“I’ll cut you in on the $82,000 sale I just made!”
“Bruce and Harriet Nyborg? You want to see the memos? They’re nuts. They used to call in every week when I was with Webb and we were selling Arizona. Did you see how they were living? How can you delude yourself?”
“I got their check!”
“Yeah? Well, forget it. Frame it. It’s worthless.”
“The check is no good?”
“Yeah. If you want to wait around, I’ll pull the memo. I’m busy right now.”
“Wait a minute! The check is no good? They’re crazy?”
“You want to call the bank, Shelley? I called them. I called them four months ago when we first got the lead. The people are insane…they just like talking to salesmen.”
A salesman is, in practice if not by strict definition, an unwelcome stranger, a wraithlike apparition that materializes at inopportune moments in our lives to proffer offers we should refuse, then stubbornly loiters at front of both mind and eyeline until, by virtue of charm, pitch, and/or dogged tenacity, they wear our defenses to ribbons or finally slink away coated in disdain. The three weeks I spent as a telemarketer after graduating college 118 years ago began in confusion, ended in the closest thing I’ve had to a nervous breakdown, and instilled in me an understanding, however necessarily limited, of the inherent desperation that fuels and informs the salesman’s mindset. Continue reading “Movie review: “Glengarry Glen Ross” (1992)”
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