Copyright 2009, All Rights Reserved
Author's note:
This story really isn't at all about the "other man" so don't expect much detail on him. As per usual, there is no sex, it's about a relationship.
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Scott:
It was mid morning on a Friday and I was already looking forward to leaving the office. Not that inside sales is boring, mind you. Ok, it is, but it couldn't quite compete with golf....or sex for that matter. In fact, if I had my way, life would revolve around those couple of pastimes. Well, so much for fantasyland. I guess I should tell you a little bit about myself.
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I'm Scott Evans. I guess I'm just your average guy, if a little on the short side. I'm 5'6" and weigh about 170. With 36 waistline, I don't have a body that make the ladies melt, but I like to think they wouldn't run away scared, either. I'm 48 years old and have mostly dark hair with the requisite sprinkling of gray. My eyes are probably my best physical attribute. They are blue, but I do have the occasional friend or family member that considers them to be gray.
My wife is Lisa and we've been married 18 years. Lisa is 44 years old and is still very attractive to me. She was/is one of those ladies that a lot of men will notice, but not necessarily every man. For me she falls into the "there's just something about her" category. You know what I mean. She is 5'7" and, though she refuses to tell me, I'm pretty sure she weighs about 145. I guess she is not considered thin, but as I said, she is still attractive to me. I LOVE watching her hips sway when she walks. She also has great legs. I consider myself something of an expert on ladies' legs after a number of years of careful, if not strictly scientific, research. I assume her hair is still mostly a light brunette, though I haven't seen the actual color in 3-4 years. She insists her colorist uses the same color as her natural color, so I guess I believe her.
Lisa and I met when I first moved to town and decided to look at an apartment in a complex she managed at the time. She was attractive enough to catch my eye, but not initially so much that I was tongue tied or anything. I guess that turned out to be in my favor because her personality very quickly started to make up for whatever little was necessary to give her a "wow" factor and I was able to be relatively smooth. I admit it was a little easier since we had built-in business to discuss that allowed us to get acquainted with no pressure.
She was very friendly, as I knew she had to be to prospective new tenants, but I assume she wasn't required to ask me to join her for coffee after I signed the lease, which she did. Again, she could have simply been being friendly, but I allowed myself to think maybe she had some interest. It happened to be late afternoon as we wrapped up the paperwork, so she knocked off about 15 minutes early and we went to continue talking and drink a latte.
By the way...in case you're wondering, I truly DID like the apartment and thought the monthly rent was competitive as well.
We had a great discussion. I learned that Lisa had worked in retail for a few years after graduating from high school, but decided after a couple years that she wanted to better herself, so she started going to school again and eventually graduated with a BA in Marketing. She still didn't know what she wanted for a career at that time, but thought that Marketing would give her a better chance in most kinds of businesses, to pursue a lot of different career options.
She definitely wanted to get out of retail, at a minimum. She enjoyed the work and the interaction with customers, but hated the number of weekend and evening hours she had to work.
Though it had never been a consideration, she noticed an ad on Monster for a leasing agent/property manager at a large apartment complex and was intrigued. She thought it would be a more "professional" position and still give her the chance to interact with customers, but also give her more normal hours. She had been there about 18 months when we met and was really enjoying it.
I gave her my story. I had graduated from a small private college in the Midwest at the age of 22 with a Business Administration degree. Much like her, I didn't know enough about what I wanted to do for a career while I was still in school to focus on the things that would have allowed me to make myself more competitive. As a result, I bounced from one "entry level" job to another for a few years before I finally figured out a couple of things about myself.
First, I didn't enjoy being responsible for the performance of other people. I learned that through a couple of junior supervisory positions such as night parking manager of a hotel in the city where I lived at the time. Second, though I enjoyed the competitiveness of sales, the fact that I had to consciously make myself think about smiling, even when I was in a good mood, made it more of a challenge for me to develop a quick rapport when meeting people in person for the first time. Obviously, that makes things tough in outside sales.
It was through a fair amount of self analysis and exploring a few "less than ideal" career paths that I finally figured out that inside sales works very well for me. I was still able to enjoy the competitive aspect of sales in general and got to capitalize on a good speaking voice. I wasn't, however, hindered by those aspects of myself that would make working in outside sales more of a challenge.
It was interesting. I found myself smiling very easily around Lisa...and without having to think about it. When it finally occurred to me to look at my watch, I found that we had been there for hours!
"Lisa, I'll be glad to stay and keep talking as long as you're interested, but I want to be sensitive to your schedule as well. Should we call it an evening? I assume it goes without saying that we'll get together again very soon, right?"
I've always heard that ladies appreciate confidence, so I figured what the heck?
"Pretty sure of yourself there, aren't you, Scott?" she said with a laugh. "Ok, give me a call at the office when you're almost done moving your stuff into your apartment and maybe I'll bring the pizza and beer over, ok? I don't think we're quite to the stage of me helping you move, just yet!"
I laughed and told her that it was a deal. I walked her out to her car and wondered about a kiss. In the end, I opted to attempt to not create any chance of awkwardness by being very proactive about not kissing....or maybe I should say trying to kiss her. As I opened her door, I said, "I hope you'll just be satisfied with the captivating conversation this evening. So many women view me as just a body and it really does get tiresome after a while!"
That was a great move, as it turns out, because it got a very hearty laugh out of her as she got into the car. I found out later that she really appreciated my effort to make that moment as easy as it could have been.
I decided, for once in my life, to just allow things to play out. I was interested in seeing Lisa again and hoped she was in me, but I didn't allow her to consume my thoughts, and certainly not my schedule as I was new in town and starting a new job.
I threw myself into learning all about my company's products and about those of our competitors. We were an industrial supply company, so there was a LOT of products, but none of them required much of an effort on my part. All our products were really more of a commodity. Our real "product", from a sales perspective, was our service.
Specifically, we managed inventory levels on behalf of our customers in such a way that we could maximize either their level of inventory or their order quantities, depending on whether they derived greater value from a little better price or from the savings of keeping inventory levels as low as possible without risking running out of important items.
I guess I was lucky enough to be one of the few to come to the realization of what our real competitive advantage was because I became our company's top producer after about 18 months or so. However enough about work, I'm sure you care more about how things progressed with Lisa.