Heroes and Zeros

Last night I was remembering my first week in sales. I had joined an incredibly toxic company -- the sickness there would only be revealed slowly over the next two years. During my week-long sales training, I ended up working closely with another new hire, a seasoned sales professional in his 60s. Cliff was charming and witty -- almost entirely without guile. One day, the trainer had us paired together for role-play, leaving it up to each of us to build challenging sales scenarios. One of the scenarios I built for him was not really that realistic. He rolled his eyes, earning some mild scolding from the trainer for not fully investing in it. In retrospect, I think I had been instinctively sucking up to the trainer, becoming a bit of a "teacher's pet" all week without even realizing it. It wasn't fair to Cliff at all but he didn't hold it against me.

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