The Real Hard Sell by William W. Stuart (most interesting books to read txt) đ
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- Author: William W. Stuart
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This story was published in If: Worlds of Science Fiction, July 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
[p 25]
Naturally human work was more creative, more inspiring, more important than robot drudgery. Naturally it was the most important task in all the world ⊠or was it?
BY WILLIAM W. STUART
Ben Tilman sat down in the easiest of all easy chairs. He picked up a magazine, flipped pages; stood up, snapped fingers; walked to the view wall, walked back; sat down, picked up the magazine.
He was waiting, near the end of the day, after hours, in the lush, plush waiting roomââThe customerâs ease is the Sales Managerâs pleaseââto see the Old Man. He was fidgety, but not about something. About nothing. He was irritated at nobody, at the world; at himself.
He was irritated at himself because there was no clear reason for him to be irritated at anything.
There he sat, Ben Tilman, normally a cheerful, pleasant young man. He was a salesman like any modern man and a far better salesman than most. He had a sweet little wife, blonde and pretty. He had a fine, husky two-year-old boy, smart, a real future National Sales Manager. He loved them both. He had every reason to be contented with his highly desirable, comfortable lot.
And yet he had been getting more sour and edgy ever since about six months after the baby came home from the Center and the novelty of responsibility for wife and child had worn off. He had now quit three jobs, good enough sales jobs where he was doing well, in a year. For no reason? [p 26] For petty, pointless reasons.
With Ancestral Insurance, âGenerations of Protection,â heâd made the Billion Dollar Clubâand immediately begun to feel dissatisfied with itâjust before cute, sexy, blonde Betty had suddenly come from nowhere into his life and he had married her. That had helped, sure. But as soon after that as he had started paying serious attention to his job again, he was fed up with it. âToo much paper work. All those forms. Itâs work for a robot, not a man,â heâd told Betty when he quit. A lie. The paper work was, as he looked back on it, not bad at all; pleasant even, in a way. It was justânothing. Anything.
Indoor-Outdoor Climatizersâsniffles, he said, kept killing his sales presentation even though his record was good enough. Ultra-sonic toothbrushes, then, were a fine product. Only the vibration, with his gold inlay, seemed to give him headaches after every demonstration. He didnât have a gold inlay. But the headaches were real enough. So he quit.
So now he had a great new job with a great organization, Amalgamated Production for LivingâALPRODLIV. He was about to take on his first big assignment.
For that he had felt a spark of the old enthusiasm and it had carried him into working out a bright new sales approach for the deal tonight. The Old Man himself had taken a personal interest, which was a terrific break. And still Ben Tilman felt that uneasy dissatisfaction. Damn.
âMr. Robb will see you now, Mr. Tilman,â said the cool robot voice from the Elec-Sec Desk. It was after customer hours and the charming human receptionist had gone. The robot secretary, like most working robots, was functional in formâcircuits and wires, mike, speaker, extension arms to type and to reach any file in the room, wheels for intra-office mobility.
âThanks, hon,â said Ben. Nevertheless, robot secretaries were all programmed and rated femaleâand it was wise to be polite to them. After all, they could think and had feelings. There were a lot of important things they could do for a salesmanâor, sometimes, not do. This one, being helpful, stretched out a long metal arm to open the door to the inner office for Ben. He smiled his appreciation and went in.
The Old Man, Amalgamatedâs grand old salesman, was billiard bald, aging, a little stout and a little slower now. But he was still a fine sales manager. He sat at his huge, old fashioned oak desk as Ben walked across the office.
âEvening, sir.â No [p 27] response. Louder, âGood evening, Mr. Robb. Mr. Robb, itâs Ben, sir. Ben Tilman. You memoâd me to comeââ Still no sign. The eyes, under the great, beetling brows, seemed closed.
Ben grinned and reached out across the wide desk toward the small, plastic box hanging on the Old Manâs chest. The Old Man glanced up as Ben tapped the plastic lightly with his fingernail.
