A Salesman's Breakfast by: Brian Miller

A salesman's breakfast consists of a cup of coffee, usually black, and a cigarette. There are some variations on this but typically this is a salesman's breakfast. This stems not from poverty or any wish for bad health but from boredom. Boredom used to dominate our lives and by the end I was usually drinking about 15-18 cups a day. I didn't smoke you see so I drank the coffee twice as fast while standing outside waiting for fresh ups.

It of course wasn't the only thing we did to relieve boredom. We had games. Our favorite game was called hit on the greeter. We had three greeters who welcomed customers and directed them to the salesmen. Two were named Christine and one was not. The one that was not was old and unattractive and as such any details of her life were unimportant then and certainly are not remembered now. The two Christines though, they were certainly worth our time. Especially the first one. She was in her mid 30's, stunningly beautiful in that slender classic way. She was a single mother working a second job to support her family and so clearly better than the lot of us that it was laughable. Yet every night when she was there 1 by 1 we would try out luck. Striking up conversations with her, trying different ploy after different ploy to... well I don't know what really. It never got that far. Certainly we didn't want anything real. A trip to the back of a Volvo on a satellite lot? Hardly seemed likely but we tried and we failed time and time again.

The second Christine was younger, a student working her way through school. Unlike her older counter part she was shorter, more accurately described as cute and pretty than as beautiful. Not that it stopped any of us from plying out trade. She was more receptive, after all scum bags and liars are typically more attractive to a wide eyed 19 year old than they are to world weary 34 year olds. Of course, the girls we picked up in bars were typically a little better looking and frankly we wouldn't have to see them the next day, so most of us just practiced and moved on, claiming a need to make calls and follow ups. She was pretty though and far more interesting. She had just returned from a semester in Paris, she was an art major, and when Add It Up came on the radio one day we sang the entire song together. She even had a story about being a 14 year old Courtney Love, calling herself Polly for a year and arriving at a school dance in a baby doll, bleached blond hair and a tiara. I of course immediately stood no shot once I began to actually think I had a chance with her. No, she had a rotating crush on Rob and then Larry and then Ruzello and then Kevin and then Artie. See, nature understood what a bad idea the mix of a salesman and a greeter actually would be. So eventually I got bored with the game.

We would torture Larry. We would steal things from the desks of the guys in the Honda Dealership next door. We'd sneak naps in the nap room which was really the boiler room with a shitty orange recliner. We'd listen to Mr. Burns disturbing stories of anonymous, gay mens room sex. I'd put on a long coat and do my stoner impression. We threw tennis balls at a VW logo before one day it came crashing down, we all agreed we'd been working and it had just fallen. And every now and then Steve Campo would come out screaming at us to get to work. Oh how we hated that son of a bitch. He knew we had nothing to do but anytime he was in a bad mood he would tear into us. And he was god damned good at it. It was a real testament to his ability as a salesman that even though we all hated him we all kind of liked him, too. He was one of those truly rotten sons of bitches everyone liked. Of course, he was 4 times divorced so the honeymoon clearly ended at some point.

But we hated that son of a bitch. I'll never forget the day we saw him put some dealer tags on the Z3 we had sitting in the used lot and then ushered the older Christine into it. He smirked at us as he let her in and sped off on the middle of the evening. Artie took a long drag of his cigarette and said to no one in particular though I was the only one there, “I really hate that cock sucker.” I sipped my coffee and nodded.