The 250 Square Foot View

“Work For Students! $8 an hour/appt.”

That cryptic message, along with a phone number, would turn out to be the catalyst for my short-lived, highly unsuccessful career as a Cutco knife salesman.

I wasn’t sure exactly what “hour/appt” meant but I was a broke college freshman at the State University of New York at New Paltz, and nothing I’d found on or around campus was paying close to eight bucks an hour. So when I saw that “ad” scribbled in the corner of a chalkboard before one of my classes, I jotted the number down, called it as soon as I got back to my dorm room, and was given a time and place to show up for an interview.

A few days later I hopped into my baby blue ’86 Chrysler Lebaron with a printed set of MapQuest directions to an office building in Wappingers Falls, NY, about a 40-minute ride from New Paltz. Over the next three months I’d become very acquainted that particular stretch of U.S. Route 9.

What I thought was a one-on-one meeting turned out to be a group interview with about 15 other people. While I filled out my application, I pieced together that most of the other candidates were around my age, also college students, and all lured in by the promise of this relatively high-paying gig.

The interview opened with all the candidates sitting in three rows facing the front of the room as our potential new boss, Adam, welcomed us and thanked us for coming. Adam was a smiley guy, clean cut and well groomed, dressed like a Wall Street broker. He spoke vaguely about what the job entailed, focusing instead on the positive attitude we’d need in order to do it successfully and explaining that in the Cutco universe, the last four letters of “enthusiasm” stood for “I Am Sold Myself!” Over the next two hours, Adam revealed to us that with our enthusiasm in tow, the actual job we were up for would be selling Cutco brand kitchen knives.

Adam went into great detail, impressing upon us the value of these knives: the ergonomically designed handles made from the same stuff they use to make bowling balls; the patented metal technology that doesn’t require frequent sharpening; the lifetime warranty on each and every knife. He even turned us against Cutco’s competitors in the cutlery game. Henckels? Pfff. I wouldn’t cut a Swanson Salisbury steak with their stuff! A full set of Cutco knives including a beautiful wooden block to keep them in—this package was called “The Homemaker”—sold for over $700. Before the interview, $700 for knives would have sounded like a fortune to me; I was eating three meals a day in the campus dining hall off plastic trays, the same trays that doubled as sleds in the winter. But after hearing Adam talk about Cutco, I thought $700 sounded too low. I Am Sold Myself.

It might seem that anyone smart enough to get into college should’ve been able to figure out that at best this “interview” was a waste of time, and at worst it was an obvious pyramid scheme.  But Adam could sell, and he knew his audience. He had us sitting up and at the edge of our chairs with permanent, toothy smiles–like his–affixed to our faces. When something he said required an affirmative response, we shouted “YES!” in unison; when he made a joke, we laughed robotically, like Tickle Me Elmo.

Adam also knew that even the slightest hint of negative energy could taint the entire interview and cost him a room full of potential salespeople. He was a hypnotist, and we were just volunteers from the audience; one false move and we might wake up from our trance and realize that we were carefree college students and had better things to be enthusiastic about than housewares. About halfway through the interview he sussed out the biggest spoilsport in the group. Adam asked one of his rhetorical questions, and when this Mr. Negative gave only a lukewarm answer instead of a rah-rah-sponse like the rest of us, Adam went after him. “You know what?” said Adam, pausing for effect. “GET OUT.” Stunned, Mr. Negative froze. Adam stared him down, pointed to the door, and repeated, “GET OUT.” The rest of us were equally stunned. We waited for further instructions, now clearly under Adam’s command.

He refocused. “I’m sorry about that, guys,” he said calmly. “This job is about positivity. I don’t want to waste anyone’s time, mine or yours. If you don’t want to be here, you can follow him out.” No one moved. He continued his pitch, knowing now that he had us hooked. (He probably could have told me to slice my palm open with a bread knife right then and swear a blood oath, and I would have done it.) The last thing any of us wanted was to be thrown out of the room like that other guy when we were clearly being presented with the opportunity of a lifetime.

He finished up his spiel, taking us through the pay scale and how much we stood to earn if we followed his instructions and stuck to the script. Then he brought each one of us into his office to talk one-on-one, after which each candidate was led out of the office rather than rejoining the group. When my turn came, I’ll admit, I was excited. He’d made it all sound so easy, like I’d be selling Homemakers faster than I could take the orders. After some easy questions, like what did I think of Cutco, did I have a car, what’s my major, he asked the most important question of all: “Bobby, on a scale of one to ten, how much do you want to work for Cutco?”

