Doing them for a fiver

Walking around Brixton in the United Kingdom trying to sell overweight filofaxes to old ladies doesn’t exactly give you that “holiday” feeling. But sooner or later, if you’re a young South African on a working holiday (as I once was), you have to start working — preferably while you can still afford a travel card.

Initially you respond optimistically to ads like: “DREAM JOB! Looking for 10-15 people who would like to earn 300-400 pounds a week working in the entertainment and fitness industry with the opposite sex,” but then you discover it should have read: “CRAP JOB! Looking for 10-15 people who would like to earn 10-15 pounds a week going around Soho inconveniencing various people by interrupting them in the middle of work and trying to convince them to buy a season ticket to some crappy comedy club [your ticket in: “Excuse me. I’m looking for people who like to laugh!”] and working only with yourself for eight bloody miserable hours.”

Opting to seek jobs in the Evening Standard, promises of an “above-average” income brings one in contact with the world of double-glazed window-selling. At a brief “workshop” session at an office, one learns the fine art of selling (“If someone comes into a hi-fi shop and browses around, you don’t go up to them and say: ‘Excuse me, may I help you?’ You say: ‘I see you’re looking at the TVs …’ “).

One then goes out to grim and distant suburbs such as Wokingham and once again interrupt people, this time while they are having their supper.

After a night out on this sort of job, one has a good idea of what is and is not a council flat and how a door slammed in your face can bring a sudden end to a sales pitch.

This prepares you well for that most degrading and feared of jobs: daytime door-to-door selling.

Responding to an ad in the Times, I found myself arriving at a rundown industrial part of London at 6.45am. It had taken five trains and almost two hours to get there.

“Most of our clients already know our products and buy from us time and time again,” the owner of the company had told me the previous day in the “selection” interview.

The air was biting with a fierce crispness and I seemed to be the first one there. No wait, voices … Actually, the entire company was already there. They had formed a circle and were chanting something. I thought I heard the words “cheap prices”.

I was immediately noticed. Several people came up to me, shaking my hand and saying: “Welcome! Welcome!”

I was ushered into the circle. One by one, all the newcomers were introduced to the group, a sickening outburst of hand-clapping following each announcement. The manager led a “motivation” session where the previous day’s top sellers were given their “hoorays” by the group. We were then broken into small workshop groups to prepare us for the day.

Our instructor had several handy tips on offer, such as putting what you’re selling into people’s hands because “people are greedy” and trying to keep a sales pitch at the closing (summing-up) stage. His motto was “ABC — always be closing”.

The owner took us through the day’s specials, met with evangelical enthusiasm by the group. On offer: plastic leather bags and cheap filofaxes.

“We’re doing them for a fiver!” he blurted out. More cheers and chanting.

Soon I was out in the field, teamed up with my experienced salesman who was going to be showing me his work in progress. He was Jamaican and seemed upbeat, although he kept repeating that you must have “a good attitude”. This was probably his ABC.

He left no door unturned in the busy mid-morning bustle of Brixton: pubs, restaurants, office blocks, shoe shops, hair dressers, psychics — even a funeral parlour got some of his “good attitude”. Some were unlucky enough also to get the tacky bags and filofaxes he was selling. (“Guess what? We’re doing them for a fiver!”).

I was soon reeled in, my first customers being a packed pub. He stood watching as I made a complete ass of myself in front of the lunch-hour drunkards.

Outside, he tried to cheer me up by saying: “You must just have a good attitude …”

Eventually I sold one of those bags by cornering an old lady in the street. I put the bag in her hand, and to my surprise she asked: “How much?”

“Well, uhm, we’re doing them for a fiver …”