will cheerfully agree to do it again.
I check his background. Sure enough, Mommy’s rich. She has an apartment on prime Central Park West realty.
Let’s look at door number two. Debby Chang. A tiny little small breasted creature with generous shoulder length ebony hair. Bookish brown eyes in circular gold rimmed glasses. She favors tight black jeans which display to advantage her delicate cherry blossom buttocks.
Assumed to be Chinese, but being from Peru, she speaks beautiful fluent Spanish. The shock value alone is enough to get her some sales. Mostly some of mine, who hope to get a date with her. Amazing what men believe will drive a woman into the sack with them. Until you’ve witnessed it enough.
She knows virtually nothing about guitars at all, and can only play U2 riffs. But this is good enough to elicit male praise of her talent, if for no other reason than to elevate their own vanity in their indifferent accomplishments.
She means well, and tries hard, but how am I going to ask her to do any of the heavy work?
That’s it for the guitar department. Everybody else is gone. Under most circumstances that would mena more business for me, but Rodney has promoted four new Assistant Managers, all of whom are guitar sharks, in addition to what they can pull out of other departments. They are all also my bosses, so they will perform no tasks.
I take stock of what has to be done. Other than my little fiefdom in the Acoustic Matrix, I find one disaster after another.
One of the strangest things about the Disney approach to merchandise is the cosmetic demands are prioritized over functionality. It’s like a Battalion parade soldiers and ROTC graduates. A nightmare away from combat ready.
If one were to walk into the main Guitar Matrix, one would be very impressed by the awesome array of amplifiers organized by brand on risers. In addition there are about twenty five full guitar rigs. Each of these include two 4x12 speaker cabinets stacked below either a fifty or hundred watt head.
Unfortunately I know well that at least half the amps on the floor are not functional. This does not mean there is anything significantly wrong at all. Just maintenance issues. They may need to be plugged in. Or there is a missing cable necessary to connect the amplification unit on top to the speakers. In some cases, a customer has stolen the fuse, or, more likely it was cannibalized to sell another piece that needed a fuse.
These missing cables, fuses, plugs, all disappear because in the course of engaging customers the sales associates take expedient approaches. Once a customer is interested, their full concentration is devoted to executing the sale, "whatever it takes."
Much of the time, these expensive rigs do not exist in boxes in the warehouse. Inventory depth on pieces of that size would add overhead that would preclude the store selling at its guaranteed lowest price and making any money at all. Additionally, there are not enough of this kind of unit made to provide an enterprise of GSI magnitude with disposable $2000 floor models.
Therefore, almost everything is a floor model in the high end amplifier department. To get the piece out, requires &#salesmanship." Emphasize the unique quality and intrinsic value of the 100 watt Mesa head. And there truly is a lot there. At their best Mesa, Marshall, and all the other major brands deliver excellent product. For an artist that requires one or the other, virtually no advertising is necessary. They are known variables, each with distinct virtues.
Once the sale is executed, the sales person needs to fill the "hole" left by the piece on the floor. These perfectly simple activities are shrouded in a plethora of problems based on previous expedient solutions.
A common scenario is as follows. Customer enters the store with dreams of glory and a budget of about two thousand dollars or less in mind.
"Do you guys carry the Wallingford three hundred watt Bone Breaker amp with the Hernia cabinet?"
"We don’t stock Wallingfords. And aren’t they a boutique amp, anyway? I believe we can arrange a special order for you, however, And that’s easy because we are the only Wallingford dealer on the East Coast. You want me to look it up for you on the computer?"
"Sure."
"By the way, I want to call Wallingford to check on availability because they require a full deposit in advance to activate a construction order. They basically hand build the piece for you."
"Thanks for looking out."
"I always do. Special orders are for special customers, and that means special attention to me."
"Well, I see the current guaranteed lowest price on the hundred watt Bone Breaker is twenty two hundred. If you want a Hernia with it, that’s another grand."
"Any chance of a deal on that? My guitar player got a whole rig for eighteen hundred."
"When did he buy it?"
"About seven years ago."
"Well, that's been quite some time. The price on the heads has been steadily rising with the price of high end steel. Those Bone Breakers are famous for being built like tanks. But they cost like them too."
"I know. It’s a great amp. Should have bought one back then."
"Well, that’s the story with everything."
"Nothing used?"
"Nothing worth banking your gigs on."
"How are the Marshalls?"
"The high end ones are excellent. For the rest, catch as catch can. Although their solid state stuff has a better crunch than most of the other brands."
"All right let me plug into the JCM."
We walk over to the rig where the JCM head is atop two 2x12’s. I grab a cable from the counter and return to see he has taken a nice American Strat off the wall. I ask to borrow the piece to get control over the initial process. Not so much just in case anything goes wrong, as because I’m sure thangs will go wrong and want to minimize the impact on the sale."
Sure enough. The amp does not power up when I hit the power switch. I pull the rig away from the wall. It’s GSI humor time.
