Chapter Fourteen - The Big Dogs Eat

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Big Dogs Eat

OH YEAH, BABY. Saturday.

The weekend. Except weekends here don’t mean rest. They mean war. Saturday’s not your day off. It’s not even your worst day. It’s your real day. That was part of the gospel, straight from the pulpit of commission-based capitalism.

Saturday is when the big dogs eat.

That’s how they said it. Like a mantra. Like scripture. Like truth.

And it kind of made sense. Saturday meant people were home. More doors to knock. More chances to close. More money. But that doesn’t mean it started great.

We went to Panera that morning. I was weirdly excited. I hadn’t had real food in days. No lunch all week. Just surviving on adrenaline, disappointment, and the occasional unmelted chocolate bar. I was starving. I didn’t know who was paying, or if we’d be expected to buy something. But apparently, it was on Jacob.

My head buzzed from the lack of food. We walked in, and Jacob bought a bunch of sandwich deals that added up to one sandwich per person. You just got to grab them as they were ready. We didn’t get to choose anything. I got one of the last: a sausage croissant.

And I hate sausage. Especially the breakfast kind. But I was too hungry to care. I downed it like it was prime rib. I poured some honey into my coffee for the calories. That was breakfast. That was survival.

Then came the knock.

Now, Saturdays were technically shorter. Supposed to end at 3. That sounds humane, right? Ten to three? You could get through that.

But here’s the twist: you only got to leave at 3 if you made two sales.

If not, you stayed until 4:30. And if you took a lunch break? That added another hour and a half. You’d be out there until 6. So of course, I skipped lunch. I couldn’t afford to eat anyway. I couldn’t afford the time either.

I was trying. I really was. But something had shifted in me.

I wasn’t selling anymore. I was just talking.

I had already emotionally checked out. I didn’t care about the pitch anymore. I didn’t believe in it, and honestly, I didn’t even believe in me selling it. So I stopped trying to be a salesman and just started being a person. I’d knock, smile, and talk to people. I’d ask them how they were doing. Make a joke. I had better conversations that way. People weren’t nearly as annoyed.

I talked to a guy about football and he was a Panthers fan. He told me to go find a house down the street and said the guy was an Ohio State fan, which gave me a target.

That was more fun than anything else I’d done all week.

Still, no sales. Not even close. I was in a rich neighborhood that day. Like rich-rich. But that didn’t help.

See, the first neighborhood I got stuck in was poor. Not poverty-stricken, but definitely not upper-middle class. You could tell by the driveways. Old Toyotas. Faded siding. Most people weren’t about to commit to dropping a band on a pest control out of the blue. Especially not for some kid in a tucked-in polo shirt with a bad sales pitch.

But the rich neighborhoods weren’t any better.

The overwhelming majority of them already had pest control. The other half had enough money to throw at me to go away. Either way, they weren’t listening. And they certainly weren’t buying.

But still, I was getting better. I was more comfortable. More relaxed. My pitch was dead, but I was finally alive. I wasn’t hated. I wasn’t robotic. And even though I didn’t close, I didn’t hate myself at the end of the day.

That felt like progress.

By 4:30, I was cooked. Done. I called James to check in. He still wanted to keep knocking. Of course. Always keep knocking. "Winners knock late,” and all that macho, exhausted garbage they spewed.

So I waited to get picked up.

Caleb ended up grabbing me. Thank God. He’d already come back earlier in the day because he had to get his inhaler. Medical condition. Apparently he got yelled at for that, by the way. Nothing like being reprimanded for having asthma. Real good company culture.

Luckily, I’d forgotten my keys that morning and left them on the counter. That was the luckiest mistake I’d made all week. So Caleb had my car.

When he came to get me, James actually pulled up right before him and dropped off Aaron. Of course.

I was sitting on the corner, on the grass, ass in the dirt, trying to rest my spine. Aaron sat with me but immediately started policing the situation.

“We can’t sit here. It’s someone’s yard.”

Whatever, man. We were behind a bush. No one could see us. But sure, let’s be covert about our burnout.

Then came the lecture.

“No such thing as a bad neighborhood,” he said. “That’s just an excuse.”

I couldn’t take it anymore. So I pulled the ripcord. I gave him what he wanted to hear.

“Yeah, I’ve been trying to tell myself it’s on me. That if I’m not selling, it’s because I’m not doing something right.”

Hook, line, and sinker. He bit hard.

“Exactly! That’s the mindset! That’s how you grow, man.”

Great. Now he felt like a mentor. But at least he shut up after that.

Eventually, Caleb pulled up and I climbed in, but the gas light was on.

So, we hit a gas station. I had two credit cards, both near the edge. I swiped one and prayed. It worked. I put five bucks in and that got us home.

Finally, a break. Or so I thought.

We still had the team dinner.

Because of course we did.

Where’d we go? Twin Peaks.

Classy.

All the rookies sat at the kids’ table. All the “big dogs” sat at their own. A true caste system. The knockers and the knocked.

And because people were out selling past 9 p.m., we didn’t even go out until almost midnight. A late dinner at a titty-themed sports bar, eating on six hours of door knocking. The American dream, baby.

I had eight bucks left to my name. I scanned the menu and found the one thing I could afford: a kid’s meal.

It actually wasn’t bad.

We were joking, chilling, and pretending for a minute that this was normal. That we weren’t slowly dying inside. Caleb didn’t have money either, but Zack told him Connor would cover it. So Caleb ordered a burger and scarfed it down like it was his first real meal in days. It kinda was.

Then Connor comes over and picks up Zack and Chris’s checks without hesitation.

Zack asks him to get Caleb’s too. Connor looks at Caleb, then asks:

“Did you make any sales this week?”

Silence. But he grabs it after Zack pleads.

He’s standing behind me. He looks over my shoulder and reads my check.

Six dollars and twenty-four cents.

Then walks away.

Didn’t cover it.

I was in the same crew as Zack, Chris, and Caleb. You’d think he’d pick up the fourth homie’s six-dollar check.

But nah.

Six bucks was too much for the big dog.