Salesperson
CurrentBy far the most interesting and illuminating job I have had. I took the job initially because it offered a lot of down time between tasks which I could use to concentrate on schoolwork while getting paid to do so. When I started at Verlo I was their youngest employee by almost 20 years. I had to adjust to a far more professional and complex workplace than the fast food joint and grocery store I worked prior to this. I went from fist bumps at Culver’s to handshakes at Verlo and I quickly learned skills such as complex conflict resolution, dividing tasks, giving and receiving respect from my peers, etc. The mattress business is not the most traffic heavy industry and in a given 10 hour shift I might only have 1-4 customers. This led to a far more intimate and concentrated customer experience as I would often spend 30 minutes to an hour with a single customer. This allowed me to heavily hone my social skills and develop strategies to engaging with all sorts of people. Everyone needs a mattress so I have dealt with every kind of person you can imagine. I have done business with people in their late teens and people in their late 90s. With highly reserved introverts who offer one word responses to every question to bombastic extroverts who love to banter. If you can think of a kind of person I have probably done business with them. Through constant learning and observation I have gotten substantially better at dealing with people. I am able to read people rather well now and match their respective energies in conversation. If someone is very talkative I will be more inclined to follow them throughout the store and explain more to them where as if someone is far more reserved I will be more inclined to give them the essential information and then give them space to explore on their own. It is at Verlo where I truly honed my people skills. Conflict de-escalation, matching energies with people, knowing when to talk and more importantly knowing when to listen, etc.
