The next morning, the bus dropped me off at the mall a few minutes before the stores were supposed to open. The weekend was still a few days away, and the mall was empty—except for an elderly couple, both wearing sneakers, who walked speedily without paying any attention to the half-naked mannequins peeking at them through the glass windows of the Victoria’s Secret, or to the glittering diamond rings in Zales.
As they walked by, the man said, “Opening a little early today, Brittany?” to a lanky white girl who revealed a large green tattoo on her lower back as she bent down to lift the shutters of the Auntie Anne’s pretzel shop. Brittany replied, “Yeah, gotta start early today.”
The couple waved a hello to a massively overweight, bearded black man who pushed the cart equipped with cleaning supplies. The janitor stopped at each store and looked at the objects in the window for a few minutes before he moved to the next one. The husband and the wife seemed to be regular walkers in the mall—they passed me three times while I strolled aimlessly, and waited for it to be time to go to work.
As I walked past a cell phone accessories kiosk across from Ritz Camera, I noticed a dark-haired head in the midst of the hanging faceplates and carrying cases for wireless phones. I slowed down to take a look. The lady looked to be Indian, and she said, “Can I help you?” I was happily surprised to see her, and hear her familiar accent. I tried to hide my excitement, but instead of responding to her question, I asked where she was from. She responded, “India, what can I help you with today?”
I was expecting that she would ask me if I was from India too, and then I would ask what part of India she came from, and then maybe we could talk in Hindi. She looked straight into my eyes, waiting to know if I was interested in buying anything she sold. I didn’t get a friendly vibe from her, so I said, apologetically, “Sorry to bother you, but I got excited to see another Indian in the mall.”
She smiled, “Oh, no problem, my husband is running late this morning, and I am trying to open the kiosk on my own.”
“I understand. I work in an electronics store a few shops down. I’ll come another time.” I looked at my wristwatch and saw it was almost time for my store to open.
I walked quickly and saw that the glass front door of my store was shut, but the lights inside were on and the backroom door was half opened. I pushed the glass door to see if it had been unlocked; it had. As I walked in I could hear the Black Eyed Peas pouring out of the demo satellite radio. Cindy was sitting at her desk in the backroom with a large Starbucks cup. She was straining her eyes to look at the computer screen, working the mouse with her right hand, and holding what seemed like last night’s sales receipts in her left.
When I said hello, she shook her head as if she were waking up from a dream. “Oh, you scared me, I didn’t know you were here,” she said and laughed. “Let me know if you get busy on the floor. Jackie is running late by an hour this morning.”
Soon, a white-haired man sauntered into the store. As he came close, I noticed that his eyebrows were white too. I asked if I could help him.
“Yeah, I’m lookin’ for a shower radio.”
I knew we carried shower radios, but I’d never had a customer come in to buy one. Among the variety of electronics that we carried in the store, the shower radio was the most intriguing to me. I always wondered what they were for. The name was self-explanatory, but why there had to be a radio in a shower, I didn’t understand. In my mind, the two things had nothing to do with each other. When you were listening to the radio, you wouldn’t be taking a shower, and when you were taking a shower, why would you want to listen to the radio? The product was under ten dollars and since it was not the most popular item, I had never bothered to learn more about it. When this man in the store said he was looking for one, it brought to mind the same questions again.
“You got one?” said the man.
“Yes, we do have those. Let me grab one for you.”
He was about my height. Old age seemed to have curved his spine. He talked with his hands behind his back. I brought out a shower radio and gave it to him.
“Thank you, young man,” he said. Wrinkles bunched up around his eyes as he smiled. He had a pleasant manner about him. Since he was the only customer in the store, I asked him, “Do you mind telling me what you are going to do with this radio?”
“Ah, my wife gets pissed when I listen to the radio when she’s around. I can’t hear very well so I have to keep the volume cranked up pretty high. She hates that.” I smiled. “I thought maybe I could get a shower radio. I’m an old man and I spend a lot of time in the bathroom. I could listen to it there.”
In India, our family of five shared one bathroom. The five-square-foot space in our apartment was prime real estate at eight in the morning. Also, we didn’t have an endless water supply. We got water for two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening. With one bathroom between five people and limited water supply, there was barely enough time for all of us to defecate, brush, shave, and shower. There was no time for listening to the radio. If my father spent more than five minutes there, everyone else knocked on the door until he got out. If I took a little longer, my brother hurled abuses from outside the door.
I looked at the old man said, “How old are you, sir?”
“Well, let’s put it this way. I’ve had more surgeries on my body than your age,” he said and laughed. He looked old, but he acted young and happy. I waited for him to tell me his age. “I am eighty.” I didn’t think he was that old. I was guessing seventy.
“You look good for your age,” I said.
