On Being A Cad

Twice in my life I have worked commission sales positions.  In this line of work it is possible to meet all kinds of cads.  The interesting thing is how often the cad arrives in sheep's clothing as a "committed" man of God.


A friend once told a tale of a commission sales person who ruthlessly transferred all his non-paying insurance customers to her husband's account.  Her husband worked the list hard, anyway, and began bringing the clients back into the fold.  She was singing God's praises for making something good come from something meant for evil.


A woman from India, an immigrant, used to stop by a real estate kiosk when a particular realtor was on duty.  She picked the woman's brain for hours about available commercial properties.  The woman from India promised to be back with her father to complete the purchase.  The realtor saw a colleague and supposed friend leave with the woman and her father.  Later she confronted the "friend" for taking a client he knew to be hers.  His justification for doing so was that the father did not want to work with a woman.  Perhaps he was right to save the sale for the company, but as he had done none of the groundwork, it would have been appropriate for him to have shared the commission with the first realtor.  He did not.  There were no rules in place to cover this situation.


At another business there were firm rules in place as explained by the senior sales representative.  If a customer told the clerk ringing the sale that he had spoken with another sales person about the purchase, the sale was to be rung under the original person's number.  Frequently, the customer neglected to tell the clerk about this until the sale was completed or almost finished.  This entailed putting all the info back in the register to cancel the sale and then ringing it again under the other person's number.


One evening a frequent customer to the store stopped and told a representative that he had finally purchased the lawn tractor he had inquired about for several weeks.  He said he had told the elder salesperson that it should have been "your" sale.  The man had made an achhh sound and batted the air like the other person's sale was a pesky fly.  He rang it under his own number.


Now, I don't need to tell anybody that these men are real jerks -- cads, if you will.  They certainly were the forerunners of today's morally bankrupt throngs.  What I can't tell you is how to stop the trend.  The race toward immorality is much like a herd of lemmings racing toward their fate.  It seems impossible to stem the flow.  The best we, as Christians, can do is watch our own behavior and perhaps we'll be models for others.