My parents bought an Electrolux vacuum and carpet shampooer ca. 1990, give or take a couple years. The shampooer is still aorund, I think. When we moved west, we briefly live din an apartment in Spokane while my parents looked for a more permanent home. The Mother Thing lent the vacuum to a neighbor, who managed to destroy it somehow. I think she had a broken fish tank and treated it like a wet/dry shop vac. In any case, that was the end of that.

I briefly attended a recruitment seminar for Cutco knives. I didn't like the feel of it. The first aid kit in my car came in handy, though, because a dumbass also attending managed to cut himself. Those knives are plenty sharp, after all, but one should know better than to have one's fleshy fingers anywhere near the slicey-dicey metal.

I worked in a call center for one of the major cell phone carriers for almost 3 years in the aftermath of the housing crash and the end of my drafting career. It was above-board, and we were inbound calls only. That meant any yahoo who saw a TV commercial could call us, though. Hitting targets was a pain in the ass, and there was always pressure to upsell. This was peak BlackBerry time, and the OG Motorola Razor line, and early smartphones. Symbian was still an option. I was there when Windows Phones launched. the horror! They were pretty good devices, really, but Android and iPhone owned that market, and Microsoft wasn't really adding anything worthwhile to stand out. But yeah, that was the worst sales job I've had.