âOh, Ben. Itâs you.â The Old Man raised his hand to adjust the ancient style hearing aid he affected as Ben sank into a chair. âSorry Ben. I just had old Brannic Z-IX in here. A fine old robot, yes, but like most of that model, long-winded. Soââ He gestured at the hearing aid.
Ben smiled. Everyone knew the Old Man used that crude old rig so he could pointedly tune out conversations he didnât care to hear. Any time you were talking to him and that distant look came into his half closed eyes, you could be sure that you were cut off.
âSorry, Ben. Well now. I simply wanted to check with you, boy. Everything all set for tonight?â
âWell, yes, sir. Everything is set and programmed. Betty and I will play it all evening for the suspense, let them wonder, build it upâand then, instead of the big pitch theyâll be looking for, weâll let it go easy.â
âA new twist on the old change-up. Ben, boy, itâs going to go. I feel it. Itâs in the air, things are just ripe for a new, super-soft-sell pitch. Selling youâve got to do by feel, eh Ben? By sales genius and the old seat of the pants. Good. After tonight Iâm going all out, a hemisphere-wide, thirty day campaign. Iâll put the top sales artist of every regional office on it. They can train on your test pattern tapes. I believe we can turn over billions before everybody picks up the signal and it senilesces. You give an old man a new faith in sales, Ben! Youâre a salesman.â
âWell, sirââ But the Old Manâs knack with the youthful-enthusiasm approach was contagious. For the moment Ben caught it and he felt pretty good about the coming nightâs work. He and Betty together would put the deal over. That would be something.
Sure it wouldâŠ
âHow do you and your wife like the place, Ben?â It was some place, for sure, the brand new house that Amalgamated had installed Ben, Betty and Bennie in the day after he had signed up.
âItâsâuhâjust fine, sir. Betty likes it very much, really. We both do.â He hoped his tone was right.
âGood, Ben. Well, be sure to stop by in the morning. Iâll have the tapes, of course, [p 28] but Iâll want your analysis. Might be a little vacation bonus in it for you, too.â
âSir, I donât know how to thank you.â
The Old Man waved a hand. âNothing you wonât have earned, my boy. Robots canât sell.â That was the set dismissal.
âYes, sir. Robots canât manage sales, orââ He winked. The Old Man chuckled. An old joke was never too old for the Old Man. The same old bromides every time; and the same hearty chuckle. Ben left on the end of it.
Dialing home on his new, Company-owned, convertible soar-kart, he felt not too bad. Some of the old lift in spirits came as the kart-pilot circuits digested the directions, selected a route and zipped up into a north-north-west traffic pattern. The Old Man was a wonderful sales manager and boss. The new house-warming pitch that he and Betty would try tonight was smart. He could feel he had done something.
Exercising his sales ability with fair success, he fed himself this pitch all along the two hundred mile, twenty-minute hop home from the city. The time and distance didnât bother him. âGives me time to think,â he had told Betty. Whether or not this seemed to her an advantage, she didnât say. At least she liked the place, âAmalgamatedâs Country Gentleman EstateâSpacious, Yet fully Automated.â
âWe are,â the Old Man told Ben when he was given the Company-assigned quarters, âstarting a new trend. With the terrific decline in birth rate during the past 90 to 100 years, youâll be astonished at how much room there is out there. No reason for everyone to live in the suburban centers any more. With millions of empty apartments in them, high time we built something else, eh? Trouble with people today, no initiative in obsolescing. But weâll move them.â
Home, Ben left the kart out and conveyed up the walk. The front door opened. Betty had been watching for him. He walked to the family vueroom, as usual declining to convey in the house. The hell with the conveyorâs feelings, if so simple a robot really had any. He liked to walk.
âColor pattern,â Betty ordered the vuescreen as he came in, ârobot audio out.â With people talking in the house it was still necessary to put the machines under master automatic and manual control. Some of the less sophisticated robots might pick up some chance phrase of conversation and interpret it as an order if left on audio.
