The Stansbury Alumni Blog

Just a quick FYI for those of you who have found me here at Tumblr: I’m no longer blogging through this site.  I’ve moved Bobby Calise’s Stansbury Alumni Blog over to Wordpress.  You can now find me at www.bobbycalise.wordpress.com.  I hope to see you there!

By Bobby Calise

My cheapness manifests in many forms. I once paid $350 for a tattoo, but complained about the five dollar tube of healing lotion I had to buy along with it. When I eat at a fast food joint that has a self-service soda fountain, I fill my cup to the top, slurp two or three giant sips, and top-up again before I leave. I am willing to travel miles and inconvenience friends and family just to avoid an ATM fee. But never is my frugality more evident than when it comes to my daily coffee.

For years I tried any alternative I could think of to avoid paying someone else to make my coffee. When I first started at my current job, I would drink the office’s low-grade brew. Later, I brewed my own with a single cup machine, but couldn’t get it to taste right. Then there was my failed experiment with a cheap Target French press. Last year, in an effort get my coworkers caught up in my neuroses, I cofounded an office coffee club. We would all share the responsibilities of buying the coffee, brewing it, and cleaning the machine each day. But we never seemed to establish any sort of rhythm, and after a few months we all gave up.

Meanwhile, a new coffee shop called Gregorys Coffee (no apostrophe) had opened up in the previously vacant storefront downstairs from my office building at 40^th Street and 7^th Ave. Disillusioned by the disintegration of coffee club, a few of my coworkers went down to check it out and came back with rave reviews. But I held my ground. Still uninterested in overpaying for coffee, I tried my hand at Lipton tea (there’s an unlimited supply in my office), attempting to convince myself that it was just as good.

Then one day a coworker came back upstairs after a trip to Gregorys and notified me that he had become a “Gregular.” Gregular status, earned simply by asking for a Gregorys Coffee membership card, means that for every $50 you spend, you will receive a free $5 to spend at Gregorys. Once you get your $5, you start over accumulating another $50. The prospect of spending a little over $2 per cup for coffee twice a day still made me hesitant to try the new place, but the idea of becoming a Gregular—and joining a 10% cash back program—was too good to pass up.

My first few trips to Gregorys were uneventful. The coffee was reasonably priced and tasty, pretty much what I had expected. But after a few more visits I started to notice that their commitment to customer service was, well…noticeable. A couple times I even spotted Gregory himself working the espresso machines, tidying up, and offering explanations on his various brews if a customer asked. (I recognized him from his likeness from my Gregular card, above.) To me it seemed that Gregorys should have been drowning in a neighborhood dominated by Starbucks and other better known, longer established coffee shops. Instead, it was full every morning and still busy by afternoon. On nice days the outdoor seating was occupied by office workers and tourists spilled over from Times Square.

I had to know more. I found their modest company website and sent an email to info@gregoryscoffee.com, hoping to get in touch with someone—preferably Gregory—who might meet with me for an interview. A half hour later, I got a response from gregory@gregoryscoffee.com, asking when I had some time to talk. Later, we sat down for coffee at the store below my office building. He poured me a cup of my usual “medium-medium” (medium sized medium roast, which he explained had more caffeine than the dark roast) on the house; he had an espresso.

Gregory, a.k.a. Greg Zamfotis, is 29. He went to Boston University for business with aspirations of being an investment banker, but changed his mind. He went on to Brooklyn Law School to be a bankruptcy lawyer, but changed his mind again. He didn’t want to sit in front of a computer all day; he wanted something that he could put his name on. Greg’s dad spent his entire career in the food and beverage industry in Manhattan, mostly with delis, but it never interested Greg enough to go into the family business. It was only during a conversation with his father a few years ago—at a Starbucks of all places—that he decided to combine his foodie pedigree with his entrepreneurial spirit and open a coffee shop in New York City. His first location, at 24^th and Park Ave, debuted in December 2006.

It’s obvious the guy is passionate about coffee—and equally passionate about running a successful business. He splits his time among all three of his locations, often working behind the counter in a fitted white shirt (rolled up sleeves) and a dark skinny tie. He designed the company website himself. He answers his own emails. He has plans to move into a midtown office space in the near future, and has a fourth store set to open in August 2011. And on top of that, he’s literally the face of the company.

When I hear Greg talk about the finer points of coffee, I can’t help but think of a wine connoisseur describing the subtle differences between two vintages of a cabernet, or what someone like Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head Craft Brewed Ales might tell me about his 60 Minute IPA versus the 90 Minute IPA.

Greg describes the coffee evolution in America as happening in three waves. The first wave, from coffee’s inception up until about 20 years ago, was when coffee was just Joe—it had caffeine, people drank it, and then went on with their lives. The second wave, in the 1990s, was Starbucks. More choices for serious coffee drinkers, from myriad roast profiles to a slew of espresso-based specialty drinks, and if you were willing to pay a little more, you could get a better cup of coffee than you could make at home or order at a deli. The third wave is where Gregorys comes into play. After our initial meeting, Greg articulated via email what exactly that third wave entailed:

“The third wave is basically taking the second wave to new heights. It is using single origin coffee and brewing them one cup at a time to highlight the specific flavors and aromas you might find. It is focusing on direct trade, buying straight from the farmers, establishing relationships with them. It is pouring latte art into espresso based beverages instead of just using an automatic machine like Starbucks. It is basically about picking and choosing specific qualities of specific beans and deciding which method of brewing will highlight that bean to its fullest.”

For Greg, it seems to be less about putting Starbucks out of business and more about putting something new out into the marketplace. “I wanted to bring the third wave to midtown,” he says. But if the majority of his customers are “first wave” coffee drinkers (like me) who order medium-mediums twice a day, doesn’t that run contrary to the whole third wave paradigm? He says no. He estimates 85 to 90% of his Gregulars order mostly just basic coffee. And if customers like those are trying to find the absolute cheapest coffee on the block, it won’t be his. (Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s are both within walking distance of his 40^th and 7^th location, not to mention a fleet of breakfast carts stationed at every corner.) So instead, he says, the plan is to compete by offering great customer service.

You might be thinking, Customer service? What a concept! It should come standard with every cup of coffee. But it doesn’t. The archetype of a modern coffee shop employee, as Greg describes him, is the guy wearing a wool cap in the middle of the summer, ignoring the customer so he can brag to the other employees about the latest indie flick he’s seen or the new obscure band he’s into. Of course that’s not always the attitude you’ll encounter, but Greg makes sure you don’t see it in his stores.

Even before I met with Greg, I could tell that the Gregorys staff had been trained to handle customers a certain way. On one visit, I reached the front of the line only to find the cashier fumbling with a stubborn roll of quarters. Her manager noticed the line starting to grow and in a polite but firm tone, she instructed the cashier: “Don’t worry about the quarters when there’s a line. Take care of the customer first.” Another time, I accidentally dropped my change into a dish of their complimentary mini biscotti. The cashier immediately snatched up the tainted plate and replaced it with clean cookies. On still another occasion when I was running late for work, I accidentally left a large personal check on the Gregorys counter and didn’t realize it until about an hour later. When I went back to see if anyone had found it, the check was waiting for me behind the counter along with a $10 bill I didn’t even notice I had left with the check.

