paul smith's Snaps & Bytes e-home
May 2000
The stories I hear about how people got into this crazy industry often amaze me. I have a customer who became interested in computer retailing after stealing the wrong boxes from a Dix*ns warehouse. Had things gone to plan, by now he could have been the guv' of a string of TV, video and hi-fi shops instead. At this years CTS I met a Scot who had recently retired from a hard life on the oilrigs, out in the cruel North Sea, to become an Indie. I asked him if he missed the isolation, the constant threat of danger and the long unforgiving hours. "Miss it?" he replied, "I'm just getting used to it." As Basil Brush would say, "Aha-aha-aha… Boom-boom."
My own story is one of sexual politics. I was happy as a motorcycle courier but my girlfriend at that time (Ah! The raven-haired Catherine. Where art thy now?) thought I was capable of much more. Or perhaps she had become bored with my oily, leather-clad look and wanted to see me in a smart business suit? Anyway, I was bullied and generally 'blackmailed' into applying for a job as the grand sounding 'Business Machines Sales Consultant' for a local stationer (now closed.) The day after I accepted the position, she dumped me. Oh the irony of it. In an unsuccessful effort to win her back, I vowed to become the best BMSC the world had ever seen. To this day I can still recall the features and benefits of all the calculators.
Although I had fun selling PCs and occasionally, when they worked, 'Mac's too, sadly the job involved hard work so I resigned to work for ZCL as the assistant Manager of a branch of their retail chain, Calculus (now closed.) Here I learnt to tow the High Street Multiple line, to abandon my individuality and sacrifice my soul to the corporate gods. When they went bust, I worked for five months selling mobile phones. I left shortly before the branch was closed to be the Manager for a local Indie PC store…
Predictably, within six months that shop had also closed, and I was once more destitute at Christmas. It was about now that I began my downward spiral into alcohol, drugs, prostitution and finally, most tragically of all, PC cable distribution. It's not something I'm proud of. I was young and needed the money. Call me foolish, but I couldn't resist the draw of black rubber Power-leads… Mmmm!
That company lasted almost two years as my employer before it too became infected with whatever dark financial beast of the Id I carry within me, and closed down. Are you beginning to see a pattern emerge? The next Distie I became a symbiotic parasite of, seemed (for now at least), to break my trail of destruction. Feeling as if I'd lost my mystical powers of chaos, I resigned*.
Which brings me to the great firm I now work for. It's nice to be surrounded by so many happy, guileless, smiling faces…
505 words. I can write these faster than you can bring out Indies! I can see a backlog forming, piles of unused 'Paul Smith Writes…' turning into an EEC bollocks mountain! The good new is that we're making a healthy profit at the moment and is still growing at 40% p.a…. so fingers crossed there then!
Paul
* This firm, RK Distribution, has since closed. ;-)