“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.
Gotten back maybe ten polite rejections and a whole lot of nothing. The pen story? That happened on a Thursday.
On Friday, I got a call—not from them, but from another company I had completely forgotten about. A startup. HR manager with a nervous voice and too many ums.
She said they liked my resume and wanted to meet. Not for sales, but something called “client experience liaison.” I had no idea what that meant, but I said yes immediately. I wore the same suit from the pen interview, even though the lining was coming loose at the cuff.
Didn’t matter. What mattered was how they made me feel. Seen.
Heard. Like they weren’t just looking for a sales robot. The interview was in this little converted warehouse—half tech office, half coffee shop vibe.
Open space, colorful chairs, three dogs wandering around like they owned the place. The founder was a woman named Charita, late forties, long dreadlocks, clear eyes. She didn’t ask me to sell a pen.
She asked me how I would handle a customer who was angry at 10 p.m. because a shipment didn’t arrive. I told her the truth.
“I’d apologize. Even if it wasn’t our fault. I’d listen first, fix second.
People want to be heard before they want to be helped.”
She nodded slowly. Then asked if I’d be okay working on a “probationary contract” for 60 days. It paid $23/hour—less than I made before, but more than zero.
I said yes. I started on Monday. That job didn’t change my life overnight.
What happened next changed everything…
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