"Well, I suppose it helps to have power running to the wall. Let me get a power cable."
Back at the counter I grab a speaker cable, because I saw that whoever put the head on top of the rig neglected to cable it to the cabinet. I wish with all the nostalgia movements that somebody would bring back bull whipping. I return fervently praying to the drunk, blind lesbian keyboard goddess of guitar retail to please give me a break on this sale.
Not a chance. I get all the ducks in a row, but not a quack out of the rig.
"Maybe it’s the fuse."
Now if I were thinking about buying this, I’d already have a foot out the door. But the man with the money is not me, and the show goes on.
It’s not the fuse. So it’s time to grab another pair of cables and test the guitar through an amp I know works. Five minutes with the Fender Super Reverb reveals that the problem was the guitar. I grab another Strat, check to make sure it works and bring it over to my genius de jour.
"Hey man, that’s a maple neck. What’s the matter with you? Get me a rosewood. No guitarist who’s any good plays that maple shit."
"Oops sorry. Let me get you one. I was just in hurry because the other one didn’t work."
Of course, neither is my masculinity. Otherwise this guy would be pumping maple out of his ass the next twenty times he has to take a dump.
The only other American rosewood has a bad pot. Before you know it we’re back with the maple. It’s the only one that properly operates and has a good neck. Which is why I selected it in the first place. Rosewood be damned. Send ‘em all up in Stevie Ray’s helicopter for all I could care at this point.
So twenty minutes after greet and qualify, we’re poised to pitch, and the buyer has all the cards.
"Hate the guitar, but I’m loving this. Let me open it up so I can check the headroom."
Twenty years of playing every kind of amp in every kind of hell hole, I never heard this term until GSI. I looked up what "headroom" means in recording, and the definition seems to have nothing to do with what the high amateurs intend when they use it.
But I have mastered Moronese. Basically he wants to play it very loud and sound professional about it. As if what we hear on a sales floor is going to be what one can expect from the rig under professional circumstances. The customer is always right.
"Sure, man, how else are you going to know what it really sounds like?"
Stifling the impulse to murder or cringe, I take a quick cigarette break. Very bad AC/DC is coming off his hands, and God help us, his solos are yet to come.
Two minutes later I’m back, and he’s in full lead swing. We’ve got atrocious Metallica now. My head hurts, and I swear I just swallowed a filling that rattled out. There’s a jagged new hollow where my tongue used to expect a tooth.
I’d kill this guy for five dollars, but I’m sure I couldn’t raise more than four and change from my colleagues in sycophancy. I take a deep breath, put on my best harlequin sales face and ask-
"Great piece, huh?"
"I love it. You got one in the box, right? I don’t want the floor model."
I see it must be that special time of the celestial month for our drunken lesbian goddess of music sales.
"You know man, they simply aren’t making many of these high end pieces. But I know for a fact this one came in last week. Just in case, let me check the computer. Maybe we got lucky, and the store got shipped an extra one in the box. It sometimes happens. If worse comes to worse, I can always order another one in the box for you, and we can swap this one out when the other comes in. That way you can get full enjoyment from now till then."
"Ummm. Okay. Maybe I’ll even go with this piece. It’s got a great sound. You say you just got it, right?"
"I’m positive."
Judging by the coating of dust on the top which he can’t see, I’d say certainly within this fiscal year. I make a note to get a damp cloth and prepare the item for transport in the warehouse.
And now for my favorite part of a sale. When a moron with money tries to act stupid, and thinks he’s being clever in the process. Step one is always the same. He fondles the 6x6 price tag as if he didn’t see it before. Here we go.
"So how much is it?"
Oh God, what I’d do for you if I could really answer this one objectively!
"Well, that depends. The 1699.99 with the big numbers is our guaranteed lowest price, an automatic reduction from the 2199.99 retail suggested by Marshall. And let me save us some time. If you want me to make a special order to get one in a box, we need to stay with that number to keep the corporate people validated. If you’re really liking this, and I can see every reason why and none why not, I’ll negotiate you a great deal, if you’re interested in the cabinet too."
A bump here a grind there and before you know it the piece is on the way out the door.
But now it’s my responsibility to get the floor back up to speed, so that the half hour of chasing power cables around is not lost on every large rig transaction. I get the floor tight by virtue of three sixteen hour days by doing all the departmental tasks.
My numbers drop. The department’s sales performance improves. Before I can get a manager commission check for that, Rodney calls me into his execution chamber again.
"Congratulations, Weasel, in less than two weeks, the department has upped its numbers by twenty five percent."
"Thanks, Rodney."
"Save your thanks, and don’t insult my intelligence. Your numbers are in the tank, so obviously you’re riding on the shirttails of whoever’s really been driving the growth. I see right through you, white boy."
Silence is golden, and that’s all I’ve got for him. Here comes the ax.
"I’m demoting you back to Sales Associate. Like I told you in the first place, you were only there as a transitional move. The new manager will be Debby."