The Bright Side Of Life

About 30 years ago we were running a builders yard, USA builders supply depot, my brother serves a client, who leaves gets into his car, drives off, suffers an heart-attack and dies at the wheel, and ends up crashing into several cars in our yard. Police and Ambulance attend, they take away the body, and my brother decides with great sadness and foreboding to telephone his family to break the news. He gets hold of the wife, tells her what happened, she says to him "Can I ask you something", so brother Jim is ready with his [expected] answer telling her "No he did not suffer, nor appear severely hurt"; She says to him, " Where's the goods he bought, are they safe, and when can we come and get them". So much for love and cherishment?

I was knocking on doors, on the other side of the street is a rather attractive women with a flimsy red blouse on and some smart figurework underneath washing her car. I get to the bottom end of the street, walk over and start knocking her side of the street, I knock on her door, she invites me in, then to my surprise starts saying "Please don't hurt me, you can have anything you want, but please don't hurt me". she then takes off the blouse, revealing all and I get to hell out of there. This is extremely rare and anyone who says otherwise is lying.

I was in Wales, I had a client who had ordered some goods from us, I had been several times to deliver them but he was never in, I then caught him in when casually passing and we agreed I'd come the next day at 8.00am to deliver, he paid me cash and we had pleasant chat about the trouble I'd had getting hold of him. The next day I got up at 6.00 am, was outisde his door at 7.45am, but got no answer, I knocked and knocked, no answer. A neighbour came out and told me he had got killed the night before when a crane jib had fell on him. We mailed the cash back to his family.

Brother Jim is out delivering with an assistant, they arrive at the house and are asked would they be good enough to carry the goods upstairs to the bedroom and leave them there, they do so, they come down ready to get paid and to make out the bill, they find the lady had collapsed and laid dead in an armchair.

We are delivering goods to an hospital, going up the stairs one of our men knocks a huge wall clock with the timber planks [joists] he's carrying on his shoulders. The next day the clock falls off the wall and it hits a passing patient on the head - who dies about 2 days later. I get a phone call from the Hospital Engineer asking me to come through and attend a Coroners Inquest, I do so. An hospital doctor told the court the lady was in poor health, its unlikely the clock had caused her death, so we are in the clear. At the end of the hearing the Coroner says "Well, its obvious to me, her time was up". The doctor says to me in a whisper; a poem that goes;" Hickory- Dickory Dock, the mouse runs up the clock, the clock STRUCK ONE, the mouse run down, Hickory- Dickory Dock. I was drinking a cup of tea at the time and spluttered it all over.

This is a puzzler: The men go out with deliveries, they have 20 drops, they do all of them, collect the cash, give reciepts, bring it back to the office, when its counted we have about $500 dollars too much, most clients paid by cheque, so we ring all the cash clients and ask them "Did you by any chance have quite a large sum of money missing after we delivered your goods? all these clients said no they hadn't. So were on earth had it came from?

We were doing a sales promotion in Sheffield, a major UK city, we got there at 2.pm to find the streets almost deserted, the venue deserted, no people anywhere to be seen. The press advertising had cost about $500, the venue $200.00, the expenses $500.00, we never sold a thing. The USA spacecraft that was in trouble [Houston, we have a slight problem here] was expected to land and just about the whole of Britain was sat at home watching it arrive on TV. Does anyone think NASA might refund our expenses?

From this post you can see that sales in just 10% of our daily efforts, its all the other bits and pieces that make a business. Whats your experiences of life.

This incident caused me a great deal of anger:

There was a terrible road accident, involving a drunk, a motor vehicle, and three girls. Two got killed, the 3rd survived but was badly injured. An appeal fund was set up for her which raised a great deal of money. I was asked by the manager of a local public house [USA tavern?] to ask the mother to come to the pub one evening to accept the £3500 / $7000 dollars they had raised. This was just one organisations donation, there was many others beside this also. The Mother refused claiming she was too embarrassed, was unable to speak in public, and had no suitable clothes to wear which seemed reasonable enough. I then asked the little girls step father [the Mothers boyfriend actually] to do the honours and to attend the presentation. To my surprise and anger he said he "Would love to do it, but always went fishing with his mates [friends] on that night and was unable to do it". I pointed out to him that this local public house had voluntarily raised this sizable amount of money, and surely it was only fitting he / or some member of the family should attend and accept the funds raised with out success. When news of this incident became public knowledge the Appeal folded, closed down, and I promised never-ever to get involved in this sort of venture ever again.