The young staff is positive and enthusiastic and polite for now, but how, I asked Greg, does he keep them that way once that newness wears off? After all, even the most disgruntled employee in the world was probably happy at his job for at least the first month or two. At 29, Greg is around the same age as many of his employees. He appreciates that they have other interests outside of coffee and presumably that understanding has molded his managerial style. Though his is still a relatively small operation, he stresses the import of the distinct company culture at Gregorys. The staff regularly does book clubs and movie nights together. Once a year, Greg closes his stores and takes everyone to Medieval Times in New Jersey. And later this year, he’s headed to Brazil to visit some coffee farms and he has saved an open seat for one of his employees to join him, all expenses paid. To decide who gets to go with him, Greg is holding a contest. Employees can submit a piece of original art—a song, a personal essay, a photograph—with the best entry getting the ticket to Brazil.

After speaking to him, it’s hard not to like Greg; I’m rooting for him to succeed. But most of his customers will never have a conversation with him or follow him on Twitter or even notice him behind the counter. Still, it says a lot about Greg that he’s managed to overcome some long odds, against both his competitors and my cheapness. For the record, I still buy all my clothes at outlets. And I still hate leaving even a few minutes unused on a parking meter. But I’ll happily pay $4.46 a day ($2.23 in the morning, $2.23 in the afternoon) for my medium-mediums, and I’m proud to call myself a Gregular.

By Bobby Calise

It was 11 years ago since I last sold a Cutco knife. I thought I’d shrugged the experience off, but apparently I still remember way too many details from those days. As a follow up to Confessions of a Knife Salesman Part 1, please check out the much longer sequel, cleverly titled Confessions of a Knife Salesman Part 2.

Yesterday, I was a college student. My biggest concerns were the Freshman Fifteen, picking a major, and meeting a few girls. But today, I was a traveling Cutco salesman.

So how does an 18-year-old kid build up a client base from scratch? The closest thing I had to a Rolodex was an AIM Buddy List. Well, I’d start there. A few days after the initial group interview, Adam rounded us all up again (mostly everyone from the interview except, presumably, the smart ones who’d declined his offer) about a week later to teach us how to get off to a fast start in our Cutco careers. He asked the room, “How many people do you know?” Some of us offered responses. Maybe three hundred? Like five hundred? “Nope. Higher,” Adam claimed. He said if we wrote down the names of everyone we knew, including family members we rarely see, or our friends’ parents (and parents’ friends) we’d “know” around a thousand people. Our homework assignment that night was to—you guessed it—write down the names of everyone we knew. The next time we reconvened with Adam a few days later, we were expected to bring our completed lists.

Ugh. Write down a thousand names? I was a college kid. I had actual homework I could be working on. Instead I was supposed to spend my night writing down the names of everyone I knew? Fine. I’d at least put down the people I really knew, my high school friends and my close family. Alright, I’ll add on the not-so-close family, family friends, a few friends’ parents and siblings. All told, I got up to about six or seven hundred names. I’d completed my first Cutco homework assignment. As a student, I felt proud; as a college kid, I was pretty embarrassed. (Throughout my twenties I’d hear hundreds of stories about the antics of college co-eds; making a People I Know list was never one of them.)

I walked into the Cutco office a few days later with my names in hand. Adam informed me that this would become my client roster. I didn’t love the idea of selling knives to my family and friends. Sure, they were quality knives, but they were expensive and of those 600+ people I didn’t know too many who had $700 lying around in case a knife salesman knocked on their door. Adam explained that all I had to do was call these people up, give my presentation, and if they were interested, sell them some knives. If they weren’t, I’d still get paid $8 per appointment (which is the “hourly” rate I’d been attracted to initially). To put my clients at ease, I could even tell them that I got paid either way. Besides, the knives would sell themselves.

Proximity was a problem for me, though. I’d been recruited to sell around in and around New Paltz. But I’m from Long Island, and most of my friends and family were there, too. So, to earn my $8 per appointment, or hopefully the commission that would come with a big sale, I’d have to head home for the weekend and make a few stops along the way. Begrudgingly I called a few of the people on my list who I thought would say yes and, without revealing too much about what I was actually going to be presenting, I was able to secure four appointments for that upcoming weekend—my uncle Chris, two of my friends’ moms, and my grandmother.

My uncle Chris is a tough customer (both in life and in knives) but his house was on the way to my second appointment, so I had to see him first. Despite his serious day job as an FDNY fireman, the humor of his older sister’s teenaged son trying to sell him knives was not lost on him. This was the same uncle who, when I was little, would have me hide all around the house for hours and never bother to seek me. I was not optimistic. Still, I told myself, this was good practice for when I got some “real” customers to whom I was not blood-related. I plodded along through the presentation as best I could, flubbing lines from the script, describing the bread knife when I was holding the fish knife, sweating through my cheap white dress shirt, and doing my best to keep a straight face. All the while I could hear Adam’s voice in my head, admonishing me about “wimp words” like kinda and maybe that could blow a sale. Remember, I Am [supposed to be] Sold Myself.

Finally, I’d reached the end of the presentation, the part where I was supposed to close the deal. I opened to the page that showed a picture of The Homemaker and everything that came with it. “So,” I said, “are you interested in The Homemaker?” Unless the customer asked, we weren’t supposed to talk about price up until this point. (After all, by the time they heard how great Cutco products were, they’d be signing over blank checks just to get their hands on them.) “How much is it?” my uncle asked. “Well, with everything you see here…” I listed all the pieces that made up The Homemaker, and went briefly through the craftsmanship, the uniquely shaped handles, and all the other characteristics a good knife should have. “It’ll come out to 734.” Adam taught us that when finally revealing the price, we should say it quickly and confidently, as if we were saying it in dollars and cents, not in hundreds of dollars. (Not “SEVEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY FOUR DOLLARS,” but “seven thirty four.”) Uncle Chris looked me straight in the eyes and with a big smile and just a hint of incredulous laughter, said “No.”

I had expected a no on The Homemaker. I knew my demo hadn’t gone well. But as I flipped to the back of my Cutco binder and pitched smaller packages for $500, $300, and $150, I started to look around my uncle’s home. I wouldn’t describe him as rich, but he had a great house. His kitchen, where we were sitting, overlooked his backyard on the water, where his boat bobbed a rubber ducky. He had a wife and three young sons. For the first time I started to think about what it actually costs to be an adult. The boat certainly wasn’t free (nor were the kids) and I’m sure he had a mortgage on the house. Was a set of knives really the best way he could spend $700? By the time I got to the end of my binder it was obvious that Uncle Chris, while gracious enough to invite me into his home, offer me a cold drink—he had one of those fridges that made its own ice, which always fascinated me as a kid—and send me a birthday card every year, he was not going to buy any knives from me. I thanked him for his time, he wished me good luck, and I was on my way.

