We were talking about salesmen. Who should and shouldn’t be selling what. Like a person who’s very very cheap shouldn’t really be selling $1000 watches.
So someone was talking about this salesman whose clothes are from the dollar rack but who wears a really expensive watch. It works for him because he calls it “putting your money in the right place.”
The other night I was learning Orchos Tzaddikim with a friend. We read that if you take one middah and work on it it can pull or put all the other middos into place. And the reverse is also true; one middah out of place pulls all the others out.
My friend said “I accepted upon myself not to get angry. And as soon as I did everything around me started bothering me. My baby didn’t sleep all night. My son forgot his lunch and I needed to run over to the school. Came back and there was a blackout. I couldn’t use the oven I came home late because I was teaching and then my husband came home starving because he didn’t eat all day and you know the saying that the yetzer hara walks in the door with him?
“Well just as I was working up to a boil the kids started crying cause someone took someone’s something and I felt like I was never going to get out of that moment. Then I said to myself Don’t get angry no matter what! So the electricity went out. So there’s no food. So the baby’s crying. So your husband’s eating cold canned soup. I counted to three. Lamaze-style. And looked at the time. And held on.”
Working on not getting angry pulled all her other middos along too. It’s what the salesman’s expensive watch does. People buy from him because they see he has good taste. The eye is pulled to the watch and they follow after.
I just heard a story about a mother and a daughter. No matter what the mother did to try to improve the relationship it didn’t work. She bought her daughter a new siddur and a day later someone else bought the daughter a siddur that snaps shut with her name embossed in gold. The mother bought her daughter new shoes the next day her daughter found a pair on sale she liked better. The mother made her favorite macaroni-and-cheese dinner but her daughter had just eaten fleishigs.
The mother complained to me “No matter what I do it isn’t right.” She blamed her daughter. “She’s just ungrateful ” she said.
But she knew in her heart it wasn’t really the truth — she just wasn’t giving in the right way and for the right reasons. There was always something a little held back a little cheap about the way she gave.
Then one day she decided: I’m going to give with a full heart.
That same day she had to make one of her fancy cakes for an affair. She was a master baker but she always pushed her daughter out of the kitchen when she needed to come up with one of her masterpiece concoctions. Everyone bothered her when she had to work.
That day it almost happened again. But this time she caught herself. Instead of coldly shooing her daughter away when she came near the kitchen she warmly invited her in to help make the cake. She even let her come up with the design and color theme. She let her into her life which was really all she’d ever wanted.
A person can do a hundred nice things for someone but there can be something cheap about the doing. And then the outfit never really makes it the gift isn’t appreciated the supper doesn’t really feel nurturing. Because all the other person sees is cheap. Then there are those that might do a hundred things that aren’t perfect but they’re giving in the right way — the right words at the right time — and that closes the deal.
The buyer can see and feel when something’s in the right place. It catches the eye and the heart just like the salesman’s watch.
It’s the job of a salesman. —