âBen,â said Betty, getting up to meet him, âyouâre late.â
Ben was too good a salesman [p 29] to argue that. Instead, he took her in his arms and kissed her. It was a very good sixty seconds later that she pushed him away with a severeness destroyed by a blush and a giggle to say, âLate but making up for lost time, huh? And sober, too. You must be feeling good for a change.â
âSureâand you feel even better, sugar.â He reached for her again. She slipped away from him, laughing, but his wrist tel-timer caught on the locket she always wore, her only memento from her parents, dead in the old moon-orb crash disaster. She stood still, slightly annoyed, as he unhooked and his mood was, not broken, but set back a little. âWhatâs got into you tonight anyway, Ben?â
âOh, I donât know. Did I tell you, the O.M. may give us a vacation? Remember some of those nights up at that new âDo It Yourselfâ Camp last summer?â
âBen!â She blushed, smiled. âWe wonât get any vacation if we blow our house-warming pitch tonight, you know. And we have three couples due here in less than a half hour. Besides, I have to talk to you about Nana.â
âThat damned new CD-IX model. Now what?â
âSheâs very upset about Bennie. Iâm not sure I blame her. This afternoon he simply refused his indoctrination. All the time he should have been playing store with Playmate he insisted on drawing thingsâhimself, mind you, not Playmate. On the walls, with an old pencil of yours he found someplace in your things. Nana couldnât do a thing with him. She says youâve got to give him a spanking.â
âWhy me? Why not you?â
âNow Ben, weâve been over that and over it. Discipline is the fatherâs job.â
âWell, I wonât do it. Bennieâs just a baby. Let him do a few things himself. Wonât hurt him.â
âBen!â
âThat Nana is an officious busybody, trying to run our lives.â
âOh, Ben! You know Nana loves little Bennie. She only wants to help him.â
âBut to what?â
âSheâd never dream of lifting a finger against Bennie no matter what he did. And she lives in terror that heâll cut her switch in some temper tantrum.â
âHmph! Well, Iâm going up right now and tell her if I hear another word from her about spanking Bennie, Iâll cut her switch myself. Then she can go back to Central for reprogramming and see how she likes it.â
âBen! You wouldnât.â
âWhy not? Maybe she needs a new personality?â
[p 30]
âYou wonât say a thing to her. Youâre too soft-hearted.â
âThis time I wonât be.â
This time he wasnât. He met Nana CD-IX in the hallway outside Bennieâs room. Like all nurse, teaching, and childrenâs personal service robots, she was human in form, except for her control dial safely out of babyâs reach, top, center.
The human form was reassuring to children, kept them from feeling strange with parents back. Nana was big, gray-haired, stout, buxom, motherly, to reassure parents.
âNow, Mr. Tilman,â she said with weary impatience, âyou are too late. Surely you donât intend to burst in and disturb your son now.â
âSurely I do.â
âBut he is having his supper. You will upset him. Canât you understand that you should arrange to be here between 5:30 and 6 if you wish to interview the child?â
âDid he miss me? Sorry, I couldnât make it earlier. But now I am going to see him a minute.â
âMr. Tilman!â
âNana! And whatâs this about your wanting Bennie spanked because he drew a few pictures?â
âSurely you realize these are the childâs formative years, Mr. Tilman. He should be learning to think in terms of selling nowânot doing things. Thatâs robot work, Mr.
Tilman. Robots canât sell, you know, and what will people, let alone robots think if you let your boy grow upââ
âHeâs growing up fine; and I am going in to see him.â
âMr. Tilman!â
âAnd for two credits, Nana, Iâd cut your switch. You hear me?â
âMr. Tilmanâno! No, please. Iâm sorry. Let the boy scrawl a bit; perhaps it wonât hurt him. Go in and see him if you must, but do try not to upset him orâ All right, all right. But please Mr. Tilman, my switchââ
âVery well Nana. Iâll leave it. This time.â
âThank you, Mr.
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