I could say eight or nine and not sound too desperate, I thought, but it’s supposed to be all about enthusiasm, right? And nothing is more enthusiastic than… “TEN, Adam!” I said. He smiled. “OK,” he said. “Welcome aboard!”

—

 Yesterday, I was a college student. My biggest concerns were picking a major, meeting a few girls, and not gaining the Freshman Fifteen. But today, I was a traveling Cutco salesman.

So how does an 18-year-old would-be salesman build up a client base from scratch? A few days after the initial group interview, Adam rounded us all up again (almost everyone from my original interview, save for the few smart ones who declined his offer) about a week later to teach us how to get off to a fast start in our Cutco careers. He asked the room, “How many people do you know?” Some of us offered responses. Maybe three hundred? Like five hundred? “Nope, he said. “Higher.” He said if we wrote down the names of everyone we knew, including family members we rarely see, or our friends’ parents and parents’ friends, we’d “know” around a thousand people. Our homework assignment that night was to write down the names of everyone we knew. The next time we reconvened with Adam a few days later, we were expected to bring our completed lists.

Ugh. Write down a thousand names? I was a college kid. I had actual homework I should have been working on. Instead I was supposed to spend my night writing down the names of everyone I knew? Fine. I’d at least put down the people I really knew: my high school friends and my close family. Alright, I could add on the not-so-close family, family friends, a few friends’ parents and siblings. All told, I got up to about six or seven hundred names. I’d completed my first Cutco assignment. As a student, I felt proud; as a college kid, I was pretty embarrassed. Prior to college, I’d hear hundreds of stories about the wild antics of co-eds; making a People I Know list was never one of them.

I walked into the Cutco office a few days later with my names in hand. Adam informed me that this would become my client roster. I didn’t love the idea of selling knives to my family and friends. Sure, they were quality knives, but they were expensive, and of those 600-plus people I didn’t know too many who had $700 lying around in case a knife salesman knocked on their door. Adam explained that all I had to do was call these people up, give my presentation, and if they were interested, sell them some knives. If they weren’t, I’d still get paid $8 per appointment (which is the “hourly” rate I’d been attracted to initially, which of course didn’t factor in having to set up and drive to the appointments). To put my clients at ease, I could even tell them that I got paid either way. Besides, the knives would sell themselves.

Proximity was a problem for me, though. I’d been recruited to sell around in and around New Paltz. But I was from Long Island, and most of my friends and family were there, too. So, to earn my $8 per appointment, or better yet the commission that would come with a big sale, I’d have to head home for the weekend and make a few stops along the way. Begrudgingly I called a few of the people on my list who I thought would say yes and, without revealing too much about what I was actually going to be presenting, I was able to secure four appointments for that upcoming weekend—my uncle Chris, two of my friends’ moms, and finally my grandmother before heading back to school.

My uncle Chris is a tough customer, but his house was on the way to my second appointment so I had to see him first. Despite his serious career as an FDNY fireman, the humor of his older sister’s teenaged son trying to sell him knives was not lost on him. This was the same uncle who, when I was little, would have me hide all around the house for hours and never bother to seek me. I was not optimistic. Still, I told myself, this was good practice for when I got some “real” customers to whom I was not blood-related. I plodded along through the presentation as best I could, flubbing lines from the script, describing the bread knife when I was holding the fish knife, sweating through my cheap white dress shirt, and doing my best to keep a straight face. All the while I could hear Adam’s voice in my head, admonishing me about “wimp words” like kinda and maybe that could blow a sale. Remember, I Am [supposed to be] Sold Myself.

Finally, I’d reached the end of the presentation, the part where I was supposed to close the deal. I opened to the page that showed a picture of The Homemaker and everything that came with it. “So,” I said, “are you interested in The Homemaker?” Unless the customer asked, we weren’t supposed to talk about price up until this point. (After all, by the time they heard how great Cutco products were, they’d be signing over blank checks just to get their hands on them.) “How much is it?” my uncle asked. “Well, with everything you see here…” I listed all the pieces that made up The Homemaker, and went briefly through the craftsmanship, the uniquely shaped handles, and all the other characteristics a good knife should have. “It’ll come out to 734.” Adam taught us that when finally revealing the price, we should say it quickly and confidently, as if we were saying it in dollars and cents, not in hundreds of dollars. (Not “SEVEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY FOUR DOLLARS,” but “seven thirty four.”) Uncle Chris looked me straight in the eyes and with a big smile and just a hint of incredulous laughter, said “No.”

