I was living with my parents while looking for a job. My mom saw an ad in the Chronicle that said, "ART. Hippies. $1,000/wk." She told me about it and I told her I wasn't interested because it sounded suspicious. Uncharacteristic of my mother, she took it upon herself to call them when I was out of the room. I heard her yell my name and she put me on the phone with them. The woman on the phone said, "Awww. Was that your mom?" I admitted that it was. I was embarrassed. They invited me to come in for an interview.

I drove to their office which was in a warehouse in San Francisco. The waiting room was pretty plain with a bunch of trophies for employees of the month. When it was time for my interview, I was invited into the office of the owner. Yards of purple rug and leopard print lined the floor and walls. He said 'Bro' in every sentence and seemed to be stoned. He looked at my resume and was impressed with my education. He told me I could be a manager and make $50,000 a year with expectations for my salary to rise rapidly. I told him I wasn't sure. He invited me to come back, just to experience the job for a day to see if I liked it. Intoxicated by the possibility of money, I said I would. He told me that next time I should dress more casually and be myself. All that I knew about the company is that they sold art.

A couple days later, I returned to the San Francisco warehouse. I sat in the in the waiting room with two middle-aged men in their 40s. After about 10 minutes, about 10 people ran into the waiting room, yelled some sort of chant, and then started shaking our hands quickly and forcefully. I was scared. The owner said that I was going with him. He led me to the parking lot where we loaded his car with about 40 framed posters. They were a good mix of motivational posters, Monet’s, and van Gogh’s (see the sample images).

We proceeded to drive for about an hour to Silicon Valley. We parked at a cookie cutter office building. There were about 8 buildings that were identical. We entered the building, and one by one, entered every office with the hopes of convincing people to come down to his car to buy art posters which he would sell for 40 bucks a pop, because of the nice frames, of course. He had the process down to a science. He new exactly how long to wait for people before deciding it was a waste of time. He immediately visualized the layout of the building. "No soliciting" signs didn't stop us. Many people informed us that someone else was trying to sell them posters the day before. Others told us to never come back again. Sometimes I couldn't bring myself to follow him into the offices. He thought that was weird. We repeated the exercise for all 8 buildings, and then went to three other lots of office buildings. A couple people had agreed to look at the posters at his car, but no one bought anything.

Discouraged with the office buildings, we went to a shopping area. We went to a beauty salon where a man was getting a manicure. We brought posters with us. This man "loved art." He bought 6 posters. We walked away and my companion told me how fruity the guy was. Later we went to sell posters at a Chinese restaurant. They weren't interested. When we drove away, he told me that Chinese restaurants always smelled bad. I told him that maybe a Chinese person would think that a burger joint might smell bad. He said he had never thought of that. It made me happy.

Finally the day was over and it was time to go back to the warehouse. He drove 100 mph on the freeway, intentionally cut people off, and sped up to cars who he had antagonized to flick them off. I thought it would be a horrible way for me to die.

He offered me the job. I told him I wasn't interested because I don't like to sell things.