[mistercow]

>David Mamet must not have known a lot of salespeople, to have this view of what a good salesperson is, because that is definitely not how great salespeople work.

If I wrote a story about a politician who committed suicide, would you say "You must not know a lot of politicians, to have this view of what a good politician is, because suicide is definitely not what makes a great politician"?

[swombat]

Mamet wrote a story about salespeople where all of them have highly dubious ethics ranging from being outright thieves to being conmen, and the most successful of the lot is willing to destroy someone's life to earn himself a cadillac.

From some of the other comments, it sounds like I misinterpreted Mamet's intent - he apparently wasn't looking to generalise to all salespeople - but still, it seems to me the comment is fair based on this particular piece of evidence.

[mistercow]

>and the most successful of the lot is willing to destroy someone's life to earn himself a cadillac.

...and keep his job. You can hardly watch that film without feeling soaked in the desperation of the characters.

>but still, it seems to me the comment is fair based on this particular piece of evidence.

How? The story is about a particular subset of the sales world, which is where you work for an employer who gives you an undesirable product to sell and then puts you under immense pressure to close. These situations do exist, and the people who succeed in them are the ones who are willing to act unethically. The only way that Mamet could have realistically included an ethical salesperson as a character would have been to depict them getting fired.

How do you reckon that the characters depicted in an author's work are likely to comprise the entirety of that author's experience?

[olavk]

It's hilarious that the writer uses subtly flawed logic to convince the reader that shady and unethical salespeople simply doesn't exist in the real world.

[swombat]

I don't see how I did such a thing. Of course shady and unethical salespeople exist: just walk into a mobile phone shop to meet one.

I'm saying that by and large, great salespeople are not shady and unethical, though.

[olavk]

> Which brings me to real salespeople, the ones who actually make sales in the real world, rather than in fantasy plays.... > Mythological salesmen like Ricky Roma, who are really highly skilled scammers, have given the sales profession a bad name.

Anyway, do you have any kind of evidence that deceitful salespeople cant be successful? It is a rather extraordinary claim. I mean the guy who sold the Eiffel Tower as scrap iron multiple times was pretty successful.