My next two appointments were with my friends’ moms, one while the friend actually there, and one without the friend (I preferred it that way). After my disastrous first demo, I felt slightly more comfortable with the script. By the third demo I was able to slice through a tomato and I’d mastered the art of cutting a penny in half with Cutco’s famous Super Shears. It really works, and this was easily the highlight of my demos. Inevitably, people would jokingly suggest that they’ll have to call the government on me, because I was destroying U.S. currency. I’d have to play along. “Sir, that is hilarious! I’ve literally never heard that joke before!” I didn’t sell any Homemakers, but both moms bought a few individual pieces. I was finally on the board. I felt happy, but also a little guilty. Wasn’t I a little too old to be selling the grown-up version of Girl Scout cookies?

The most important part of the presentation—more so than actually selling anything—was getting referrals. For me, asking someone I know to give me five names and numbers of people “who might enjoy the demonstration I just gave you” was harder than asking them to buy three Homemakers. But the only way I was going to get new potential customers was to grab as many referrals as I could, preferably ones who lived a little closer to New Paltz. Once I acquired the referrals, I had to be really sneaky about how I used them. When calling people I knew, I could be a little more honest and explain that I was selling knives and they didn’t really need to buy anything. No matter how stupid they thought this was, they would most likely still say yes. Calling on my referrals was more complicated, especially when those referrals gave me their own referrals. “Hi, this is Bobby Calise, I’m a friend of Kathy Sullivan’s.” Even on the phone it’s obvious that I’m a young male, so it’s a bit of a stretch that I’m a “friend” of Kathy’s, but OK, they know I’m not a telemarketer. “Mary passed along your info to me. She thought you might be able to help me out with a project I’m working on for college.” Well, I’m in college, and this was increasingly becoming a “project.” If I really wanted to be sneaky, I’d say that I was working towards a scholarship, because Cutco sometimes rewarded its best salesmen that way, perhaps only for the sake of including it in the script. Then I’d explain that I’d like to give them a short demonstration, and that the whole thing was actually more of a part-time job for me while I was in school. If they caught on and asked me what I was selling, I was ready for that one. Without ever mentioning the name Cutco (for fear they’d recognize it and hang up), I would say something like, “Oh…well the company sells a variety of house wares, some really nice stuff. But don’t worry about that. Even if you don’t buy anything, I still get paid.” That was the line that almost always got me in the door. I’m a nice young man who’s working part-time to pay for my education. You’re just helping me out by letting me do my demonstration for you.

Since I didn’t have a cell phone, I had to make most of these calls from the landline in my dorm room, often while my roommate Chris was there. He’d listen in, making stupid faces and trying to throw me off. Sometimes when I had to use the “house wares” line, Chris would get so frustrated listening to the calls. “Well, we sell a variety of products…items for everyday use…” I’d stutter, refusing to give in and say “Cutco” or “knives.” (It was like a game of Taboo!) When I would get off the phone, Chris would yell, “Just freakin’ say it’s knives!”

My final appointment of that first weekend was with my grandmother before our Sunday pasta dinner. While the meatballs soaked in tomato sauce (her own recipe, of course), I took her through the presentation. With my dad, aunt, uncle, brother, and cousins standing around cracking jokes, it was impossible stick to the script. But my grandmother has always been generous with whatever money she’s had, and even though she probably didn’t need a whole new set of ladles, spoons, and spatulas, she bought them from me anyway.

That first weekend was a relative success but there was still much more work to be done. To get some local appointments, Adam recommended I do the pitch for some of my professors. But I wasn’t comfortable with that, especially in the first semester of my college career (meaning they were my current professors). I’d call on the few local referrals I did have, otherwise I’d head home to Long Island on Fridays after morning classes until Sunday afternoons to keep working the names from my People I Know list. Most weekends, the trunk of my Lebaron contained: three days worth of clothes, a brown plastic accordion folder to hold brochures and order forms, my thin navy vinyl bag full of knives, some fresh produce to cut up, and of course, pennies. (Note: The penny trick didn’t work with nickels, and cutting up dimes was a little over budget.)

There was another ancillary task that came with being a rookie Cutco salesman that Adam had failed to mention in previous conversations: guerilla marketing. The “ads” like the one I’d seen on the chalkboard that day, “Work For Students! $8 an hour/appt,” were put there by Adam and his army of New Paltz students/Cutco salesmen. Of course, professors wouldn’t let us come in and write on their chalkboards, so we had to get there before they did to give their students a chance to see the message and write down the number. I was setting my alarm for 5 am once a week to make sure I was up and ready to hit as many classrooms on campus as I could, even as the New Paltz winter grew increasingly colder. (My roommate loved this).

Meanwhile, it became increasingly difficult to sell—or even just get appointments—as I started to contact referrals who were three and four degrees away from my original list. Occasionally I’d mix up the details of how I was supposedly “friends” with the person who gave me the referral. “Hi Claire. This is Bobby Calise. I’m good friends with Kathy Sullivan. She said you could help m…oh you don’t know any Kathy? I meant to say I’m good friends with Susan…something.” Adam recognized that I was struggling. My lack of sales wasn’t making either of us any money, but he tried to work with me. He set me up with a more experienced salesman from his office. Tom, a junior at nearby Vassar College, would let me shadow him on an appointment with one of his former professors. Tom was a liberal dude studying at a liberal school, but also working as traveling knife salesman. I found this paradoxical, but I still trusted Adam even though at that point I was actually losing money after paying for gas, tolls, and fresh tomatoes (and again, the pennies). But where I was often reticent when it came to telling people I worked for Cutco, Tom simply owned it. I doubt he’d used it as a pick-up line with the Bohemian girls at Vassar, but he wasn’t ashamed, either. It probably didn’t hurt that he was great at it.

When we arrived at Tom’s professor’s house somewhere in a secluded neighborhood near Vassar, I could tell within seconds why Tom was so good at selling. The professor opened the door for us and the tone of their mutual greeting was that of friends, not of salesman and customer. It was obvious the professor had liked Tom when he had him in class, and that affability was still evident now. I assumed that in this gregarious climate, Tom would veer from the script as I had with my grandmother. But to his credit, he pretty much stayed on track. He’d self-deprecate, but it was all just part of his pitch. “OK, let me get ‘serious’ for a second here and give you the ‘hard sell,’” he said, half-jokingly. The professor ate it up. Tom wasn’t able to get his professor to pull the trigger on The Homemaker, but he did talk him into buying a couple of individual pieces, including the Fisherman’s Solution, a utility knife that I couldn’t even get my uncle Chris, a serious fisherman, to buy from me.