This might indicate that sometimes we need to be aloof, to stand back and to recognise that certain individuals do not share our thoughts and concerns and [they] may not be worth helping. I could add a great deal more to this post but it would serve no purpose. I think the sales profession needs to monitor charities and to be careful which they support.

I know what you mean. I went out of my way to help a family this summer who was being evicted from their home, had no money, and had no cooling for their home. I loaned them the money they needed to avoid foreclosure, paid for and installed a new air conditioner, loaned them money to pay other bills, and contacted several city aid projects to get them additional help. They have not tried to repay the money as agreed and they now avoid me whenever they see me. Their banker called me last month and said they were behind again. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.

Where's the bright side or was that sarcasm?

Its a joke taken from the film Life of Brian, a film skit on organised religion. The theme song is based on no matter what goes wrong in life , and it will- it will, "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life".
I forget some forum members [who live in the USA] will not be aware of how popular this song is in the UK, England.

An interesting story, at 10.am an indecisive client arrived in our yard with his wife to buy, after examining the goods on advertised offer, he whispered in my ear "Was it genuine", "was it a good deal for him", "and what did I think"? It was said as if he knew all offers were false, all salesmen rogues. I said to him "it wasn't a good deal, that if he looked around he could do much better" and sent him 2 miles to a competitor to get the bargain he wanted, he returned an hour later saying "They were a lot dearer than us and he wasn't impressed", so we give him the name of another firm and off he went, he returned an hour later saying the same thing, so for the 3rd time [and trying to be mischevious or friendly-you decide] we sent him to a 3rd firm about 4 miles away, he returned about 1.0pm in a temper saying it all had been a waste of time, they were far dearer, that it was the exactly the same goods we sold, and the 3 journeys I had sent him on had been fools errands.

He wasn't exactly sure, but he gave me the impression that he now wanted to buy our goods, unfortuanately for him we were serving a client who had just bought the very last lot of the "goods we had on special offer". I told him it was too late, we had sold out and had none left, he couldn't believe it, so we let him look inside the empty 40 foot storage van they had been in, it was empty, he drove off in quite a foul mood. So much for bargain hunting. When he arrived this van was full - we were doing a "truck load sale at at almost half-price".

That's a nice post Incidentally. When I frist read it, I didn't get the idea of the story. I decided to read it again, I found out the bright side of life. Thank's for posting it.

Whilst knocking on doors selling things for a living you meet some characters, I worked with a man who used to say to women "the deposit is $15 dollars-but if you haven't got it, then you can pay me on the bed", once a day he scored in blue collar area with this close. People ask you for advice, or give you things, or offer you tea, cakes and friendship.

I knocked on door once and a white man, dressed as a Red Indian Chief came out, inside his home he had built a teepee in the dining room, and his wife was dressed as a squaw. He showed me a copy of Chief Seattles letter to the President [this letter is an hoax, beautifully written by a History Professor] and we had quite a long interesting chat.

Another call the man took me upstairs to show me a radio he had built, it was so good he claimed that he spoke to Mars each day. He sat down at the radio and said "Hello Mars, Hello Mars, Alan here". He was deadly serious about his converations with the Martians.

The funniest call I had was> I knock on a door, a man comes out dressed in womens clothes, I pretended not to notice, he agreed to buy and I whipped out an order form for completion, lo and behold the first tick box said; Mr Mrs Miss. Looking at him I wasn't sure what to tick, so I asked him outright what I should put down, he repled "Put anything down you want ya daft bu---gger". So I ticked Mr, I then asked him his name he replied Jessie, I asked him was it Jesse as in Jesse James, or Jessie, and got the same reply. I have never laughed so much in my life at the carry on we had filling in that form. He had lipstick, pearls, high heels and tights and a dress on.

Another call the man came to the door with a bruised face and a broken arm, I asked him what had happened, he informed me that he'd tried to kill himself by hanging the night before, had put the rope tied to a stair bannister around his neck and jumped over the rails into the stairwell, the wood rail bannister had snapped, he fell to the ground and got hurt. I signed him up and took the order.

On one call I witnessed a fight between a cat and a dog, the cat won, and it ended up the cat chased the terrified dog down the street. This was worth seeing. Sometimes you meet ex-prisoners, famous people, and sadly ex-concentration camp inmates. It's Life.