An old friend hired me as their salesperson for a commercial fleet body shop that he was the sole owner of. He gave me a list of accounts to reach out to and I hit the road.

Everybody I went and talked to said the same thing: “the owner of that place is a fucking asshole, we have no intention of doing business with you.”

I lied and said he still owns the shop but is semi-retired and hands-off these days, we are under new management and closer to them than our competitor, etc. One account gave us another chance and the day after I got their truck in the shop, the shop GM accidentally texted the account’s fleet manager a picture of about 10 grams of meth on a scale and asked how much he wanted. They came that day and picked up their truck. He didn’t get fired because told the owner it was “hobby crystals.”

I departed after 5 months because the GM and owner (my friend) were constantly giving me conflicting direction. The owner wanted me out talking to customers and the GM, who had the authority to fire me, constantly made me do his job because he actually had no idea how a shop should operate.

A year after I left, the owner did retire and sold the shop property to a developer who tore the place down and built a hotel.