On Saturday afternoons I would head down to the home office to make calls. If someone miraculously had free time right then and there, I would shoot over to their house. If not, at least Adam could see I was attempting to set up some appointments. (As discouraged as I was about the job, I’d feel worse if I got fired.) When there was no one left to call or visit, I’d go out to my car, drive over to the nearby batting cage, change into sweats, and hit a few fastballs to cheer myself up. The cages were usually empty at Fun Central, which also featured a mini golf course and an arcade. One day I was in there swinging away when I mistimed a pitch and pounded the rubber ball into the rubber home plate beneath me. Instead of “oval-ing” out and then bouncing away from me, the ball bounced straight up, hitting me directly in the groin. I fell to my side in pain, doing my best to protect not only the injured area but also the rest of my body. (Batting cages don’t have big red emergency stop buttons like treadmills, so the balls continued to whiz by me at 70 miles an hour.) When the machine finally stopped, I looked up to see smiling families walking to and from the parking lot, not even noticing that there was a guy laying down in the batting cage clutching himself in agony. The smiling families were a lot like my college classmates, who were just coming and going to lectures and frat parties, movie nights and study dates, not bothering to notice that I was hustling across two counties to sell the bare minimum of knives, repeatedly absorbing blows to the crotch along the way.

If it wasn’t enough that I was constantly driving to and from Wappingers Falls and its surrounding towns for appointments, I was asked by Adam to drive my 14-year-old car on a four-hour trip to Syracuse for a one-day regional conference. (To save Cutco some money, Adam also asked me to carpool with another salesman who I’d never met before.) By that time I had started to sour on the job. I wasn’t making any money, I was spending entirely too much time on the road—it was my freshman year of college and I was taking five classes—and I just didn’t like what I was doing. So when I went to the conference I was expecting a lot more of the same rah-rah stuff that got me into this situation in the first place. But to my surprise it was actually pretty sophisticated. The speakers included some of the top salesmen of the respective regions, including an ebullient, charismatic guy named Jeff Gamboa. Far from the laid back style I’d seen from Tom, Jeff bounced around the stage, sharing insider tips that he’d picked up in his two or three years working for Cutco. How to close a deal. How to upsell. How to get five, ten, even twenty referrals from a single customer. Once again, I was falling into the same trap: it’s easy to sell Cutco. The only question is how much. I Am Sold Myself.

When I returned home from my Syracuse trip, I was physically exhausted. But when I eventually woke from my “Cutcoma,” Jeff and the other speakers were still fresh on my mind. I went back to my referral list and made as many appointments as I could. But I still sold the bare minimum, if anything at all. Just as my enthusiasm started to wane again, another Cutco road trip was on the horizon, this time Olean, New York, home to the Cutco factory. (Olean is also home to St. Bonaventure University, which is the “famous” landmark we were told to reference when we went through the Origins of Cutco part of our presentations.) Olean was an even longer trip than Syracuse, around five hours (this time, Adam drove).

Cutco was the first factory of any kind I’d been to. My tanking sales career aside, it was kind of cool to see how a product line was made from scratch, especially one I was so familiar with. The factory itself was massive and loud. Prior to that my only mental image of a factory was from the domestic auto commercials I’d seen on TV. Cutco’s factory was exactly like that. Blue collar men and women wearing jumpsuits, protective goggles, baseball caps, and earplugs. Walking tours like these were commonplace for the workers, and they were eager to wave hello and answer any direct questions about what they were working on, whether making the handles, shaping the metal, or assembling the myriad products. More importantly, it was apparent that these people loved coming to the factory each day and were proud of what they did. I wanted that feeling, too, but I wasn’t getting it with Cutco. I Am [Not] Sold Myself.

The Olean trip was eye-opening to me as a person, just not as a salesman. The Christmas break was coming up at school. It would be easy enough to sever ties with Cutco before I went home for a month. I could give my demo knives to my mom (I’d paid for them out of my own pocket), get a temp job during the break, and live a Cutco-free existence at school in the spring. It had been a rough semester for me as a student. I was starting to adjust socially, but my closest friend was my roommate, and he went home every weekend (usually a great attribute in a college roommate, but not in the first semester of freshman year.) My GPA was a crappy 2.36, dragged down by my grades in two supposedly easy courses—Evolving Earth (got a C) and Planet Earth (got a D)—which my academic advisor had recommended for me at orientation. There are many plausible excuses a freshman can come up with for a lower-than-expected GPA, but cutlery typically isn’t one of them. It was time for me to get out of the knife business.

During my stint with Cutco, several of my fellow salesmen had quit, often without notice. They would just stop showing up at the office. Adam was used to the high turnover. If anyone ever asked about one of these former salesmen, he’d make some dismissive quip like, “She’s gone…I guess she didn’t like money.” Me? I liked money—I just wasn’t making any. But I decided that if I was going to quit, I should do it in person. I drove the 40 minutes to Wappingers Falls on a Saturday afternoon, half hoping to show up at a time when Adam wasn’t there so I could have one of the assistant managers pass the news of my resignation along to him on my behalf. But of course he was there. He asked me how I was doing, and if I had any appointments set up for that day. My voice was shaking less than I thought it would, a sign that I had already moved on mentally. “Actually…no. I appreciate the opportunity and everything…but I don’t think I can work here anymore.” To his credit, Adam put on a face as if to express some surprise, though surely he saw it coming. “You’re quitting, just like that?” (Ironically, he said this in the same incredulous tone many of my friends and family had used when they’d said, “You’re selling knives?”) I nodded. “Yup. I have to.” I stammered through a few excuses, citing fatigue, my grades, my achy Lebaron. But the longer I talked, the more I remembered how angry I was at Adam, and at Cutco. Angry for wasting my time, and for making me think this job would be so easy. As I walked out, I could already picture him talking to the other salesman who might have asked about me. “Bobby? Don’t worry about him anymore. I guess he just doesn’t like money.”

Cutco doesn’t appear on my resume or in my LinkedIn profile. But I do think of it when I visit relatives and see the Cutco products that I sold them in their kitchens. If I was living comfortably and in a position to spend a few hundred bucks on finely crafted knives, maybe to help out one of my younger cousins or a friends’ kid, would I? Probably not. Instead, maybe I’d hand them my business card and tell them that when they graduate from college, I can write them a nice recommendation or look over their resume. But first, I might ask them to cut a few pennies in half.

By Bobby Calise

“Confessions of a Knife Salesman” will be a two-part series. Part 1 below talks about how I got roped into selling knives out of the trunk of my car. Part 2 will go into detail about how I weaseled my way into strangers’ homes, woke up at 5 am to do Cutco’s guerilla marketing, and cut a whole bunch of pennies in half.

“Work For Students! $8 an hour/appt.”

That cryptic message, along with a phone number, would turn out to be the catalyst for my short-lived, highly unsuccessful career as a Cutco knife salesman.

