Death of a Salesman

I am not going to talk about death. I just do not exactly remember what this novel was all about aside from it being a subject of a book review when I was in high school. The fact is, I did not finish reading it. I don't even recall how I was able to produce the report that we have to submit.


We even watched a play based on the novel at UP Theater starring Pen Medina. I thought it’s going to be exciting because the main role is to be played by at least a known character actor (he was active on soap operas at that time playing as a rapist, abusive father or a leftist farmer) but I fell asleep during almost the entire play.

It bored me.

Perhaps, I didn’t see it interesting to know what it is like to be salesman. Well, I didn’t want to be a salesman after all. 

Remember the popular jingle from Electrolux? “I’m gonna knock on your door, ring on your bell, knock on your window too.”

It stuck in my mind. A salesman is one who sells vacuum cleaners to housewives. Oh, and they walk miles and miles just to sell lotion and perfume on “special offers” to anyone he sees along the way. Just for me to wake up one day and realize, I am the salesman I never wanted to be.  

I don’t sell vacuum cleaners or lotion or perfume but still, the fact that I’m selling makes me a salesman, regardless of what products or services I offer. Five years ago, I was a Copylandia salesman walking along the busy highways of Quezon Avenue and the dirty streets of Manresa, with both feet often dipped into floodwater in rainy afternoons under a broken umbrella. It used to make me teary-eyed every time I get stuck in a flooded road during a client call. That wasn’t the work I dreamt of but I landed on it in a bizarre twist of fate. I was browsing the net a month after graduation when I saw on jobstreet.com – Management Trainee for Sales and Business Development. I said, “Wow! I want that job, sounds very executive!”   

Then I thought, sales people are somehow treated with little importance. I mean, there is lack of care when it is the sales people who bring money to the company. Look, all other employees enjoy their stay at the airconditioned office and wait for 5 o’clock and leave. But for sales people, we leave the office early after the morning huddle, look for clients to sell our products to, get wet because of rain and sweat because of heat and then the morning after, you’ll be asked by the sales manager how much of your quota is achieved.

Then I thought, I should have taken Mass Communication rather than Management. I love to talk anyway (that’s my concept of mass communication is). Could I become a good reporter or news anchor? Maybe and maybe not.

But this is where God has put me. He has reasons and I wholeheartedly embrace it. The salesman is alive and he has evolved into an entrepreneur. Yeah, a selling entrepreneur. Why not? Tell me of an entrepreneur who is not into selling one way or the other?  

(I am surprised though to know that there is a movie version starring John Malkovich and Dustin Hoffman - two great actors of Hollywood. I plan to search for a copy and watch it, might really be a good material)