I had expected a no on The Homemaker. I knew my demo hadn’t gone well. But as I flipped to the back of my Cutco binder and pitched smaller packages for $500, $300, and $150, I started to look around my uncle’s home. I wouldn’t describe him as rich, but he had a great house. His kitchen, where we were sitting, overlooked his backyard on the water, where his boat bobbed like a rubber ducky. He had a wife and three young sons. For the first time I started to think about what it actually costs to be an adult. The boat certainly wasn’t free (nor were the kids) and I’m sure he had a mortgage on the house. Was a set of knives really the best way he could spend $700? By the time I got to the end of my binder it was obvious that Uncle Chris, while gracious enough to invite me into his home, offer me a cold drink, and send me a card on my birthday, was not going to buy any knives from me. I thanked him for his time, he wished me good luck, and I was on my way.

My next two appointments were with my friends’ moms, one while the friend was actually there, and one without (I preferred it that way). After my disastrous first demo, I felt only slightly more comfortable with the script. But by my third appointment I was able to slice through a tomato and I’d mastered the art of cutting a penny in half with Cutco’s famous Super Shears; this was easily the highlight of my demonstrations. Inevitably, people would jokingly suggest that they’ll have to call the government on me, because I was destroying U.S. currency, and I’d have to play along. Sir, that is hilarious! I didn’t sell any Homemakers, but both moms bought a few individual pieces. I was finally on the board. I felt happy, but also a little guilty. Wasn’t I a little too old to be selling the grown-up version of Girl Scout cookies?

My final appointment of that first weekend was with my grandmother before our Sunday pasta dinner. While the meatballs soaked in tomato sauce (her own recipe, of course), I took her through the presentation. With my dad, aunt, uncle, brother, and cousins standing around cracking jokes, it was impossible stick to the script. But my grandmother has always been generous with whatever money she’s had, and even though she probably didn’t need a whole new set of ladles, spoons, and spatulas, she bought them from me anyway.

That first weekend was a relative success but there was still much more work to be done. To get some local appointments, Adam recommended I do the pitch for some of my professors. But I wasn’t comfortable with that, especially in the first semester of my college career (meaning they were my current professors). I’d call on the few local referrals I did have, otherwise I’d head home to Long Island on Fridays after morning classes until Sunday afternoons to keep working the names from my People I Know list. Most weekends, the trunk of my Lebaron contained an odd assortment of items: three days worth of clothes, a brown plastic accordion folder to hold brochures and order forms, my thin navy vinyl bag full of knives, some fresh produce, and of course, pennies.

—

The most important part of the presentation, perhaps more important than selling anything, came at the very end: asking for referrals. For me, asking someone I know to give me five names and numbers of people “who might enjoy the demonstration I just gave you” was harder than asking them to buy a Homemaker. But the only way I was going to get new potential customers was to grab as many referrals as I could, preferably ones who lived a little closer to New Paltz. Once I acquired the referrals, I had to be really sneaky about how I used them. When calling people I knew, I could be a little more honest and explain that I was selling knives and they didn’t really need to buy anything. No matter how stupid they thought this was, they would most likely still say yes. Calling on my referrals was more complicated, especially when those referrals gave me their own referrals. “Hi, this is Bobby Calise, I’m a friend of Kathy Sullivan’s.” Of course it was a stretch to say I was a “friend” of Kathy’s, but name-dropping at least got me past their telemarketer detector. “Kathy passed along your info to me. She thought you might be able to help me out with a project I’m working on for college.” Well, I was in college, and this was increasingly becoming a project. If I really wanted to be sneaky, I’d say that I was working towards a scholarship, because Cutco sometimes rewarded its best salesmen that way, perhaps only for the sake of including it in the script. Then I’d explain that I’d like to give them a short demonstration, and that the whole thing was actually more of a part-time job for me while I was in school. “Even if you don’t buy anything, I still get paid.” That was the line that almost always got me an appointment.

