When I first got hired, my number one goal was to not get fired. The job seemed daunting, and I was worried that I could lose it if I didn’t do more than what was required from a regular employee. I focused hard on learning about products, their names and their uses. I paid a lot of attention to what customers were asking for, and how they were describing what they wanted.
After almost a year of selling electronics, I had learned more than what was required to keep my job. I was aware of most of the things the job had taught me, but there were a few things I didn’t even realized I had learned. I had stopped assuming that a dad who brought his ten-year-old son to get him an iPod would automatically pay for it. Half the time he made his little boy spend his pocket money. I had learned not to assume that two women who came in wearing matching pink miniskirts, tank tops, sparkly lipstick, high heels, and glittery purses, were sisters or friends. Half of the time they turned out to be mother and daughter. I had learned not to be surprised, or disturbed, when a young mother told her toddler son in public, “Come on, let’s go, Duane. When Daddy gets outta jail, he’s gonna get you that Robocop for Christmas,” or when a middle-aged man said to me in front of his ten-year-old daughter, “I need a camera phone so I can send my naked pictures to all my bitches.”
Most times I was able to tell what customers wanted before they finished their questions. I was able to decode the southern drawl, and had toned down my Indian accent—people on the other end of a phone conversation no longer asked to speak to someone who spoke English. I also had acquired local knowledge without even trying: I knew the zip codes of many counties and small towns around Charlottesville.
It came to me as a surprise when Cindy told me that I had become the top salesperson in the store. She also said that my sales figures were the best among other branches of the company in the city, and occasionally, I managed to get into the bracket of the top five salespeople in the district—which included hundreds of stores. Cindy started setting me up as an example in her meetings: “He used to walk away from the customers, and look at him now,” she would tell the new employees to motivate them. Cindy told them that I made good money, and that I was one of the best-paid employees in the entire district. I was making more money than most new employees, but the difference wasn’t huge. I didn’t know what to think of all this since my lifestyle hadn’t changed much since I had first started. I still thought hard before buying a second cup of coffee. I still used public transport, and brought home-cooked food to work.
One day when I was putting up the merchandise, I noticed Ron coming in with his lunch bag hanging from his shoulder, looking down at the floor, walking slowly. He usually moved with a tired gait, but this was different. Just to check how his mood was, I said hello. He didn’t respond and walked past me, continuing to look down. I waited for him to come back onto the sales floor. He appeared after a few minutes. He laid his hands on the counter, bent his head down, and let out a big sigh. I went to him, put my hand on his shoulder, and said, “Are you okay, Ron?”
“I’ll be okay one of these days.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I have to,” he sighed again, “go file my bankruptcy papers today. Can’t afford to make payments on my mortgage anymore.” I looked at him. His eyes were moist. “I don’t make enough money here. Gotta find something else,” he said. There was nothing I could say to make him feel better. All I could do was to lay my hand on his shoulder for a minute and squeeze it. I walked back, feeling helpless, and picked the other items from the box to shelve them.
After a few minutes, Ron came to me, bent down, letting out a slight groan, picked up a cassette player and placed it on the shelf. He came back and picked another product out of the box and shelved it.
I said, “Ron, it’s okay, I can do it. You can relax for a while.”
He bent down, holding his knee with one hand, picked up something else, and said, “It’s awright. I gotta do what I gotta do.”
I felt bad for Ron. His age and health problems often brought to mind several friends and colleagues of my dad. Mr. Dube was one of them. He was potbellied, almost completely bald, and had arthritis, high blood pressure, and diabetes. He worked for a government-owned power company, and could barely manage to make himself sit on his twenty-year-old cream-colored Bajaj scooter to get to the office. There he sat on a wooden chair that had a tatty cushion on it and moaned all day about how his life sucked in every possible way. I felt bad for Mr. Dubeq, too, but at least he had a government job that was stable and came with a pension when he retired. He had two obedient sons who were studying to be engineers. Ron was almost fifty, financially insecure, with the medical problems of a sixty-year-old, and had no one to help.
Ron was not the only person who was having a hard time keeping up with expenses. Jackie was always under pressure to sell more and make more commissions so that she could pay for her child’s babysitter, get her car fixed, and pay the rent. It hadn’t dawned on me that people were not able to support themselves with the money they were making. Since I didn’t have to pay any child support, make payments on a mortgage, or a car loan, I hadn’t realized that supporting a family with this retail job could be so difficult. I wasn’t paying any attention to my checks because I had a direct deposit arrangement. The money went into my bank account every two weeks. Most of the time, I didn’t have to deal with the finances because my wife paid most of the bills.
When I heard Cindy telling everyone that I made good money, I became curious. I wondered how good “good” money was, since everyone else at work was struggling to pay their bills. I logged onto the company website to take a look at my last paycheck. Since it was my first job in the United States, I didn’t know what amount was considered to be a good salary, and had nothing to compare it with. I looked at my recent paychecks, and I saw that I was averaging around nine hundred dollars a month. To keep it in perspective, and to be able to compare, I converted that to Indian rupees. I was shocked to discover that it was only 30 percent more than I had been making at my last job in India. I had not thought about it this way before.
It made me remember how, before I came to the United States, Holly had tried to convince me to keep my job in India while she visited me on breaks until she finished her work at UVA. Her hesitation didn’t dissuade me from taking the leap to come to the United States. In fact, I had started wondering why she wanted me to stay back in India.
Now, making only 30 percent more money, I was somehow living in America, where the cost of living was at least four times more expensive than it was in India. Just our rent for the apartment in Charlottesville took most of my salary. I realized I would not be able to meet the expenses had my wife not also been earning. It made sense why my colleagues were having such a difficult time supporting their families on such a paltry amount.
I went home, thought about it, and discussed the situation with Holly. She said she hadn’t wanted to complain about my small paychecks because I had a tough time finding a job in the first place, and when I found one, I struggled to get adjusted. She said she hadn’t wanted to stress me out by bringing it up. When I told her about my colleagues struggling, she wasn’t surprised. She talked about how difficult it is to get a better-paying job if you don’t have a college degree. I realized this described what was happening with Ron and Jackie. They were barely managing to pay the rent or mortgage for their homes; I couldn’t imagine them being able to provide higher education for their children. It seemed that they were caught in a vicious cycle.
When Cindy told me that I was doing a good job as a sales associate, she also mentioned that I was due for a vacation. She came to me and said, “Deepak, I just wanted you to know that you will be entitled to a two-week paid vacation in a few days.” She gave me a big grin. I thanked her, but wondered about what the hourly rate was going to be, since my income was mostly based on commissions. Before I asked, she said, “You will get minimum wage for two weeks.”
I didn’t feel very enthusiastic about taking the vacation because I could make more than six dollars an hour if I chose not go and worked instead. My wife suggested we should take the opportunity and go to India. It had been quite a while since I had first come to the United States, so I agreed with her and planned to visit my parents.