How To Find Your Soulmate in the Home Depot Garden Center
Sometimes the best stuff in life comes from surviving the worst.
A few years ago, I spent two years working for my local Home Depot’s HVAC contractor as a lead generator.
If you don’t know, lead generators are those annoying salespeople in khakis and monogrammed polo shirts who approach homeowners to convince them to schedule free in-home estimates. You know — those people you try to avoid eye contact within the hardware store or in Costco hoping maybe they’ll go away. When they persist, you lie, pretending to be interested — giving them fake information so you can shop in peace.
Before I got good at remembering peoples’ faces, I would repeatedly approach our regular daily customers without realizing they were construction contractors and not homeowners.
They weren’t very patient.
Some of them got irritated with me.
Their reactions ranged from good-natured amusement to terrifying fits of rage.
One man brought his face so close to mine that I feared he would kiss me.
He said “NO” as loudly and firmly as he could, as though he were training a dog.
