This one is very, very easy. When I first moved to Basildon, I ventured into retail sales for the first time. I worked for a family-run TV shop, in the town centre. I discovered that this particular family were not particularly interested in the manual labour side of the job, which involved lugging heavy, wide-screen TVs up and down stairs, because they had no other means of transporting them. Considering this was in the summer, it was hot, sweaty work.
The owners were not easy to work for, and one of them was thoroughly unpleasant. Screaming at your staff, sometimes on the shop floor, in front of others members of staff, is about as unprofessional as it gets. If I were to describe the situation as stressful, I’d be massively underselling it. Being shrieked at, called an idiot, and having that hang over me, whilst trying to sell (and receiving some pretty poor training to boot), led me to swiftly decide to leave that place. What was galling, and ironic, is that the particularly unpleasant guy, once I had landed another job, kept asking me if I respected him. No, I did not. I don’t tend to respect obnoxious, abusive people. The experience did teach me some valuable lessons though.
I didn’t learn how to sell, but I learned what not to do. I also knew how I did not want to conduct myself.
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