“I am okay, but I can’t pee very well. Spend too much time in the john. That’s why the radio.” I enjoyed talking with him. He bought the radio and thanked me for helping him.
After a few minutes, a young white man walked in. I greeted him and walked toward him to offer help. He took a detour around a shelf, and went straight to the cell phone wall at the very back of the store. It seemed like he knew what he wanted and didn’t want any help. Cindy came out and pointed at me and then at the guy with her index finger. I got the message from reading her lips, “Help him!” She must have seen the guy on the backroom TV, which was hooked up to the store camera.
I made a second attempt at the customer and asked if he needed any help. He said, “Yes, I’m looking for a cell phone, but I’m not sure which service provider I should sign up with.” I knew from my training that selling cell phones was a good way of making commissions. I had also learned a lot of information in training about selling them. Now that this customer was standing in front of me asking for my advice, all the details became a blur in my mind.
As much as I wanted to help him and to make a sale, I didn’t know what to say or where to start. I stood there in silence looking at the cell phone wall, pretending I was trying to think which service would be good for him. The customer waited, as if he appreciated that I was taking my time to come up with the right answer.
When the pause became too long and got awkward, I said, “I’m sorry, I am not from this area, but my manager will be able to help you. Let me go and get her.” The customer smiled as if to say, “That’s totally fine!”
I quickly stepped away and asked Cindy, “Could you help me make a cell phone sale?” She smiled and said, “I’d be more than happy to.” She took a final swig from the Starbucks cup, and threw it in the trashcan next to her chair. She put on a happy face to greet the customer. “Sir, what can I help you with today?”
“Umm, yeah I was looking for a cell phone that works in this area.”
“Okay, are you gonna be living in Charlottesville mostly, or will you be moving around a lot?”
“I’ll be in Charlottesville most of the time.”
I was watching Cindy carefully and paying attention to what questions she asked the customer. There was a lot of genuine enthusiasm in her voice. The sale was made in no time. She then went around the store picking different accessories for the cell phone, and laid them on the counter. The guy didn’t seem sure, and asked if he really needed the carrying case.
She replied, “Oh, yeah, you don’t want your two-hundred-dollar phone to drop and break by accident.” She threw her own phone on the floor to demonstrate the utility of the case. Cindy had good aim—the phone rolled down and landed near his feet. He picked it up and looked at it.
“Sure, why not. I’ll get it.” A sales gimmick, I thought, but it worked. The man, who had walked into the store twenty minutes ago looking for a cell phone, walked out with a bag full of products he hadn’t known he wanted.
A few more days passed. Although I had learned a good number of things, I often found myself clueless when trying to answer questions from the customers. In order to avoid embarrassment, I came up with excuses like, “I am new,” “I am still training,” and, “Today is my sixth day—or eighth day.”
Some of the customers were nice and waited until I figured out what they wanted, and some of them were not so nice. It shook my confidence. I dreaded going to work on busy days, mostly weekends, when the store would be filled with customers, and Jackie, Cindy, and Ron were all on the sales floor helping customers and had no time to answer my questions.
I’d be stuck with tricky questions. “Y’all program radio scanners?” “I live in Scottsville and I don’t get no reception on my cell phone. Y’know what service works in my area?” “I’m a truck driver and I’m lookin’ for an antenna for my CB radio, y’all have ‘em?” “I’m trynna come outta a quarter-inch jack of an audio receiver, goin’ into a one-eighth-inch jack of an MP3 player—you got that kinda cable?” Not able to understand what they were talking about, I’d look at them with an empty expression as if they were speaking another language, which, in a way, they were. I would have to wait for one of my colleagues to help me decipher where the customer was coming from and where he wanted to go, what worked in Scottsville, and what CB radio antenna would be best for him.
It frustrated me that I had to rely on other people for every other question. Sometimes, Cindy would get irritated, point towards the computer, and say, “Look it up on the company’s website, you’ll find it.” But computers only understand the specific name of a product, not a convoluted phrase like, “I am trynna to come outta.” I would continue to wait for someone to help me.
It got to the point where I started hiding from the customers. If I saw someone walking into the store, my first reaction would be to walk in the opposite direction, bend down under the counter, or hide behind a shelf pretending I was looking for something or dusting the merchandise.
I desperately hoped that someone else would take care of the customer. My two college degrees—with concentrations in sales, marketing, human resource management, and consumer behavior—hadn’t taught me anything about working sales in America. This brought to mind my friend in India who worked in a call center. His job was to call Americans and remind them to pay their credit card bills. He often complained about not being able to understand their accents and having trouble making himself understood. Although he had gone through several weeks of voice and accent training, he still complained about Americans yelling at him. Now I could relate to what he was going through, since I had trouble talking with them even when I was there in person.