I wasn’t sure what the “hour/appt” part meant, but I was a broke college freshman at SUNY New Paltz and nothing I’d found on or around campus was paying close to eight bucks an hour. So when I saw that “ad” scribbled in the corner of a chalkboard before one of my classes, I jotted the number down, called it as soon as I got back to my dorm room (using my landline), and was given a time and place to show up for my interview.

A few days later, I hopped into my baby blue ’86 Chrysler Lebaron with a printed set of MapQuest directions to an office building in Wappingers Falls, NY, about a 40 minute ride from New Paltz. Over the next three months I’d become very acquainted that particular stretch of U.S. Route 9, including the nearby batting cage and the Wendy’s across the street.

What I thought was a one-on-one turned out to be a group interview with about 15 other people. While I filled out my application, I pieced together that most of the other candidates were around my age, also college students, and all lured in by the promise of $8 an hour. The interview opened with all the candidates sitting in three rows facing the front of the room as our potential new boss, Adam, welcomed us and thanked us for coming. Adam was a smiley guy, clean cut and well groomed, dressed like a Wall Street broker. He spoke vaguely about what the job entailed, focusing instead on the positive attitude we’d need in order to do it successfully and explaining that in the Cutco universe, the last four letters of “enthusiasm” stand for “I Am Sold Myself!” (That should have been my first clue.)

Over the next two hours, Adam revealed to us that with our positive attitudes and enthusiasm in tow, our actual job (if hired) would be selling Cutco brand kitchen knives. If Cutco sounds familiar to you, it’s because you’ve probably bought, used, or maybe even sold their knives at some point in your life. Adam went into great detail, impressing upon us the value of these knives: the ergonomically designed handles made from the same stuff they use in bowling balls; the patented metal technology that doesn’t require frequent sharpening; the lifetime warranty on each and every knife. He even turned us against Cutco’s competitors in the cutlery game. Henckels? Pfff. I wouldn’t cut a Swanson Salisbury steak with their stuff! A full set of Cutco knives including a beautiful wooden block to keep them in—this package was called “The Homemaker”—sold for over $700. Before the interview, $700 for knives would have sounded like a fortune to me; I was eating three meals a day in the campus dining hall off plastic trays (the same ones we used for sleds in the winter). But after hearing Adam talk about Cutco, I thought $700 sounded too low. I Am Sold Myself.

Look, I know what you’re thinking: anyone who’s smart enough to get into college should’ve been able to figure out that at best this “interview” was a waste of my time, and at worst it was an obvious pyramid scheme. But Adam could sell, and he knew his audience. He had us sitting up and at the edge of our chairs with permanent, toothy smiles affixed to our faces. When something he said required a response, we shouted “YES!” in unison; when he made a joke, we laughed. We were like dogs on graduation day from obedience school.

Adam also knew that even the slightest hint of negative energy could taint the entire interview and cost him a room full of potential salesmen. He was the hypnotist, and we were just volunteers from the audience. One false move and we might wake up from our trance and realize that we were carefree college students, not knife salesmen. About halfway through the interview, it appeared as if he’d sussed out the biggest spoilsport in the group. He asked one of his rhetorical questions, and when Mr. Negative gave only a lukewarm answer instead of a rah-rah response like the rest of us, Adam went after him. “You know what?,” he paused. “GET OUT.” Stunned, Mr. Negative hesitated. Adam stared him down, pointed to the door, and repeated, “GET OUT.” The rest of us were equally stunned. We waited for instructions. Adam refocused. “I’m sorry about that, guys. This job is about positivity. I don’t want to waste anyone’s time. If you don’t want to be here, you can follow him out.” No one flinched. He continued his pitch, knowing that he had us hooked. The last thing any of us wanted was to be thrown out of the room when we were being presented with the opportunity of a lifetime.

He finished up his spiel, taking us through the pay scale and how much we would stand to earn if we followed his instructions and stuck to the script. Then he brought each one of us into his office to talk one-on-one, after which each candidate was led out of the office rather than rejoining the group. When my turn came, I was pretty keyed up. He’d made it all sound so easy, like I’d be selling Homemakers faster than I could take the orders. After some easy questions, like what did I think of Cutco, did I have a car, what’s my major, he asked the most important question of all: “Bobby, on a scale of one to ten, how much do you want to work for Cutco?”

I could say eight or nine and not sound too desperate, I thought, but it’s supposed to be all about enthusiasm, right? Nothing is more enthusiastic than… “TEN, Adam!” I said. He smiled. “OK,” he said. “Welcome aboard!”

By Bobby Calise

A few weeks ago, I found myself crammed into a sixth floor hotel room in Puerto Rico. I was one of four groomsmen in my close friend’s wedding party. The groom’s dad, who we dubbed Big Smooth (he’s 6’8” with a booming but pleasant voice) was handing out our ties. The ties were a shiny lime green color that might have otherwise been incongruous for five guys in black suits, but was appropriate in the semi-tropical setting of a Puerto Rican beachfront resort, and perfectly paired with the bridesmaids’ dresses. Big Smooth was walking around to each of us, conducting tie checks to make sure our top buttons were buttoned, the white from our shirts was hidden underneath the knots of our ties, and each of our tie clips rested at the same height on our shirts. Meanwhile the wedding photographer glided around the room, snapping obligatory “groom getting ready” shots—the kind where one guy helps the groom put on his jacket as the other groomsmen smile awkwardly and sip $9 beers from the mini bar—before heading over the bride’s wedding day headquarters.

In the corner of the room, though, the groom’s younger brother slash best man was oblivious to our jokes and stupid comments, each of us taking turns sarcastically asking the groom, “Hey man, it’s the big day…you nervous?” No instead he was feverishly scribbling on hotel stationery with a hotel pen, simultaneously transcribing and editing his best man speech off the screen of his laptop, cutting and adding jokes like a veteran stand-up comedian moments before a set. One of the guys even suggested that he just read the entire speech off of his smartphone. We all got a kick out of that image: a nervous 23-year-old using his index finger to scroll through his three-minute address while the older relatives look at him like he was from another planet. (By the way, it would turn out to be the best best man speech I’ve ever heard.)

Fast forward to this past Monday night when I accompanied my girlfriend to the memorial services for her great uncle Bill, who passed away at age 82. I’d never met Bill, but I knew a few stories about him from my girlfriend’s mother, including the one that explains his moniker at the offices of the New York Times, where he worked for 46 years, retiring in 1991. Bill was a makeup editor at the Times in the days when they still laid out the entire paper by hand, and one night a young Times employee dropped a cart containing the next morning’s layout, just moments before it was headed to the presses. Cool as a cucumber, Bill swooped in and recreated the layout from scratch and on time. Known then for quick hands and equanimity under pressure, he became “Billy Changes.” Years later when the journalism industry underwent its own series of changes, and newspapers began to use computer programs rather than quick hands to lay out their pages, Bill decided to retire rather than recreate himself from scratch. And I can’t say I blame him.

