Former salesperson's revelations

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Act 1. To drink or not to drink - is that the question?

I am a history teacher. This was my favorite profession. I believed that with each reform the teacher's rate would grow in line with the contribution the teacher makes to the future of Russia. But when the teacher's salary became incompatible with survival, she left school. So I became a sales agent, first in a tobacco, and then in a large alcoholic company. Soon my salary, in comparison with the teacher's salary, increased significantly. I was proud of my company, proud of the fact that we advertise and sell "high quality" goods.

My responsibilities included: working with sales staff in stores, promoting new products and working with young people striving to become as “successful” as I am. At the very beginning of my career, I was sure that “to drink or not to drink, to smoke or not to smoke” is everyone's personal choice. I remember that after passing the relevant trainings, where we were taught, among other things, what to do so that a person “chooses” exactly what we need to sell, I had no doubts that everyone has a personal choice. I did not lose confidence in my righteousness even during promotions, when we "taught" to choose the "right" cigarettes and the "right" vodka.

But one day a young girl came to our company who decided to become a promoter. She passed the casting very successfully. I was happy for her, but she, after working one day, did not come to work. Concerned, I called her home. The words she said to me shook me to the depths of my soul: “Am I doing the right thing,” she asked me, “that I promote alcohol? I cannot sell vodka because it contradicts my inner convictions."

At that time I was much older than this girl, but for the first time I had doubts about the "voluntariness" in the choice "to drink or not to drink."

After that promotion, we reported on a successful advertising campaign in Magnitogorsk: the amount of liquor sold (now I use this word, and then I proudly pronounced "alcoholic drinks!") Increased significantly! And I began to notice things that I didn’t realize before. At the trainings, we were not told anything about the effect of alcohol on human health, about destroyed families and destinies, but they talked a lot about the quality of the product, about the efforts to create it, about the incredibly huge amount of money invested in it - everything that made us proud of our company and feel their involvement in some "great" business. Therefore, during the campaign, we experienced real excitement, and when it came to an end, we eagerly counted the amount sold. We were not very interested in what would happen to the people who bought vodka from us - we were interested in our salary!

Act 2: Beware - Poison

Somewhere in my soul, a question began to arise: why in Russia there are so many drinkers, why is the number of alcoholic and tobacco shops growing at a tremendous speed throughout the country? But the confidence, formed during many trainings, that personal and family tragedies are a consequence of the fact that a person drank in the wrong way, in the wrong quantity and in the wrong quality, drowned out the voice of conscience. From all sides the assertion sounded that they always drank in Russia. And although as a history teacher I knew it was a lie, I succumbed to the directional effect of the advertisement! Only today I realized that a well-oiled system acts on us, which is aimed at fabulous profits at the expense of our well-being and health! Today, alcohol is freely sold even in convenience stores, where not only adults, but also children go for groceries. And as "food !!!" these shops offer beer, wine and other alcoholic swill of different dilutions and tastes, which are called "drinks"! The reverse transformation is taking place with large stores: they began to turn from pure alcoholic into grocery stores. So we were gradually taught and taught that alcohol is an ordinary food product that can be easily bought in any store, at any time, at any age. And if for us, adults, this is an "achievement" of democracy, then for the younger generation it is the norm of life: I bought something to eat and drink!

I began to notice such pictures from the life of our townspeople, which I had not noticed before. Dad buys three bottles of beer. There are chocolates, sweets, chupa-chups near the cash register and a child is standing nearby, who asks: "Buy, buy!" He doesn't care what - just to be like dad. And dad buys him a lollipop. The child stops talking, dad is happy. But time will pass, and a grown up boy, who in childhood really wanted to be like his dad, will buy himself a lot of beer, and already his child - "chupa-chups" The attitude to life in our children is formed from what they see! And it shouldn't come as a surprise that as early as the first grade of high school, kids can tell you about beer, about cigarettes, and even about sex! And in grades 5-6, they don't just talk about all this, they taste it! Do you want your child to become an alcoholic or drug addict? I think no. Now remember the beer festivals where there were so many pregnant moms and dads with babies! Who benefits from our children getting used to alcohol and tobacco as indispensable attributes of the holiday? Our parents, carrying us, were afraid to breathe the smell of paint, but today drinking alcohol or sucking it in with cigarette smoke is the norm for expectant young mothers! Who will then save them and their children in maternity hospitals? What teachers will they ask if their child becomes mentally disabled? So whose choice is it - to drink or not to drink - yours, your child's, or that alcohol, tobacco and beer company that makes money at the expense of you and your children?

