| About a million years ago, I was a younger buck with an itch for sales. I got hired at the Times Square store as a floor rep. I had this grandiose design in my head that I'd just sell my you-know-what off and rise to the top. You needed to be bilingual to work there, and I had just moved to the city from a yeehaw nowhere-town, so I just claimed to be, got the job, and started hustling. I moved watches. Like you wouldn't believe, sometimes 2-3 in an hour! About six weeks go by, and I'm brought downstairs into the admin office area, several of the managers (there were like 7 levels of mgmt throughout the store) were waiting for me. The head lady at the time looked me dead in the eyes and spoke a whole Spanish paragraph. Of course, I had no idea, so I was speechless. She said: "That's what I thought, furtivo." I was no longer welcome in the store, and they even made me take off my store shirt and walk to the train in my undershirt. I didn't walk away thinking "I'll never lie again" but rather, I learned the difference between bs-ing a little, and outright lying. We all bs a little, particularly on the resume and in the interview, but I make a point not to outright lie anymore. I visited the store nearly a decade later, and only recognized one person there, someone I had never directly interacted with. Nobody stuck around, anyhow. Hope they all moved up somehow. |
I have a friend that my wife met in language school. This girl was from New York and she had an insanely good CV, best uni education from Yale, investment bank and hedge fund experience. But do you know what, she kept getting fired on the corporate gigs she took here. The trouble was, she thought lying a little is okay. Which it clearly isn't in my Northern European country. Schmoozing while a great party lubricant very easily becomes lying and that is very heavily frowned upon in most Euro places.