As an 80s kid and a 90s teenager, changing technology has always been a given for me. I’ve listened to my music on a plastic Fisher-Price record player, a Walkman, a home stereo, a boom box, a Discman, and now an iPod. I have a closet full of “pre-viewed” VHS tapes I bought at Blockbuster back in college that I can’t bear to throw away. And frustrating as it can be, I know better than to fight the evolution of consumer electronics or baseball statistics or fashion. Still, I can’t fathom how a lifetime newspaperman—or anyone who’s spent a prolonged period of time cultivating a very specific skill set in a particular industry—gets used to the idea that yesterday he was in high demand, but today his role no longer exists. I think of it as listing all the things you claim to be “extremely proficient” at on your resume, crossing them all out, and then walking into your office to interview for your own job.

Towards the end of Monday night’s memorial service, Bill’s son stood up in front of family and friends to poignantly and honestly eulogize his dad. I was still thinking about the guy they called Billy Changes, wishing I had met him, wondering why some people are lauded for staying “old school” but others are dismissed as “dinosaurs.” With that in mind, I couldn’t help but notice that Bill’s son didn’t reach into his breast pocket for index cards or even just a few crumpled scraps of paper.

That’s because he was reading the eulogy off of an iPad.

Ultimately it didn’t matter whether Bill’s son read from an iPad, or a legal pad, or a cocktail napkin, because he shared some very sweet memories about growing up in Brooklyn with his brothers under his father’s care. And from both his words and the nods around the room, it was clear that Bill served as a father figure to more than just his own sons, and that he’d be missed in his personal life as much as he would have been in his heyday in the newsroom.

Look, I can’t predict whether five or ten years from now all eulogies will be read from iPads or whether best man speeches will be delivered via smartphone (or, for that matter, if speakers will just text everyone the gist of what they planned on saying). I just hope that regardless of where future speakers are reading their speeches from, that they are delivered as thoughtfully as the ones I’ve described above, and that amid all the technological advancements, that never changes.

About the iPad: Bill’s son conceded later that he had actually bought it for his dad, though I’m not sure whether Bill got around to using it in his final months.

By Bobby Calise

The following story references a man named “Kingston.” The small business that Kingston runs is not exactly legal, so for the purposes of this post, please use your imagination as I’ve taken some liberties with the word “beverage.” Thanks.

I’ve written previously about my Tuesday softball team, but after our first game this past Tuesday night, I realized that I’ve neglected to mention our unofficial MVP: the beverage guy.

Our beverage supplier, known to us only as “Kingston,” has been working the softball fields at Central Park since I started playing on the team in 2005, and some of the older guys say he was there even before that. He’d walk around to all the fields selling water and Gatorade out of a cooler on hot summer days. Back then, though, we didn’t really need his services; the Petry offices were much closer to the fields than they are now, so we had the rookies lug a case of cold drinks along with the equipment bag. But when headquarters moved 25 blocks away from Central Park, we had to come up with a solution for our beverage needs. Enter Kingston.

Our team’s catcher, Charlie, recalls his first prolonged encounter with Kingston that led to the long-standing contract we have now: “One day in 2008 or 2009 … he comes around with his usual ‘I have water and Gatorade.’ I yell out ‘You got anything else?’ He pulls me to the side, gives me the inventory. A few weeks go by and one day he says ‘I could bring a cooler if you want.’ We go over to the end of the bleachers, hammer out the details, and voila, the partnership is born.”

I have a million questions for Kingston about his vocation as an unofficial Central Park vendor. Where does he get his supply of beverages? How many other clients does he have besides our team? How has he managed to operate under the radar for so long? But I assume that in his line of work, doesn’t do too many interviews with bloggers. Still, we’ve been using Kingston’s services for a couple of seasons now and it never once occurred to me that he’s a true entrepreneur and someone who, despite the mystery surrounding him—or maybe because of the mystery surrounding him—I’ve come to appreciate as a businessman. In fact, it was only after a recent bad experience with a major airline that I realized how bad customer service can be, and by contrast, how good Kingston’s is.

Last week I flew Continental Airlines to and from Puerto Rico. Due to a lack of diligence on my part when I booked the flight, my girlfriend and I had separate seats on the plane. After having no luck trading seats with other passengers on the way to Puerto Rico, I called the airlines before our return trip to Newark to see if they could help me straighten out our seating arrangements and get two together. I was assured that although the only open seats were designated as “Extra Legroom,” which cost $40 to upgrade to, we would be able to switch for free if I spoke to someone when we got to the boarding gate. But when we reached the gate, they explained that I had been misinformed, and that this was not Continental’s policy—if Extra Legroom seats go unsold, they remain empty for the flight—because it would be unfair to those who had paid the upgrade fee. I called Continental again from the airport and after 25 minutes on hold, they confirmed what I was told at the gate. My girlfriend and I sat 11 rows apart. (The worst part? The in-flight movie was Gulliver’s Travels. After seven excruciating minutes, I ripped my headphones out of the jack in frustration.) As a passenger, I know that the airline’s top priority is to get me to and from my destination safely. If the pilot can do that, I tend to forget that the flight attendants were snippy and the animal crackers were stale. But as a customer, I was underwhelmed yet again.

I think the Verizons and TimeWarners and Continentals of the world could stand to learn a few things from Kingston. He provides a high demand service at a reasonable price. If we have an issue, we can get a real person on the phone quickly (Kingston himself). This past week, a guy from Kingston’s “staff” came by to make sure we had everything we needed and even refreshed the ice in our cooler. And when he came back to collect the cooler at the end of the night, he asked us if we wanted to include anything else in next week’s order.

Most of my questions about Kingston and his business remain unanswered. I still have no idea where he came from (best guess so far: Jamaica), or where he goes when he disappears into the forest at night. I don’t know whether to believe the rumors that he works at a bazaar over the winter, or that he’s a former extra off the set of Oz. But what I do know is that like any good salesman, he persisted for a long time and eventually won our business. And from what I can tell, he’s determined to keep it.

By Bobby Calise

I wrote this post in April 2009 on my friend Ross’s New Yankee Stadium Insider blog, my first foray into the blogosphere. Enjoy!

In four years of journalism classes, I learned that one of the worst things you can do as a reporter is to decide what the story is about before you write it. Sure, you’re trying to make a deadline and odds are there won’t be too many twists and turns in a local PTA meeting or a high school baseball game. But sometimes the story writes itself. And the best thing you can do as a writer is just to stay out of its way.

As I write this, I’m looking at a Yankee ticket stub from April 11, 1996. During Easter break from school, my mom took my brother, my friend Beth, and me to see the Yankees. This was the day after Opening Day, when some guy named Andy Pettitte pitched through the snow on the way to a 7-3 victory. And as any New Yorker can tell you, the weather here is fickle: the day after the Yankees opened in the snow, it was so warm at Old Yankee Stadium that we watched the game in t-shirts.

