When I was working at the sex shop I was pulling poverty wages. I loved my job but I was on food stamps and still barely getting by. When they hired the stores first male employee and he started at my pay rate after Iād been there for three years I quit.
I was initially really nervous when I saw the post for the mattress job. It listed a pay scale that I couldnāt even conceptualize and I appeared qualified. When I got an interview I was over the moon but also petrified. Reactions to my line of work often varied but most people were very embarrassed or skeptical. I worried about how Iād address it in the actual interview.
I lived far to the north of their headquarters and drove almost two hours to get there. When I finally arrived it was in the nicest thrift store clothes I could find, but I shrank inside to see a room full of older white men in nice suits waiting to be interviewed for the same job.
Why did I bother? I was decades younger than anyone else in the room, shabbily dressed, and I suspected I was the only afab person in the entire building. I stewed in my insecurities until I was called in.
The second I met my interviewer I was instantly put at ease. The man had the energy of a therapy dog, he was abound with positive, good natured energy. He was also incredibly beautiful. I grinned back at his welcoming smile as we said our pleasantries. But still. This very beautiful polished man seemed very innocent. How would the sex shop question go?
āI see here you worked at STORE?ā
āYes,ā I said hesitantly.
āAnd that was sales? Or you just rang people up.ā
āNo, it was sales. Iād help people find products, we were encouraged to upsell, there was sales spiffs, and most importantly we educated customers on products to help them find what they liked best.ā
He grinned approvingly and asked, āCan you give me an example of a time you successfully upsold a customer?ā
I paused, wringing my hands before I asked, āHow vague would you like me to beā¦?ā
āNot at all!ā He assured me. āGo for it!ā
āWell. A man came in looking for something to make his fingers vibrate so when he was touching his wife it would enhance that sensation. We had cheap $10 cockrings that I showed him first. But we had a rechargeable waterproof one made of nicer material, and after I showed him a demo he bought that one.ā
āHow much was that one?ā
āWow! You had an upsell of 100% from what he came in looking for! Thatās incredible!ā
He was so truly genuinely stoked and not at all embarrassed that for the first time I saw a tiny glimmer of a future where I didnāt have ramen and peanut butter tiding me over between paychecks.
He asked me to wait then came back to tell me he liked me so much that he wanted to send me right into another interview, if that was okay. He didnāt want me to have to drive back later, it was terribly considerate and exciting. I beamed and told him it would be lovely.
I then had the second worst interview Iāve ever had. The worst goes to the time I applied to be a store manager for a pet food place years later. The district and store manager interviewing me passed notes and texted while I was speaking. When the district manager called to inform me I didnāt get the job I told him Iād never have accepted anyway because Iād never had such a disrespectful interview.
The new man sitting behind the desk radiated an aura of a brick wall. As someone with anxiety Iām highly keyed into the emotional states of people Iām talking to. To receive no feedback at all was my personal hell. After a perfunctory greeting he asked me with no inflection to sell him a pen.
I gathered the shreds of my courage and attempted the Herculean task heād set me. Through my whole improvised spiel he resisted all attempts at engaging him, regarding me with a cold apathy as I touted the benefits of my fictitious pen.
Halfway through I broke into a cold sweat. My smile didnāt waver but it grew strained as I projected friendliness and warmth into the black hole of his heart. My thoughts scattered and my sales pitch grew redundant in the face of his nothingness. I finally concluded with a hard close and he simply nodded.
He glanced at my resume and commented, āYou didnāt ask me to touch or hold it. Though I suppose I can understand from your previous line of work why you wouldnāt.ā I shriveled and died inside knowing that I encouraged people to touch dildos all day long and had been too frazzled to offer him the pen.
He bid me a cool farewell. I made it to my car before I started sobbing. I had never been so rattled. I couldnāt understand what Iād done to make him so unfriendly or if my threadbare clothes were what had made him treat me like dirt. I drove an hour and a half to get home, weeping intermittently.
I was therefore taken by complete surprise to receive a call the next day inviting me on board for their five week training program. The first man whoād interviewed me gushed on the phone about how the second guy had loved me and that I was going to be fantastic.
I was in shock. When I showed up to training the second interviewer was charming my new classmates, beaming and laughing. He was an utterly different person. To my dismay I learned he was the trainer for my district and would be my point of contact if I made it through training.
He joked with me later that his interview facade was just a tactic to see how people held up under pressure and I filed him into a category of my deepest enmity. I never forgave him for how small he made me feel that day, but I never showed him the depths of my fury.
I aced every test and went on to be valedictorian of the eight people who had survived the rigorous training process to earn a sales position. When I got my first paycheck I bought myself new clothes, the first non-thrifted things Iād owned in years.
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