One time, the district manager paid a surprise visit to our store. Cindy wasn’t prepared for it. She panicked, and started saying to every employee in a hushed voice, “Offer every customer accessories, awright?” “Greet the customers!” “Don’t forget to wear your badges!” I had never seen her so scared. The district manager stood in one corner of the store and watched everyone. Cindy, Ron, and Jackie all seemed to be extra courteous to the customers, saying hellos, welcomes, and thank-yous more enthusiastically than ever before. Watching everyone act differently, I started doing the same thing, but also I didn’t want to be caught not being able to answer a customer’s question.
I saw a tall white man taking long strides into the store towards me. The chances of me being able to answer his question were fifty-fifty. If he asked for something simple, like batteries, a digital camera, a portable radio, or an alarm clock, I could just grab it from the backroom, but if he had a question that involved hooking up two devices, programming a cell phone, or something of an equally complicated nature, I would be clueless.
I didn’t want to have to ask for help from other employees on a day when the district manager was visiting. That would have been a surefire way of getting fired. I walked away from the customer and heard someone else greet him. He had only came in to ask how late we were open. The district manager was quick to notice what I had done.
He gestured at me with his index finger to follow him outside the store’s front door, and gestured for Cindy to come out too. When she came, he asked me, “What’s your name?”
“Deepak,” I said.
“What are you supposed to do when a customer walks into your store?” He was a tall, middle-aged white man in a suit and tie, with a leather bag in his right hand.
It took me a while before I could utter any words. Cindy looked at me in the way a parent looks at a child to encourage him to recite the poem to the guests.
I forced out a sentence, “Greet him, and then ask him how we could help him.”
“Exactly. Then why did you start walking away from him? Why?” I didn’t say anything. “Do you have an answer?” I kept quiet, because I didn’t have an answer. I noticed Cindy tapping fingers on her thigh, looking in a different direction. “Can I get your word that this won’t happen again?”
“Yes,” I said. He shook my hand firmly, and smiled. I walked back onto the floor and prayed to God that he’d leave soon. When he had gone, Cindy called everyone for a quick meeting. She said, “Listen, guys, I want to make this clear to you all: if my ass is gonna be chewed, be sure that I will chew yours.”
She paused for a second and looked everyone in the eye, one after the other. “You know what I mean?” Everyone nodded. She continued, “The DM gave me a real hard time about the sales numbers—we are not making it. The goal for last month was thirty thousand dollars, and we didn’t even get close to that figure.” She paused to reveal her gritted teeth. “And the customer service was pathetic today.” She turned to me and rested her gaze on my face until I got fidgety. She said, “Deepak, I am gonna have to put you on a month’s notice.”
Silence followed after she said that. Jackie and Ron looked grim. I could tell that this was bad news for me, but wasn’t sure how bad. “What does that mean?” I asked. She replied, “It means if your sales numbers don’t improve by next month, I will have to let you go.” I didn’t say anything. “I’m sorry, but I have been sent to this store only a month ago, and my job is to straighten things out here,” she said. “The last manager was an asshole, and he is the reason why no one comes to shop in this store.”
She looked at everyone and smiled. “I can’t do this without the help of my employees.” She asked, “Are you guys gonna help me?”
Jackie raised a fist and said, “Yesss!”
Ron said, “I always help everybody.”
She looked at me and said, “Deepak, you’ve got a month to prove yourself.”
I had never been given any kind of warning at my jobs in India. None of my bosses had thought I wasn’t capable, or that I was not able to perform. Getting a month’s notice from Cindy reminded me of a being in seventh grade, and flunking math and two science subjects in my half-yearly exams. My class teacher had written in my homework diary, “Poor performance. Parents must come and meet the subject teachers.” She asked me to bring the diary back with my parents’ signatures on the note. I dreaded showing it to my mother.
I often did poorly in math, but actually not being able to get passing grades was a matter of serious concern. Most parents thought there were only two respectable professions to pursue—medicine or engineering—and not doing well in math and biology meant that I was a hopeless student. After a few days in which I avoided looking into my teacher’s eyes, she warned me again to bring my parents to the school. I finally presented my exam results to my mother. She was rolling dough to make chapatis. She looked at my grades marked in red ink and didn’t say anything. I looked at her then looked down as if I had committed an unforgivable crime. I noticed her gazing at the ceiling with her head resting on the kitchen wall. It seemed like she was trying to think what would become of me if I couldn’t become a doctor or an engineer.
She came to the school the next day and the teacher told her in front of the whole class that if I didn’t do well in my final exams, I would have to repeat the year in seventh grade. We walked out of the classroom, and my mother didn’t say anything to me. Generally, she yelled at me if I did anything she didn’t like, but her silence made it obvious that I had disappointed her so deeply that it wasn’t worth her while to scold me. Her silence was a far stronger chastisement. When Cindy told me that I only had a month to prove myself, the task ahead felt equally hard.