Okay, here ya go...
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I WAS AN ELECTROLUX SALESMAN
A Sordid Tell-All
Well, actually my stint with Electrolux was very very short-lived. One day, to be exact.
I had shyly wandered into the local branch office one day to ask if they might have any old models or parts for them. I was 18 at the time but looked about 12 -- I always looked much younger than my age. The branch manager "took a liking" to me and offered me a job working as his sales assistant. Boy, was I thrilled! I was to start working the very next day. He showed me the machines (1205, L, CB, B-8), including photos and brochures of the Golden Jubilee which would be out very soon. (It was in fact already in production but the branch stores hadn't actually gotten the machines yet.)
I was so excited I could hardly sleep that night ... Got there the next morning, was the first one there -- had to wait for others to show up to let me in!
I spent the day tagging along with him, watching him at work. It was a fairly uneventful day; he only sold one pack of bags to a nice lady. At the end of the day he offered to take me out to dinner. He took me to a very nice restaurant where he had several cocktails with his dinner. Afterward, we went back to the Electrolux shop and everyone had left, so we were the only ones there. He took me back to the sales "war room" where there was a projector for showing sales films.
He said, "Let's watch some movies." I thought he meant sales movies. He did not. He meant "stag" movies. An old, like, 1950s black and white "girlie" movie came onto the screen. He stood very close to me and said, "Do you like to see naked ladies?" He suddenly became a vile, drunk old man, with boozy breath, very bad B.O., and was giving me these drooly, cross-eyed leers. I really started to get nervous, and reeeally freaked out when he, well, groped me. I ran out of the place, drove home, and never came back. He called a few times but when I realized who was calling, I hung up on him.
That experience haunted me for a long time, so much so that I actually had a "phobia" about the 1205 and couldn't even stand to look at one. I was very naive at the time and had never had anything happen like that -- let alone with some drooling, drunk, stinky old man. It was not until many years later ,when I met a collector who's just nuts for the 1205, that I started to get over this experience thanks to my new friend's undying enthusiasm for the machine. I actually have a 1205, in beautiful condition, that my former pastor's wife gave me.
Now, I can kinda laugh about that experience, since I have gotten over it, and really laugh at what a naive kid I was at that time. I shouldda known what he was up to the very minute I saw the leering gleam in his eye when I first came into the store.
But, then, sometimes I still can feel that awful knot in the pit of my stomach when I realized what that disgusting old man was up to that cold winter night in 1974...
(P.S.: An amusing footnote: One day when Stan Kann was visiting, Arlee told him and me that his father had bought an Electrolux from a door-to-door salesman in the 1970s when they lived in Palm Springs. He said his cousin, who lived in their old house, still had it. One day when we went out there for a weekend we went to the house and he got the Electrolux -- a 1205 in nearly perfect condition.)
