He looked up from his desk and smiled. "Yeah, I heard about your vacation. Partying with a rock band. Nice."
Was there anyone who didn't know? I squinted at him. "Are you a Fiery Boys fan?"
"Nah. But my wife loves them. She recognized your name when they announced the contest winner. Got real excited. I knew you'd be taking some time off."
I nodded toward the showroom, which was already starting to fill up with suspicious-looking, camera-wielding men. "Then you don't mind the photographers who are taking pictures out there?"
"Are you kidding? This is great publicity! I've got a famous saleswoman now." Ed laughed. "But the gents are totally annoyed."
Ugh, the gents. I worked at a high-end auto dealership and was a pretty good salesperson. The other three people doing sales were "the gents," a group of men who thought women didn't know anything about cars and couldn't sell one to save their lives. But thanks to my dad and Zed, I knew plenty. I could tune an engine so it purred, knew all the automotive jargon, and had good people skills. But as far as the gents were concerned, there was no place for me on the showroom floor.
All during my first week of work, the gents did their best to make me fail. They insisted on "helping" me with every deal, and corrected each thing I told the customers. From financing to warranty issues to the forms needed for custom orders, they would interrupt me and do their best to make me look foolish. Sometimes they would actually steal my customer away. I was ready to dig three shallow graves.
But instead, their challenges only drove me harder. I paid careful attention and soon had all of the details right. In the middle of my third week, I confronted them and demanded that they stop sabotaging me. With smug condescension, they agreed to leave me alone if I could outsell them for just one day.
That was their big mistake. I went home that night and made a list of their offenses, vowing to use every one of those tactics against them. The next day, I made sure to interrupt every customer they had, using the same lame excuses they had used on me. Where they had once pointed out, "You're new, so let me help you with this," I commented, "You're a bit rusty, so let me help you with this." Where one of them had said, "I know you kids like to write with a flourish, but you have to stay inside the boxes or the machine won't read it," I told him "I know you old people have shaky hands, but you have to stay inside the boxes or the machine won't read it."