A newspaper ad (and a phone conversation) indicated I was applying for a job in the "display department" of what I thought was some kind of electronics department, but after entering a little office (somewhere on Rio Grande Street; this was a few years ago so I don't remember all of the details very clearly but am writing this to allay my conscience), I learned the job was a sales job -- selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door!

The next morning (or was it the same day?), I went out with a team of people (nice people, but aggressive salespeople) to a few homes around town to demonstrate the Kirby vacuum cleaners.

One of the homes we entered was that of an elderly woman who, it turned out, ALREADY OWNED a Kirby vacuum cleaner (perhaps two or three years old) which apparently wasn't used very often. After demonstrating a vacuum cleaner to her, her (elderly) husband came home from work. He was not happy about the idea of buying another Kirby vacuum cleaner, but we resumed our demonstration. In the end they BOUGHT another ~$1000-2000 vacuum cleaner -- and these were poor people, which is what made me feel so bad. (The sales job was effective; the hapless couple willingly bought an expensive vacuum cleaner; but I knew that the fate of this vacuum cleaner would with a very high probability resemble the fate of their other Kirby: disuse and an unnecessary burden on a limited budget.) The vacuum cleaner probably cost the equivalent of what the couple would have saved in a month or two, I'm just guessing.

Our team had latitude in negotiating the price of the vacuum cleaner, and our commission was a percentage of this price. It appeared to me that the leader of the sales team was also somewhat sympathetic to the couple and didn't charge as outrageous of a price as she could have (a price which the couple had already agreed to before our leader came back to seal the deal); however, I didn't understand the terms of the purchase (the payment would be in installments). Another, younger member of the sales team wasn't so sympathetic.

In the end I felt disgusted by the experience and quit after that very first day. I later entered a PhD program in physics but quit that also, partly because the research, I thought, was societally useless. As you can see, I might suffer from an overly acute social conscience.

It's not easy finding a way to meaningfully contribute to society, but it's possible. I'm doing it with my current job.