I don't like my job as a Strategic Sales Executive

Gentle Readers,

I've decided it's time I come clean with you about my new job as a Strategic Sales Executive. I hate it. A lot. As our dear friend Ten-S would say, I hate being a Strategic Sales Executive with a passion that burns like ten thousand suns.

I used to have a great job as an Account Manager. I had a list of customers, and I basically took care of them. Saw to their needs. Visited them when they needed handholding. Occasionally let my sales counterparts at them, but managed to reign the assholes in before they did too much damage to my clients with their annoying "let me take you for everything I possibly can and then disappear until your contract is up for renewal at which point I will return with a vengeance to screw you all over again" attitudes.

I was a good Account Manager. My clients trusted and looked up to me. They mainly looked up to me because I am over six feet tall, but still. I am also an attorney who graduated from a top law school and worked at a top New York law firm. I somehow manage to convince people I know what the fuck I'm talking about, which in my field can be kind of important.

Which is why the sleazy sales reps ended up getting their dirty little claws into me to recruit me to the dark side. I cannot believe I let this happen.

Back when I had the perfect job, I had worked a few times with one particular sales rep who was out to take some of my clients for a joyride. She asked one time if I would come along with her to a meeting so that I could present some new products we were peddling. I agreed.

My presentation kicked major butt, and since it was the first time she'd seen me present, this particular sales rep, let's call her Jane, started kissing my ass and begging me to come along on more calls with her. She also wrote a beautifully worded email and sent it to about ten thousand people in my company, extolling my virtues and saying how valuable I am to the company. I like that sort of thing - I'm a sucker for hollow compliments and even more so for cheap sentiment.

So it should have been no surprise, then, that when the company created this new position of "Strategic Sales Executive" the managers should have come knocking on my door. I was heavily recruited for this position, and was told that I would easily double my income. Double!

But it's pure sales. I've never really liked sales all that much. I would have turned them down immediately, except for those two words: easily and double.

I figured I could take the job for one year just to stash away some extra cash. And then return to what I was doing before.


Gentle Readers, when I am going to get cockamamie ideas like that out of my head once and for all? When am I going to start listening to my gut and do what I KNOW is right for me at the time, instead of pretending that I won't fucking hate what I do for a living?

When am I going to grow a pair and stop listening to every boozy dame who comes along telling me how wonderful I am just so that she can get me to do her bidding?


Working with these sales reps is like walking barefoot through a dried up lake of broken glass. It's like being tied up, dipped in honey and thrown into a nest of red ants. It's like being forced to listen to Kenny G for all eternity.

I fucking hate these sales reps. They're a bunch of God damned ravenous bottom-dwellers who would sell their own grandmothers up the river to make themselves an extra thousand dollars. I fucking hate them. Liars and cheats. Every last one of them. I feel dirty just being in the same room with them.

Remind me never EVER to be required to sell anything for the rest of my natural life.

For the record, the woman who sent the email that started this whole disaster has a shit-eating grin like the Cheshire fucking cat. It's this black-rooted toothy grin that just screams "I am going to take you for every fucking penny you're worth, you lame piece of shit, and then convince you that you enjoyed yourself!" Even if she was nice to me at the outset, why on EARTH would I ever think I would want to work with a woman who looks like that? Call me shallow, but I know the glare of an empty soul when it shines through an ugly face. I just know it.


I am such a fucking idiot. And now I have to put up with this for 8 1/2 more months. My sincere hope is that I don't end up ruining a ten-plus year career with this company by virtue of having been coaxed into this stupid fucking job.

Thank you, Gentle Readers, for indulging in my rant.

Done.