Upon graduating from high school, I was dead set on my career path. I was going to become a filmmaker. My graduation gift from my parents was a Super 8 camera, and I immediately began experimenting with it. That fall, my schooling in cinematography began at community college, where each student made his/her own short films using 16mm cameras. By the end of those two years, it become obvious, though, that I was not some budding auteur whose emerging abilities would eventually lead to a long and successful career making movies. My visions for films were not compelling and my technical skills were rudimentary at best.
Nevertheless, my buddy Jay and I took our Associate Degrees and headed to the University of South Florida, where the film program was credited with having Hollywood-style cameras and equipment. Upon arrival in Tampa, we were greeted with two big surprises. First, since the film program was part of the larger mass communications department, with its emphasis on journalism, we would each have to pass a typing test. Neither one of us had been formally trained in typing, and that was decades before keyboarding and texting became skills learned at a very young age. Preparing for and taking the test was a mess for me. Somehow, we both were allowed to continue in the program, but I am pretty sure that I never achieved the minimum typing requirement.
The second surprise was revealed to us through the first few weeks of classes. Yes, the university had Hollywood level cameras, but they were all in disrepair, and there were no funds to get them fixed. So, Jay and I were back with 16mm cameras – the same type we had been using in Pennsylvania. My true learning point, though, came gradually through the ensuing two years at USF.
Unlike the community college method of having students make their own little solo films, the USF approach was to train students to be members of film crews. So, we were educated to do the technical aspects of filmmaking. This was a practical way to prepare students for the types of jobs that might actually be out there. However, it took the glamour out of my dream and made it far less enticing. Standing around for hours adjusting lights on a set, for instance, was boring drudgery, and I could not envision a future that entailed such work. By the time I earned my Bachelor’s Degree, I realized that a future in filmmaking was not for me. That was a difficult realization having just spent four years and lots of money in pursuit of a career that was not to be.
Despite my misgivings, I tried to find a job in the field, but Florida and the Philly area were not exactly hotbeds of film production. I suppose if I had been willing to work for nothing or close to it, I could have latched on somewhere. But my enthusiasm was gone, and I wasn’t about to live in poverty in order to get a foothold in the profession.
That fall, I headed back to Philly, leaving Barbara behind in Florida. We were engaged and wanted to get married. First, we both needed to find jobs. My prospects were dim. There were no attractive jobs in the classified ads that aligned with my background and education. It had been four months since graduation, and I still had not found a job. Then I saw an ad in a neighborhood newspaper offering the opportunity to become a Kirby vacuum cleaner sales person.
I was desperate and called the number. Within minutes, I was signed up for training later that week. After scuffling and job searching for weeks and weeks with no progress, this door opened up and admitted me upon my first knock. Was I suspicious? I don’t think so. Was I grateful? Yes. Did I think about the fact that I did not have the personality to sell things to strangers? No.
The training took place in an office conference space on the second floor of an older storefront building on Castor Avenue, near my parent’s home. There were about a dozen of us eagerly awaiting the training that would surely change our lives. On the cusp of a new phase of my life, I was nervous but excited. Then the Kirby man started talking.
He took quite a bit of time describing the vacuum cleaner itself and emphasizing over and over that it was the best on the market and that customers were willing to pay a little extra for it. Multiple times he mentioned that we would not be going on cold calls. All of our appointments would be set up in advance. A customer would be happily waiting for me to come up to their door, lugging my demo Kirby with me.
As he droned on excitedly, I was becoming increasingly concerned and uncomfortable as I remembered my past sales failures. For instance, I went to sell programs at an Army-Navy football game, and was given about a hundred to lug around. We were told to shout, “Only a few left,” but that obviously was untrue since I had a bunch and there were twenty other kids selling them, too. So, my cry was, “Only a few thousand left.”
A kindly older man stopped to tell me that I would never sell any programs that way. He was right. I didn’t sell many of them that day, but at least I didn’t lie.
The highlight of the Kirby training centered on how we were to demonstrate the machine once we were in the potential customer’s home. Much of it was standard – this is how it works and look at the quality of those parts! The climax, as it were, would take part in the customer’s bedroom, and the goal was to visually display just how powerful the Kirby was.
The demo vacuum cleaner had a compartment where a small piece of clean white cheesecloth could be inserted. After being shown that, the potential buyer was asked to pull down the covers on the bed. The sales person then used the hand attachment to vacuum one side of the bedding. After doing so, the compartment was reopened to expose a piece of cheesecloth that had invariably turned from bright white to dingy grey or black. While the customer gasped in revulsion, the sales person was to ask in mock seriousness, “Who sleeps on this side of the bed?”
At that moment in the training, I realized that it would be better for me to remain unemployed than to be a Kirby vacuum cleaner salesman. I resigned the next morning.
A few weeks later, I was hired to work in a bookstore. That was more to my liking, and I didn’t need to thoroughly disgust customers to sell the product.