Transcriber’s note:

This story was published in If: Worlds of Science Fiction, July 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

[p 25] Naturally human work was more creative, more inspiring, more important than robot drudgery. Naturally it was the most important task in all the world … or was it?

THE REAL HARD SELL

BY WILLIAM W. STUART

Ben Tilman sat down in the easiest of all easy chairs. He picked up a magazine, flipped pages; stood up, snapped fingers; walked to the view wall, walked back; sat down, picked up the magazine.

He was waiting, near the end of the day, after hours, in the lush, plush waiting room—“The customer’s ease is the Sales Manager’s please”—to see the Old Man. He was fidgety, but not about something. About nothing. He was irritated at nobody, at the world; at himself.

He was irritated at himself because there was no clear reason for him to be irritated at anything.

There he sat, Ben Tilman, normally a cheerful, pleasant young man. He was a salesman like any modern man and a far better salesman than most. He had a sweet little wife, blonde and pretty. He had a fine, husky two-year-old boy, smart, a real future National Sales Manager. He loved them both. He had every reason to be contented with his highly desirable, comfortable lot.

And yet he had been getting more sour and edgy ever since about six months after the baby came home from the Center and the novelty of responsibility for wife and child had worn off. He had now quit three jobs, good enough sales jobs where he was doing well, in a year. For no reason? [p 26] For petty, pointless reasons.

With Ancestral Insurance, “Generations of Protection,” he’d made the Billion Dollar Club—and immediately begun to feel dissatisfied with it—just before cute, sexy, blonde Betty had suddenly come from nowhere into his life and he had married her. That had helped, sure. But as soon after that as he had started paying serious attention to his job again, he was fed up with it. “Too much paper work. All those forms. It’s work for a robot, not a man,” he’d told Betty when he quit. A lie. The paper work was, as he looked back on it, not bad at all; pleasant even, in a way. It was just—nothing. Anything.

Indoor-Outdoor Climatizers—sniffles, he said, kept killing his sales presentation even though his record was good enough. Ultra-sonic toothbrushes, then, were a fine product. Only the vibration, with his gold inlay, seemed to give him headaches after every demonstration. He didn’t have a gold inlay. But the headaches were real enough. So he quit.

So now he had a great new job with a great organization, Amalgamated Production for Living—ALPRODLIV. He was about to take on his first big assignment.

For that he had felt a spark of the old enthusiasm and it had carried him into working out a bright new sales approach for the deal tonight. The Old Man himself had taken a personal interest, which was a terrific break. And still Ben Tilman felt that uneasy dissatisfaction. Damn.

“Mr. Robb will see you now, Mr. Tilman,” said the cool robot voice from the Elec-Sec Desk. It was after customer hours and the charming human receptionist had gone. The robot secretary, like most working robots, was functional in form—circuits and wires, mike, speaker, extension arms to type and to reach any file in the room, wheels for intra-office mobility.

“Thanks, hon,” said Ben. Nevertheless, robot secretaries were all programmed and rated female—and it was wise to be polite to them. After all, they could think and had feelings. There were a lot of important things they could do for a salesman—or, sometimes, not do. This one, being helpful, stretched out a long metal arm to open the door to the inner office for Ben. He smiled his appreciation and went in.

The Old Man, Amalgamated’s grand old salesman, was billiard bald, aging, a little stout and a little slower now. But he was still a fine sales manager. He sat at his huge, old fashioned oak desk as Ben walked across the office.

“Evening, sir.” No [p 27] response. Louder, “Good evening, Mr. Robb. Mr. Robb, it’s Ben, sir. Ben Tilman. You memo’d me to come—” Still no sign. The eyes, under the great, beetling brows, seemed closed.

Ben grinned and reached out across the wide desk toward the small, plastic box hanging on the Old Man’s chest. The Old Man glanced up as Ben tapped the plastic lightly with his fingernail.

“Oh, Ben. It’s you.” The Old Man raised his hand to adjust the ancient style hearing aid he affected as Ben sank into a chair. “Sorry Ben. I just had old Brannic Z-IX in here. A fine old robot, yes, but like most of that model, long-winded. So—” He gestured at the hearing aid.

Ben smiled. Everyone knew the Old Man used that crude old rig so he could pointedly tune out conversations he didn’t care to hear. Any time you were talking to him and that distant look came into his half closed eyes, you could be sure that you were cut off.

“Sorry, Ben. Well now. I simply wanted to check with you, boy. Everything all set for tonight?”

“Well, yes, sir. Everything is set and programmed. Betty and I will play it all evening for the suspense, let them wonder, build it up—and then, instead of the big pitch they’ll be looking for, we’ll let it go easy.”

“A new twist on the old change-up. Ben, boy, it’s going to go. I feel it. It’s in the air, things are just ripe for a new, super-soft-sell pitch. Selling you’ve got to do by feel, eh Ben? By sales genius and the old seat of the pants. Good. After tonight I’m going all out, a hemisphere-wide, thirty day campaign. I’ll put the top sales artist of every regional office on it. They can train on your test pattern tapes. I believe we can turn over billions before everybody picks up the signal and it senilesces. You give an old man a new faith in sales, Ben! You’re a salesman.”

“Well, sir—” But the Old Man’s knack with the youthful-enthusiasm approach was contagious. For the moment Ben caught it and he felt pretty good about the coming night’s work. He and Betty together would put the deal over. That would be something.

Sure it would…

“How do you and your wife like the place, Ben?” It was some place, for sure, the brand new house that Amalgamated had installed Ben, Betty and Bennie in the day after he had signed up.

“It’s—uh—just fine, sir. Betty likes it very much, really. We both do.” He hoped his tone was right.

“Good, Ben. Well, be sure to stop by in the morning. I’ll have the tapes, of course, [p 28] but I’ll want your analysis. Might be a little vacation bonus in it for you, too.”

“Sir, I don’t know how to thank you.”