Now I’m looking at a Yankee ticket stub from June 11, 2003. Relatives from Texas were in town for a few days over the summer and wanted to catch a Yankee game. On this particular night—and I know this because I wrote it on the back of the stub—the Houston Astros no-hit the Yankees with six pitchers, and I stuck around until the end to say that I saw such an unconventional no-hitter, even though it was against my own team.

Another ’96 stub, this one from October 20: Game 1 of the World Series. After miraculously scoring a $95 Row Y ticket, I couldn’t have been more excited. The game was scheduled for Saturday night but was moved to Sunday night after a rainout. To dry off the field, they flew in helicopters to hover above the Stadium to dry off the grass. After letting my excitement marinate for another 24 hours, I showed up just in time to watch the Atlanta Braves and 19-year-old-rookie Andruw Jones break my heart by taking the first game 12-1, behind two HRs by Jones and a foul pole dinger from Fred McGriff. I can tell you first-hand how much it sucked to be there that night, but as most Yankee fans will remember, it turned out pretty OK for us after that.

Digging through my old tickets was a fun exercise, but it wasn’t what I thought I’d be writing about when I started this post. I had planned to go on a Lewis Black-like rant about how, thanks to StubHub, I’ll no longer have the stiff, glossy tickets with the Modell’s 15% off coupon on the back when I go to Yankee games; I’ll only have a paper print-out with a barcode at the top and the StubHub URL at the bottom. But when I started to look through my box of old ticket stubs, I realized that it doesn’t really matter that what material the ticket is printed on. What matters is what you think of when you look at that ticket.

For example, I have ticket stubs from…

The Departed, 2006 – I was supposed to wait to see it with my girlfriend. I didn’t. We broke up shortly after.

No Doubt, 2000 – Lit opened for No Doubt at Jones Beach; a pre-Fergie Black Eyed Peas opened for Lit. Not. Too. Good.

The Sixth Sense, 1999 – Turns out Bruce Willis was dead the whole time. Crazy!

Fenway Park, 1995 – My mom took us when we were kids. This past Thanksgiving she showed me a picture from that vacation. In the picture, I was wearing a Red Sox souvenir t-shirt. I threw up a little in my mouth.

You get the point. Whether it’s the shiny ticket or the crappy paper print-out, save your ticket stubs from concerts, movies, ballgames, plays, museums, whatever. Save plastic hotel keys from family vacations. Save matchbooks from skeevy dive bars. Keep them tucked away in a box like a time capsule, and look through them from time to time. If you’re anything like me, you’re going to be happy you did.

By Bobby Calise

About six years ago, a young and ambitious salesman at Petry Media Corp was preparing for a job interview with CBS, which at the time would have been a big step in his nascent sales career. To help himself stand out among the other candidates, he asked his colleague and veteran salesman Marty Rosenberg to put in a good word with the hiring manager at CBS, whom Marty knew personally. Marty had played with the hiring manager 12 years earlier on the Petry Pilots company softball team and was happy to help. But instead of just a “good word,” Marty dug through 30 years of old softball scorebooks and tracked down the box score from the CBS hiring manager’s best game as a Pilot, made a copy of the page, and gave it to the young salesman. An unorthodox but clever tactic, the young salesman paper clipped the box score to his resume and brought it on his interview. He got the job.

I met Marty in 2005 when I was hired by Petry, my first real job out of college. With a meager starting salary and a two-hour commute each way, the position really only came with one perk: the company softball team. I had a brief tryout, after which Marty put me in the starting line-up and I never relinquished my spot, mostly for fear of being “Pipp’d.” (When someone misses a game, Marty admonishes us repeatedly with the tale of Wally Pipp, the Yankee first baseman who sat out a game in 1925 and was replaced by the “Iron Man,” Lou Gehrig, who went on to play 2,130 consecutive games as Pipp’s replacement.)

The Petry Pilots 2011 softball season begins on May 3. It’ll be my seventh season, and my fifth since leaving the company in 2006. About half the guys on the team no longer work for Petry, which has seen several rounds of layoffs over the last few years. But we continue to show up to play for Pilots every Tuesday at 6 pm. We drink cheap beer, tell and retell stories from back in the day, and occasionally make a game winning (or losing) play. Our team is unique in that there’s no actual league, no season standings, and no first place trophy to hoist above our heads. Marty simply sends our permit application off to the parks department every January requesting 16 spring and summer dates at Heckscher field 6 in lower Central Park, and we figure out our opponents later.

The roster looks a little different than it used to. Last summer, our star shortstop Joe got a job on Long Island and had to stop playing with us midway through the season. I campaigned for a chance to fill in and Marty, preferring that I stayed in the outfield, begrudgingly agreed. I had a banner day at the plate, cracking four homers and driving in 11 runs—but I also made six errors at short and cost the team several unearned runs and a lot of patience. I knew Marty wanted to scream at me and yank me off the field around error #4, but he didn’t. He felt that we’d have a better chance of winning if he just left me alone to mishandle every routine ground ball and sidearm all my throws up the first base line, as long as I continued to hit well. We won the game handily, 20-13, and in his recap email the next day (he always sends one) he praised our team’s effort, not even mentioning my nightmarish play in the field. But even in victory I felt like I had let the team down. I responded to his email: “How magnanimous of you to leave out my defensive struggles!” He replied: “Truly one of the greatest offensive performances I’ve ever seen. Your offensive surge far overshadowed your play at short.”

This season will be Marty’s 34th as a Pilot. He’ll turn 67 years old in July but still pitches every other game for us in addition to managing the team. He still fields his position like a Gold Glover, still changes speeds and mixes in a knuckleball, and still gets pissed off when he gives up a big hit.

Our schedule has softened a bit over the years. Some of our formerly bitter rivals have evolved into just-for-fun coed squads that were built more for an extremely casual ZogSports league than to play against a taking-it-way-too-seriously team like ours. (In my seven seasons we’ve only had one female player.) A couple of times a season we’ll face a team full of veteran ballplayers who want to snatch the off-season bragging rights away from Marty. If we jump out to an early lead, Marty tells us we still need more runs; if we fall behind, he questions our effort. In my first season I was 24 and out to prove myself to my new teammates and to Marty. Back then if Marty yelled at me about a mental error I had made, I’d defensively yell back. Now, he yells a little less and I make a better effort not to get so riled up.

I know, I know, it’s only softball. Every year I tell myself I won’t take it as seriously as I used to. There’s no need to leg out a double in the first inning, or to try to nail a runner at the plate when we’re already up 15 runs. But once I step onto the field for the first time each spring, I can’t help myself. I don’t want to let my teammates down. I don’t want to let Marty down. And most importantly, I don’t want to ever get Pipp’d.

