My New Job

I'll be starting a new life as a sales person in my parent's business. I'm entirely unsure how I'll do with this as I have no sales skills and while I find the stuff pretty and interesting, I also find it to be completely useless. I've had some tips from my friend Stephen on how to be a successful sales person. Not that he would know because he's an artist. Anyway he says what I must do is always talk with a smile and repeat everything I say three times. Eg: "That's really beautiful and would look lovely in any home. Lovely. It's really very beautiful and very lovely".

I went with my mother to visit a client once and while the client was looking through the importers catalogue I stupidly said "Oh they're all very nice but to me they're just dust collectors". My mother kicked me under the table and gave me a lecture all the way home about being careful what I say. Kind of reminded me of my life as a teenager.

I'll be off to the Gift Trade Fair in Sydney at the end of February where I'll be surrounded by "Pru and Trudes" and farmers wives who own giftshops as a hobby and people who call each other "darl" and "pet". I'm looking forward to this as I will get to write about them all on my blog and it will probably be funny. Why wouldn't it be?

I will be pleased however to be helping my mother and stepfather who have worked very hard to achieve what they have. They've pulled themselves out of a terrible situation years ago and built up a very successful little business. They're well respected by those they deal with (hopefully I won't ruin that for them) and they are very clued up about how to sell without losing intergrity and self respect.

I would like to try my hand at being a rental property manager some day though. Those people pretty much get paid to do not much at all I'm sure. We've been on the hunt for alternative living arrangements and we have been searching by internet. Each property has a link to the handling agent so that you can write to request further information about the property you're intersted in, or so it says, arrange an inspection time. I have written to about 30 property managers via this link and have had a total of 3 replies. I try calling now and no one in the office can ever answer my questions. No one has ever actually laid their real eyes on the property so can't tell you anymore than their blurb says about it. You ask can you inspect it and they tell you to drive by first and then call them again if you want to take a look. Why do things twice? Then you try to tell them what specifically you are looking for in a property and they seem to let out a big sigh and say "you'll just have to keep looking on the net" and pretty much rush you off the phone. They work on behalf of the owners and not the tenants. They just have to sit back and wait for the applications to rush in, which apparently they do, do some checks on the applicants and their job is done. Easy.

Anyhow, on another note. We all have headcolds here this morning. Henry woke up coughing and spluttering with his nose running everywhere and the rest of us followed suit. The weather is so cool that it could almost be called the start of a Queensland winter (25 degrees C) so that may be why we've all suddenly developed the nose thing.

I'm leaving you with a photo of our cat tucked up in bed.