Since I didn’t have a cell phone, I had to make most of these calls from the landline in my dorm room, often while my roommate Chris was there. He’d listen in, making stupid faces and trying to throw me off. Sometimes when I would describe the products I was selling vaguely as a “line of various house wares,” Chris would get so frustrated listening to the calls. “Well, we sell a variety of products…items for everyday use…” I’d stutter, refusing to give in and say “Cutco” or “knives,” for fear they’d know what I was up to and say no. (It was like a game of Taboo.) When I would get off the phone, Chris would yell, “Just freakin’ say it’s knives!”

There was another ancillary task that came with being a rookie Cutco salesman that Adam had initially left out: guerilla marketing. The “ads” like the one I’d seen on the chalkboard that day, “Work For Students! $8 an hour/appt,” were put there by Adam and some of the other salespeople. Of course, professors wouldn’t let us come in and write on their chalkboards, so we had to get there before the first class of the day to give their students a chance to see the message and write down the number. I would set my alarm for 5 am once a week to make sure I was up and ready to hit as many classrooms on campus as I could, even as the New Paltz winter grew increasingly colder. Naturally, my roommate Chris loved hearing my alarm go off four or five hours before his first class of the day.

Meanwhile, it became increasingly difficult to sell—or even just get appointments—as I started to contact referrals who were three and four degrees away from my original list. Sometimes I’d mix up the details of how I was supposedly “friends” with the person who gave me the referral. “Hi, Claire. This is Bobby Calise. I’m good friends with Kathy Sullivan. She said you could help m…oh you don’t know any Kathy? I meant to say I’m good friends with Susan…something.”

Adam recognized that I was struggling. My lack of sales wasn’t making either of us any money, but he tried to work with me. He arranged for me to work with a more experienced salesman. Tom, a junior at nearby Vassar College, let me shadow him on an appointment with one of his former professors. Tom was a liberal dude studying at a liberal school, but also working as traveling knife salesman. I found this paradoxical, but I still trusted Adam even though at that point I was actually losing money after paying for gas, tolls, fresh tomatoes, and as always, pennies. But where I was often reticent when it came to telling people I worked for Cutco, Tom owned it like he was telling them he was a partner at the city’s most prestigious law firm. I doubt he’d used Cutco as a pick-up line with the Bohemian girls at Vassar, but he wasn’t ashamed of his job. It probably didn’t hurt that he was great at it.

When we arrived at Tom’s professor’s house somewhere in a secluded neighborhood near Vassar, I could tell within seconds why Tom was so good at selling. The professor opened the door for us and the tone of their mutual greeting was that of friends, not of salesman and customer, or even student and professor. It was obvious the professor had liked Tom when he had him in class. I assumed that in this gregarious climate, Tom would veer from the script as I had with my grandmother, but he pretty much stayed on course. He’d self-deprecate a little without overdoing it. It was all a part of his pitch.

“OK, let me get ‘serious’ for a second here and give you the ‘hard sell,’” he said, half-jokingly. The professor ate it up. Tom wasn’t able to get his professor to pull the trigger on The Homemaker, but he did talk him into buying a couple of individual pieces, including the Fisherman’s Solution, a utility knife that I couldn’t even get Uncle Chris, a serious fisherman, to buy from me.

On Saturday afternoons I would head down to the home office to make calls. If someone was willing to make a last minute appointment, I would shoot over to their house. If not, at least Adam could see I was attempting to set up appointments. (As discouraged as I was about the job, I’d feel worse if I got fired.) When there was no one left to call or visit, I’d go out to my car, drive over to the nearby batting cage, change into sweats, and hit a few fastballs to cheer myself up. The cages were usually empty at Fun Central, which also featured a mini golf course and an arcade. One day I was in there swinging away when I mistimed a pitch and pounded the rubber ball into the rubber home plate beneath me. The ball bounced straight up, hitting me directly in the groin. I fell to my side in pain and curled up to protect myself until the machine shut off.

When my money ran out and the pitches finally stopped, I looked up to see smiling families walking to and from the parking lot, not even noticing that there was a guy laying down in the batting cage clutching himself in agony. The smiling families reminded me of my college classmates, who were just coming and going to lectures and frat parties, movie nights and study dates, not bothering to notice that I was hustling across two counties to sell the bare minimum of knives, repeatedly absorbing metaphorical and literal blows to the crotch along the way.