By Bobby Calise

The Office’s Dwight Schrute once pontificated: “Why tip someone for a job I’m capable of doing myself? I can deliver food. I can drive a taxi. I can—and do—cut my own hair. I did however, tip my urologist, because I am unable to pulverize my own kidney stones.”

Like Dwight, I’ve always found the rules on tipping to be rather arbitrary. Why is it sacrosanct that we tip a waitress 15 to 20% for average service, but many of us are much stingier when a cab driver adequately gets us to our destination on time and unharmed? Why do many people leave their barber a generous tip for a job well done, but never more than pocket change and lint to our Subway sandwich maker?

Using myself as a case study of a frequent bar hopper, my standard rule is to tip $1 per beer. Whether I’m drinking $10 Stellas on the roof at 230 Fifth or chugging $1 Natty Light out of red Solo cups at a college bar, the bartender is still getting a dollar a drink. Think about that: my dollar is a 10% tip at one place and a 100% tip at another. The act of pouring beer is exactly the same in both places, so the tip should be the same, right? Well, the evil eye I’d probably get from the rooftop bartender would suggest otherwise.

I know a guy who runs a part-time dog grooming business. He charges a flat rate for house calls and often clients tip him on top of that, sometimes as much as 50%. The tips tend to be better when the dog needs more grooming…or when it tries to bite him. Let me repeat that: he stands to make the most money if a dog mistakes his hand for a chew toy.

Assuming you’ve worked out your own system for tipping the various service professionals here in America, traveling abroad comes with its own set of tipping etiquette quagmires. I recommend giving yourself a head start and reading a travel guide for that country in advance. When I studied abroad in England, I had previously read that the English don’t tip bartenders. Still, I usually tried to leave an extra “quid” on the bar when I had it. As a result the bartenders always seemed to find my face in the crowd of people waiting for a fresh pint. On another occasion during a weekend trip to Dublin, our group found a busy cafe to grab a cheap breakfast. Not realizing that our waitress was not working on tips, someone asked, “Can I have a free refill on my coffee?” The waitress replied, “Free refills? What do you think this is, America?”

My oddest tipping experience came during a two-week stay in China last May. My girlfriend and I had read in several books that tipping doesn’t exist in mainland China. We adhered to that policy pretty strictly, though we were willing to bend the rules for masseuses who could sooth our barking dogs—the kind that don’t bite—after long days of sight seeing on foot. But when you’re staying in a touristy area, such as The Forbidden City district in Beijing, the service workers know that they can probably convince you to tip them if you’re from a country that regularly pays a gratuity. One particularly aggressive taxi driver—whose taxi, for the record, was a two-seat cart pulled by an electric motorbike—unabashedly cajoled us for a little extra on top of his fare. Using perhaps the only English he spoke, he said, ”tippa tippa tippa.” (Imagine how you’d say ”tickle tickle tickle” to a baby.) Confused, I gave him a 10% tip, one yuan, or the equivalent of about 7 U.S. cents. He looked at me, laughed, and said again, “tippa tippa tippa.” I handed him one more yuan. He laughed again, shook his head, and zoomed away. It seems that when it comes to tipping, China is the worst of both worlds. The service professionals don’t work on gratuity so they’re not inclined to provide better service, but they still ask for a tip. Next time, I’ll keep my 14 cents.

At this writing I’m no closer to answering the questions I asked above. In the end, I guess, a waitress may not be able to control the frugality of her customers, but at least the food service industry has some degree of self-policing built into it. The concept of serving defiled food has been well-documented in cinema (see: Fight Club, Road Trip, or Waiting), so much so that it’s even created an irrational fear for some of us. I once was out to dinner at Applebee’s with a college friend and her younger brother who was visiting from home. The meal was good and the service was fine. When we got the check, there was some discrepancy and we asked the waiter to please take a second look. When he left the table to review it, my friend’s younger brother said, “Oh great. Now he’s gonna spit in the bill.”

By Bobby Calise

Beggars, apparently, can be choosers.

That’s the lesson I learned this past Saturday on the 4 train headed towards Brooklyn. When I boarded the packed subway car, a homeless man was working the crowd of passengers, asking for monetary donations to help propel himself away from his current circumstances and toward greener pastures. By the time I had gotten on, he had come to the end of his spiel and was in the process of collecting donations. He seemed to linger a little too long for one passenger, though, a young blonde woman who had given him 50 cents a few seconds earlier. She muttered something to the effect of, “OK enough already,” apparently hoping the homeless man would take the hint and move on.

The homeless man instead took exception to the woman’s comment and launched into a ten-minute diatribe, first towards the young blonde woman and then towards society in general (to his credit, he kept his language clean). He talked about his status as a veteran of three different wars and his efforts to defend the freedoms that people, like the young blonde woman, took for granted. At one point another rider even chimed in to support him: “Some people don’t know what it’s like to be homeless!”

By this time I had begun to tune him out and keep my head down for fear of being engaged in the debate. But then the homeless man did something that got my attention, something I had never seen before: he turned to the young blonde woman, reached over to her, and gave the 50 cents back to her. Huh?!?! This particular homeless man was poor enough to ride the subway asking passengers for donations, but not so poor that he’d accept money from a patron whose attitude he didn’t like. I was stunned.

Continuing his monologue as my fellow passengers and I counted the stops until we could escape the awkwardness, the homeless man (who is black) told a story of his encounter with another man who also works the trains (who is white). The other man claimed to have made $88 on a one-way trip on the Lexington Line, just by telling his own story and collecting donations. So the homeless man, making use of the other man’s tip, did the same in the hopes of a similar fortune. He rode the Lex Line one way, telling his story and collecting donations. According to his tally, he earned just $6. He not so subtly attributed these figures to an element of racial bias among the subway riders of New York City. And with that, I reached my destination and got off the train.

Homelessness in New York City, or anywhere for that matter, isn’t funny. It’s heart-breaking. But to me the saddest part of this particular man’s story wasn’t that he was a victim of racism or rudeness or any number of bad breaks that led to poverty. It was that he was a bad businessman and didn’t realize it. He turned a customer (the blonde woman) into his biggest detractor and actually lost money on the transaction. And through his argument with her, he poisoned the pool of other potential customers (a subway car full of passengers who just wanted him to go away). Finally, he managed to waste his own valuable time deriding an individual dissatisfied customer rather embracing a “The Customer is Always Right” attitude, ignoring her rude comment, and moving on to the next car to work his way towards his $88 goal.

I can’t possibly fathom what it’s like to be in the homeless man’s position, and for that I feel very blessed. If his rant was simply a momentary setback on an otherwise successful attempt at reaching his goal of getting off the streets then I applaud him for his hustle. But what I do know is that Chase won’t turn away a customer’s money even if that customer is rude to one of its tellers. Starbucks will still make your caramel macchiato for you, even if you’re a jerk. And JetBlue doesn’t ask you a series of questions about how nice you are as a person before they let you buy a ticket. The customer is always right, and $88 is always more than $6.