Page 41 - James Caan - The Real Deal

4 · Teenage Kicks

flicked through it looking for something that didn’t require any
qualifications or experience. She set up three interviews for me for
that week, and by the Friday I had landed a job as a sales rep. The
basic pay was tiny, but if I sold well I could earn a decent
commission. I didn’t really care what it was, as long as it meant it
paid enough to cover my rent and meant I didn’t have to return
home saying I’d failed. Just in case, I kept my Saturday job at Mr
Buyrite, although I switched to the Oxford Street branch, which
was much nearer.
My job was selling shop fittings and supplies to independent
grocers. I was given the merchandise and an A–Z, and told to
work my patch. I basically had to go door to door, and I learned
the true meaning of the expression ‘cold-calling’. I was frozen most
of the time – I got soaked and never dried out – and it was
absolutely miserable.
I’d always known I could sell because of the leather jackets, and
I knew I was good at communicating, so I suppose I’d thought
being a door-to-door salesman was a pretty natural fit. But I hadn’t
realised it would be so lonely, that I would be on my own all day
long, wandering from street to street. It shattered my illusions a bit
because I’d always assumed I’d be a great salesman, but the truth
was I was just average.
Work was a thousand times harder than I’d expected. I’d
never been in the situation where I had to do something before.
Previously, work had been about a bit of fun or a bit of extra
cash. Now I needed a job to stay afloat because I couldn’t ask
my dad for a tenner any more. Not being able to pay the rent
scared me.
At the end of the month I got my first pay packet; it was fairly
pathetic for such a difficult job and I decided I had to quit. If I was
going to keep my flat, I had to find a job that I could stick for
longer than a month. However, the door-to-door work had taught
be something valuable about the kind of work I wanted to do, and

31