These 400 mile drives are getting old

April 25, 2008
I, a Salesman

I get up at 5, drive 200 miles to that first call, this time maybe the only call, and drive back 200 miles to be in the office a few hours in the afternoon, to work out of my home, answering e-mails, making phone calls to people I haven’t spoken with in weeks or months or years, or maybe ever, hoping their application requirements have moved in our direction enough to generate interest in what we offer these days, metal oxide varistors, thermally protected metal oxide varistors, capacitors, super caps, ultra caps, rectiiers, gas discharge tubes, wireless antennae, power supplies, wall mount, desktop, open frame and rack mount, coils and transformers, toroids, EIs, isolation, power, flyback, chokes, inductors, LCDs, touch panels, industrial computers, the stuff that goes into the stuff we buy at Circuit City or Best Buy or Costco, or that’s used to help keep us alive in the hospital, or that our mechanics use to diagnose the problems with our cars, or that keep track of the money we spend at Burger King or other fast food joints, or the number of drinks we run up on our tab at the local pub, and on and on. My daily grind is ribbons of asphalt and macadam, a Medusa, and when one road gets cut off, well, there are always more roads, more companies, more engineers, more snakes to kill, and that’s a good thing because this really is a game of numbers; and the more calls you make the more likely it is you will hit a nerve, find a requirement, an application for what you have to offer that researcher, designer or purchasing agent who has everything, except a better product, a lower price, shorter delivery, longer life. Everyone is always looking for a better product, a longer life, or shorter delivery, but almost everyone is willing to sacrifice for a lower price, just as the hungry whore is willing to give it up for two bits, and I wonder how many more years can I out-drive, out run the hunger.