If it wasn’t enough that I was constantly driving to and from Wappingers Falls and its surrounding towns for appointments, I was asked by Adam to drive my 14-year-old car on a four-hour trip to Syracuse for a one-day regional conference. (To save Cutco some money, Adam also asked me to carpool with another salesman who I’d never met before.) By that time I had started to sour on the job. I wasn’t making any money, I was spending entirely too much time on the road—it was my freshman year of college and I was taking five classes—and I just didn’t like what I was doing. So when I went to the conference I was expecting a lot more of the same rah-rah stuff that got me into this situation in the first place. But to my surprise it was actually pretty sophisticated. The speakers included some of the top salesmen of the respective regions, including an ebullient, charismatic guy named Jeff Gamboa. Far from the laid back style I’d seen from Tom, Jeff bounced around the stage, sharing insider tips that he’d picked up in his two or three years working for Cutco. How to close a deal. How to upsell. How to get five, ten, even twenty referrals from a single customer. Once again, I was falling into the same trap: it’s easy to sell Cutco. The only question is how much. I Am Sold Myself.

When I returned home from my Syracuse trip, I was physically exhausted. But when I eventually woke from my Cutcoma, Jeff and the other speakers were still fresh on my mind. I went back to my referral list and made as many appointments as I could, but still sold only the bare minimum, if anything at all. Just as my enthusiasm started to wane again, another Cutco road trip was on the horizon, this time Olean, New York, home to the Cutco factory. Olean was an even longer trip than Syracuse, around five hours. This time, Adam drove.

Cutco was the first factory of any kind I’d been to. My tanking sales career aside, it was kind of cool to see how a product line was made from scratch, especially one I was so familiar with. The factory itself was massive and loud. Prior to that my only mental image of a factory was from the domestic auto commercials I’d seen on TV. Cutco’s factory was exactly like that. Blue collar men and women wearing jumpsuits, protective goggles, baseball caps, and earplugs. Walking tours like these were not uncommon for the workers, and they were eager to wave hello and answer any direct questions about what they were working on, whether making the handles, shaping the metal, or assembling Cutco’s myriad products. More importantly, it was apparent that these people loved coming to the factory each day and were proud of what they did. I wanted that feeling, too, but I wasn’t getting it with Cutco. I Am Not Sold Myself.

The Olean trip was eye-opening. The Christmas break was coming up at school. It would be easy enough to sever ties with Cutco before I went home for a month. I could give my demo knives to my mom (I’d paid for them out of my own pocket), get a temp job during the break, and live a Cutco-free existence at school in the spring. It had been a rough semester for me as a student. I was starting to adjust socially, but my closest friend was my roommate, and he went home every weekend; frequent absence is usually a great attribute in a college roommate, but not in the first semester of freshman year. My GPA was a crappy 2.36, dragged down by my grades in a couple of supposedly easy courses which my academic advisor had recommended for me at orientation. There are many plausible excuses a freshman can come up with for a lower-than-expected GPA, but cutlery typically isn’t one of them. It was time for me to get out of the knife business.

During my stint with Cutco, several of my fellow salesmen had quit, often without notice. They would just stop showing up at the office. Adam was used to the high turnover. If anyone ever asked about one of these former salesmen, he’d make some dismissive quip like, “She’s gone…I guess she didn’t like money.” Me? I liked money—I just wasn’t making any. But I decided that if I was going to quit, I should do it in person. I drove the 40 minutes to Wappingers Falls on a Saturday afternoon, hoping to arrive at a time when Adam wasn’t there so I could have one of the assistant managers pass the news of my resignation along to him on my behalf. But of course he was there. He asked me how I was doing, and if I had any appointments set up for that day. My voice was shaking less than I thought it would, a sign that I had already moved on mentally. “Actually…no. I appreciate the opportunity and everything…but I don’t think I can work here anymore.” To his credit, Adam put on a face as if to express some surprise, though surely he saw it coming. “You’re quitting, just like that?” (Ironically, he said this in the same incredulous tone many of my friends and family had used when they’d said, “You’re selling knives?”) I nodded. “Yup. I have to.” I stammered through a few excuses, citing fatigue, my grades, my achy Lebaron. But the longer I talked, the more I remembered how angry I was at Adam, and at Cutco. Angry for wasting my time, taking away from the fun of my freshman year, and for making me think this job would be so easy.

As I walked out, I could already picture him talking to the other salesman who might have asked about me. “Bobby? Don’t worry about him anymore. I guess he just doesn’t like money.”