Act3: How Odysseus went to the store

I walk into a typical grocery store of any large chain company and the first thing my gaze rests on is fancy bottles of alcohol! There are so many of them! And you won't be able to pass by, the department is right at the entrance. And I feel the same as an ordinary person: the desire to approach, examine, touch, try. Everything! Everything is done so that we salivate at the sight of this smart "barricade", so that our instincts work faster than our minds! So that we want to "match" something! Color, shape, design, competent placement on the shelf - everything plays on our emotions and instincts! Attention is paid to almost all social categories! Nobody should feel deprived! At the same time, the producers of this "harmless"-looking product sacredly cherish their emotions: any manifestation of emotions, any doubt about the correctness of such an aggressive influence on the buyer in any alcohol company is punishable by dismissal or obstruction!

Once I saw how two "tobacco" trade agents were fighting for the right to keep their products at the level of the buyer's eyes, in the immediate area. Order, clarity of the location of price tags and brand names, colors, music, smells, uniforms of sales personnel - there is nothing accidental in these stores! Everything is aimed at ensuring that tobacco-alcoholic poison falls into the zone of your interests!

Unfortunately, the zombie for the consumption of alcoholic and tobacco poisons is so strong today that few people generally understand that they are being zombified. And the "sirens" themselves rarely realize what they are doing. It seems to them that even if someone dies in a car accident, drowns, kills a relative or drinking companion, maims or takes the life of their own child, then this will certainly not happen to them and not to their families. But how can you count on this, if the "sirens" from another store are deeply indifferent to what happens to you or your loved ones, and to catch the lifeline of a sober lifestyle today rarely occurs to anyone!

Act 4: "Daddy, play with me!"

For a long time my child did not understand why his dad was not around when he really needed him. And dad had no time - he drank. We have tried all the options for "cultural" drinking: what to drink, and how much to drink, and with whom to drink, and when to drink. And we rejected the encoding as another method of zombification. Finally the day came when I, realizing that his alcoholism and my work were tightly connected, left the company. I made the choice that no one has ever advocated for me anywhere - to stay sober under any life circumstances. Since then, our entire family has been leading a sober, happy life. But how many more families in which children do not have the opportunity to stay close to their sober dads or moms! - to read a book with them, assemble an interesting constructor, make a model of some destroyer, go on a hike or go fishing with it?.. But how often do our children become participants in family scandals, quarrels and parental divorces! Our children absorb scenes of violence from TVs, interspersed with pleasant pictures of "friendly" parties with beer, and endless conversations of adults about the frailty of the world, about the fact that in this life you need to try everything … Everything except a sober lifestyle, which makes a person free-thinking and happy! Why? Who benefits from us stopping thinking, forgetting how to communicate without alcohol, solving problems soberly ?! Who benefits from us becoming drinking-chewing animals, stuffing someone's pocket with our money?

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Who makes our life hard? Why do we always blame someone for our troubles? Why do we demand an answer from other people for our mistakes? Why do we want someone to start living soberly for us and solve all our problems? Improving our own life is the task of each of us. And only a sober person can feel something different - the quality breath of life. Only a sober person is able to get the best out of himself and pass on to children! Only a healthy environment is capable of raising a healthy younger generation!

Act 5. The last one. Or the first one?

Being an alcohol or tobacco salesperson is a highly desirable position for many. You will ask why? The answer is simple: you won't earn much on milk and bread, because the cost of these products is close to their real price. But the difference between the cost of tobacco and alcoholic poisons and the prices at which we buy them in stores is huge! Due to this, alcoholic and tobacco companies receive fabulous profits. And we ourselves bring them our money! When I thought about how powerfully the alcohol-tobacco structure works, how competently their sales agents and other employees prepare, how carefully each word intended for the customer is thought out, I became scared. And it's scary not only because these companies are capable of destroying us as thinking people, but also because we, as thinking people, cannot or do not want to oppose anything to them! Therefore, I believe that it is necessary to take alcohol and tobacco shops away from the city, remove them from the near access zone! And in no case make them grocery! Along with alcohol there is only alcohol! No snacks or other related products! And no children or pregnant women on the doorstep of such shops!

Children in grades 4-5 should not be told about condoms, which are necessary during an alcoholic party, but about a sober, successful lifestyle, about the beauty of our world, about how to build a happy life! And such an understanding of the world can be found only in sober-minded adults.

But maybe there is still a lot to make up for?

What can I do to make my life and the life of my family go in a different - healthy and happy way?

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