Monday morning I fist bumped a traveling sales person and shared our first long conversation since the start the COVID pandemic. I’m sure the conversation took longer than either of us expected but it was good to catch up and learn how COVID has affected her business.
While I know sales people are motivated to call with the hope of making a sale, over time the good ones become their customers’ friend. As this is being written, I’m anticipating the arrival of a combination sales and service representative since midweek. I’ve known since Friday that he plans to stay Tuesday night at the Victorian Inn and call at the newspaper office on Wednesday. We started planning this visit before COVID and finally he is getting here. I have a number of questions for him and have been adjusting my work schedule to make time for his visit. I hope to learn a lot from a fella who serves newspapers in a multi-state area. Because of the pandemic some traveling jobs have been eliminated but the trend started long before the pandemic.
Sales people used to be regular callers at the newspaper office. They have become a rarity. I tried to make a list this week and out of the 20 companies I listed that had representatives calling here, not a single one of those now send a representative around on a regular schedule. One or two still have a person on the road, but most now rely on the telephone and internet.
I miss the personal contact and the education the sales people delivered. If we were having trouble when they called, some would literally roll up their sleeves and try to help solve the problem. If a shipment ran astray, sometimes they would make special deliveries of needed products.
One, a journalism school graduate and former newspaper owner, sometimes went with me in search of a story. He was curious and eager to learn new things. I remember times he went with me to Jewell, Lovewell and Bostwick. Once he asked if I knew where he could get a limestone rock to use as a yard decoration. His bag phone was the first portable phone I ever saw. Thanks to him, my first digital camera was an Apple Quicktake 100. He learned about a leasing company that had several of the phones for sale. Now all our phones are digital.
He enjoyed eating at the Buffalo Roam and arranged his route so he stayed in the Victorian Inn and ate supper at Mankato. The cafe waitresses got to know him and didn’t bother to bring a menu to his table. After a friendly greeting they would ask, “Do you want the usual?” The reply was always “Yes, medium well and give me extra time for the salad bar.” If he hadn’t asked to have the start of the steak preparation delayed, the cook could have put his order on to cook while he waited to be seated.
A travelling representative for the Nebraska Economic Development Office liked to eat Chinese food at a Beloit restaurant but he wasn’t allowed to take the state car out-of-state. So when he finished his day in Superior, he often came by the newspaper office and propositioned me saying, “I’m buying if you’re driving” and off to Beloit we would go. Other times he invited me to join him for trips to neighboring towns. He would provide the supper if I would be an out-town resource at a meeting he was holding in that town. He liked to collect picture post cards and thanks to him I have a large collection of the cards related to this area. I authorized him to spend up to 10 cents to purchase cards he found that had a tie to this area.
Before my father sold his business in 1971, he had far more salesmen calling on him than I have ever had. If we would have added them up and divided by the days in a month, I suspect he had more than one sales person a day calling at the station. That would certainly be true if we counted the regular route drivers who left products and shared stories on a regular basis.
For example, three soda pop route trucks made deliveries along with the drivers delivering potato chips, dairy products and candy. There were oil company representatives, four auto parts salesmen, two hardware wholesalers, three hybrid seed representatives, two grain bin and tank manufacturers, four sporting goods reps, two fireworks salesmen, a structural steel salesman, a glove and clothing salesman, a plumbing supply salesman and... I’m sure I’ve forgotten some who had Dad on their route.
While growing up and helping my father, I looked forward to their calls. They kept us informed about what happening with their speciality.
One of those salesman gave me my first airplane ride. Others took me for rides in new boats or cars. Some liked to go fishing or golfing while in the area. When I was a little fella, the fireworks salesman, who was also a toy salesman, often left me a sample toy to play with. And for a youngster his toy catalog beat the Sears or J.C. Penney catalogs my mother and father enjoyed.
When I was a youngster and saw a salesman talking to my father, I managed to be within listening range for I enjoyed their stories.
Once a resident of Hastings called to place an order with this newspaper and said, “I don’t think we have ever met but I think we are the same age.” We were. I had learned about her from a mutual salesman who called on my father and her father. I suspect she learned about me from the same salesman.
After being in the newspaper business for more than 50 years, I know where to buy a wide variety of products but I miss the old days when the sales people came to personally talk about their products. I gained many good ideas from them.
But that doesn’t mean I haven’t developed friendships with the telemarketers. I’ve been ordering mail room supplies from Robin for about 40 years though I have never met her. As she is now past the normal retirement age, I asked if she had retirement plans. She told me not at this time and explained, “If I retired I wouldn’t get to visit with my friends.”
Thanks to the telephone and internet, it can be a small world. A telemarketer on the east coast who I was doing business with asked if I had ever eaten at a Lincoln pizza place. She said she had visited Lincoln with a college roommate and had eaten there. I learned her roommate was my aunt’s niece.
I called the Rubbermaid hotline to register a computer work station and the woman answering the phone said, “I think you know my mother.” I learned decades ago I had dated her mother a handful of times.
Often when I call a computer support line I’m connected with someone in another country but twice I have gotten people with ties to this area. One asked if I was familiar with a former Lawrence business that was operated by her grandparents. Another phone rep was raised in Concordia and asked about this area.
Once while eating in a Superior restaurant a man at another table over heard my conversation and asked if my grandfather was Bill Wrench. I said yes and asked if he knew Bill Wrench. He had never met him but he worked in the Burlington’s Wymore depot and had exchanged telegraph messages with my grandfather who was working in the railroad’s Superior depot.
I wouldn’t call them friends for he complained about how fast grandfather could send telegraph messages. I could sympathize with him for when I was studying for a ham radio operator’s license and wanted to learn Morris code grandfather tried to teach me. He used a telegraph key called a bug and sent so fast I could never copy him.
Fortunately, in their early days of marriage, grandmother and grandfather had lived in the Nelson depot and she had learned Morris code. While she knew the code, she was a slow sender and I learned to copy her messages. Her effort may have been wasted. Before taking the ham operator’s test, my nterest shifted to photography and I have forgotten the Morse code. But should I have a rekindled interest I still have grandfather’s bug and my morse code key. With an increasing number of earthquakes in this area, perhaps I should relearn how to send an SOS. I’ve been told it is adviseable to know how to tap out an SOS should one ever become trapped.
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