Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

I guess we haven’t changed much from the day of the snake oil salesman rolling through town with his mule-drawn wagon.

There is something about transience and lack of integrity that tend to make the two close partners. If we have transience, we lack integrity.

Back in the old days, or at least back in the westerns that showed a version of the old days, we had the traveling salesman in his mule-drawn wagon. This fellow usually sold some magic elixir that had oil squeezed from a snake as one key ingredient. The magic elixir was, well, magic in what it could do for anything that ailed us.

No one knew the traveling salesman. He was transitory. Here today, gone tomorrow. Should we trust this fellow as he passed through?

In some places today, it is the townspeople who are transitory. We move five times in our lifetime, or some large number of times. We don’t know all the local businesses. Hmmm. The unknown salesman appears.

Well, we have the Internet today. Anything we wish to know about any product is available to us. Anything we wish to know about the reputation of the unknown salesman is available to us. With all these “anythings” available to us, how can the salesman lacking integrity exist? They seem to find a way.

Yes, I recently spent an afternoon with a salesman who either didn’t know anything about his line of products or simply lacked integrity. Lots of fellows are struggling to make a living in the year of the virus. Some cut a few corners so they can feed their families. I suppose I should write a post about economics and integrity. That will be for another day.