Introduction
It's two days before Christmas, there's 6 inches of fresh snow on the ground, and the din of screaming jobsite radios and power tools is shall we say, at a minimum. No better time for a road salesman to start a journal to document his experiences from the front lines.
Front lines?
Is it a war out there?
Well..yes it sort of is. Especially in the past few years as a flailing economy has brought about the more negative aspects of competitive nature. Tradesmen and suppliers alike are making less money for their efforts and simply trying to stay solvent.
Just a few years ago we were all so busy we didn't have time to notice every nuance of every transaction. Everyone was making decent money and we had the luxury of letting out primal survivalist skills atrophy a bit.
Was there still competition? –
of course there was –
but we weren't getting sold up the river for 20 cents on a 2x4 or even worse – $200.00 on a $60,000.00 quote!
You've seen the National Geographic specials on Africa where the predators start fighting over a few rancid scraps of Wildebeast carcass they would have otherwise passed on in better times – it's like that except the victorious usually take time at around 10 A.M. for donuts and coffee. The rest either put up with starvation or just get onto other business. Which, to keep the African wild animal analogy going thins the herd and ensures survival of the fittest. Or the richest.
Truth is, there are a lot of very good tradesmen hanging up their belts for good for lack of funds to endure long stretches of time without any real work.
I will surely miss dealing with many of them because they are, as my late friend Tim Plumer would have called them, "Good Scouts". Tim classified all people into two simple categories: Good Scouts and Hard Cases.
As a road salesman I get to deal with both on a regular basis and it makes for some interesting exchanges, some of which I'll attempt to recount in this blog.