“I had an interview for a sales manager position. They asked me to sell them a pen. It was the third time I was asked to do this on that day, so I just looked at the expensive marker in my hands and said,
‘You know what?
This pen is worthless—until you have a reason to write.’”
That got their attention. The two interviewers—one in a gray blazer, the other scrolling through something on his phone—both looked up. I kept going.
“Maybe your daughter just got accepted to college, and you need to write her a check. Or you’re signing the papers for your first home. Maybe you’re just writing ‘I’m sorry’ to someone who deserves it.
This pen doesn’t sell itself. Life does.”
There was a long silence. Then the guy in the blazer smiled.
“Okay,” he said. “That’s… not the pitch I was expecting.”
I thought I’d blown it. I left the building feeling like I’d just given a TED Talk to two mannequins.
But something changed that day. Not in the interview room, but inside me. I’d been unemployed for seven months.
Not fun-unemployed. Broke-unemployed. Selling furniture-on-Facebook broke.
Dodging calls from the electric company broke. That interview was one of six I had that week. I kept telling people I was “between roles,” like I was some traveling executive, not someone who’d been fired from a mid-level sales job at a regional paper supply chain that folded overnight.
That job hadn’t been glamorous, but I was good at it. Numbers guy. People guy.
Show-up-early, stay-late kind of worker. And suddenly, none of it mattered. I’d sent out 90 resumes.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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