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2004-07-07
Read All About It

Selling newspapers was the least demanding job I could think up, finally. It landed ahead of newspaper delivery by a slight margin. By ahead, I mean in terms of demanding less. I figured delivering newspapers could be the next step of my new career ladder, at some point in the future, if I was ready to take on something like a ladder.

In no way do I mean to say that a less demanding job is not important. Selling newspapers, getting the latest word out there, is very important, of course. What I mean by less demanding, what my definition has come to mean, is that it involves one or two tasks simultaneously at most. Dual-tasking, not multi-tasking which I have had enough of.

My research revealed that the main newspaper sales tasks were 1) an introductory conversation ("Good morning, what will you have today?" is common) while 2) picking up and handing over a folded newspaper. Maybe that task should be a two-parter but I still don�t think of it as a three-parter.

The next part is often a bit blurry and can involve as many as four things as once, but I've decided I will break it down. Receiving the payment. Sometimes giving change. Rarely is there much fumbling, rarely does someone pay with a hundred dollar bill which I saw once at a Starbucks.

Finally, there is the ending conversation ("Thanks, have a good one"). Sometimes, there's a bit of a pant adjusting or what have you.

Still, flexibility is important in the case where the blur reigns and everything overlaps. The handing over of the newspaper, the ending conversation, maybe it gets elongated, plus there is change. A little juggling ensues. All in all, do-able.

The main newspaper seller in my town has a kiosk where cars can easily pull over and the whole transaction might last only 20 seconds, sometimes 10. But it's not the speed I care about, it's the simplicity.

In my research, I sipped my coffee, sat on a nearby bench and observed up to 45 minutes of his morning business at a stretch. At 45 minutes, I became very self-conscious, my coffee gone, my obvious staring and I went and bought my own newspaper. I knew I was going to buy a newspaper all along but I wondered if he knew my watching him inspired me.

Maybe he knew I was thinking, He�s that good that I want to get in on this.

He was the kind of man who might think so highly of himself. Before my research, I bought a paper from him for almost two years and I had many occasions to witness his obvious love for himself. This man had been selling newspapers for decades, I came to understand, and in that time he had ratcheted up his tasking.

He carried on multi-part conversations with his group of buddies while he sold papers, spoke to customers and sold sodas from a cooler. Though he had this group of three to five buddies around he was the only one who walked up to cars, usually with the newspaper of choice already in hand, or greeted the walk-up customers, like myself, made change with barely a glance, and/or reached down to the cooler and brought up a chilled 7-Up.

Most of his business was repeat business and he knew people by name, what papers they wanted and even what soda. He brillantly made this easier by selling only three papers and three sodas.

The buddies just sat around and had loud conversations, sometimes shouting ones. A lot of shouting about the President or the Governor or the Mayor, etc. They shouted to each other but they seemed to all be on the same side.

They played jokes. Like after September 11th and we went to war, they put a big stuffed donkey out with a sign on the rear that said �Bin Ladden, kiss me here.� Although they were surrounded by newspapers staffed with crack editors, they still spelled the name of the number one enemy of our country wrong.

When I saw that spelling error, and I noticed it immediately (a result of over-multi-tasking I feel) I smiled and the newspaper seller thought I was smiling at their joke. �Good one, eh,� the newspaper seller said. �I thought it up the other day.�

What was more fascinating to me and I chose to ask him about was this:�Where did you get a stuffed donkey that large?�

He frowned, while transacting part of our business � the getting of the paper for me -- and nodded his head at an angle, back and to the right, where his buddies stood. �I don�t know,� he said. �One of them had it. Somewhere. I just told them to get it.� He was disappointed, it seemed, that I was deflecting attention off him, onto one of his buddies.

They all looked alike. Big men with big heads, who wear the heaviest flannel shirts but no hats, even in the coldest days. In summer they wear t-shirts, sometimes the ones called "wife beaters" and their faces are like boiling lobsters. Their hands are raw and red.

I observed this and decided, in my researching days, I would wear gloves all the time in my job as a newspaper seller. To protect myself from the cold but also because truthfully I do not like the feel of newsprint against my hands. I much prefer the smoothness of magazines. What it involves to sell magazines I don�t know yet.

The newspaper seller said other things that brought me to this conclusion that he thought highly of himself. He often said things like �They just make the news, I sell it!� and �Hey, don�t touch my papers!� He said the last remark to me the first time I bought a paper from him. I was under the impression I was supposed to pick up my own paper, especially since he was involved in a shouting conversation with one of the look-alikes. �Those are my papers, my property,� he said when he spotted me, �until I sell one to you. I�m the professional here.�

I found him startling, his big head and big red hands, but I admired his pride in his work. At that time, I was buying the paper on the way to the train station. I took the train into the city, where I entered a building, then an office, sat down at a desk and multi-tasked for eight or nine hours.

I did this for seven years, twice changing the building and office I entered and the desk I sat at, but it was always the same blur of multi-tasks. What all those tasks did, I have no idea. I took the jobs over from other people whose fault it was, I guess, that they didn�t do quite as many tasks at the same time as was needed by the boss or the company. I do not like to imagine how many tasks the people who took my jobs from me are managing to multi-do now. There hands must be a haze, the inside of their heads a jumble. That�s how I felt, anyway, after my own seven years of it.

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