When people ask me what I used to do, I usually say, “I wrote junk mail.” Then they look at me oddly as if they surely misunderstood, which necessitates a longer conversation. Yet the truth is, I learned to support myself by writing ad copy, which is a kinder way of saying junk mail. This skill, if you want to call it such, did not come naturally to me. After I finished college with a degree in English, I set out to snag a job doing anything but teaching. One interview was at the Los Angeles Times. They needed someone to write, “On Sale for One Day Only!” The interviewer fed me all sorts of prompts, such as “We often get an ad placed in the afternoon, which means we have to be able to stay late on short notice. Are you able to do that?” My reply was brief and unconvincing. “Yes.” That’s all I said and then I waited for him to resume talking. “Here are examples of our ad copy. Do you think you can match this style?” “Yes,” I replied politely. It comes as no surprise that I never got a second interview, right? I later learned I was supposed to leap at the questions like the shark in “Jaws.” “Absolutely! I have no social life whatsoever and my husband never notices whether I’m home or not. I’d be the perfect one for last minute jobs. Not only that, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool mimic. You tell me whether you want Dickens or Ayn Rand and that’s what I’ll deliver. These ads here? I can knock them out in my sleep. Working for the L.A.Times would be a dream come true. Give me a week’s trial and you’ll be glad you did!” If I’d said that, I’d have been hired on the spot. Then I would have been fired before the week was out because none of the those responses were true. I was far too shy, intimidated, and fearful to jump into that kind of feeding tank. Furthermore, all the stuff that was advertised for sale bored me. Finding a job after college turned out to be a very challenging task. When I took a test at the phone company, my results were on a par with management level. However, I couldn’t be hired for management because it was reserved exclusively for men; women were not allowed in that elevator. Women were only permitted to be telephone operators. Interestingly, men were forbidden from that domain. Companies could do things like that back then. “That’s all right. I’d love to be a telephone operator,” I lied, knowing full well I was too shy and too directionally challenged to be able to tell which connector went into what socket. “I’m sorry. Your tests scores indicate too high a level of intelligence. Being an operator would soon bore you.” “I only test high because I’ve been taking a lot of tests lately. I’m good at tests but that’s all. Being an operator would be really challenging, truly.” This time I was telling the truth. “No, I’m sorry, but we have rules we have to follow and I’m afraid you don’t fit into any of the job categories we offer.” And so it went, for months without success. Finally, I landed in the employment office of a major insurance company. The personnel manager looked at my resume and snickered. “You can’t find a job because you test too high, right?” I nodded yes. “We see this all the time. Do you think you can manage a calculator and add up policy costs? Never mind; I know you can. You have to start somewhere. We can only offer $300 a month. Will that do?” I snatched at the chance to start somewhere. They plopped me at a desk in a roomful of desks, three abroad, five deep, with two aisles. If you remember the movie “Nine to Five” you’ll know what I mean, except instead of typewriters these desks featured calculators the size of your countertop electric ovens. All of the chairs were secretary type, which means no armrests. Other than the calculator and a telephone, we were given wooden plaques with motivational comments. These were changed out every week by invisible lackeys from the personnel department. Each inspirational ditty was supposed to inspire us to work harder. When no one was looking I would hide mine in a drawer. Every morning it would reappear. The lackeys had orders. Nothing of a personal nature was allowed on our desks to distract us from the importance of our daily tasks. What were those tasks? At 9 am I would be handed a stack of paper with quotes written in pencil. My job was to compare the pencil marks to a master list, tally them up, arrive at a total cost, and advise an agent on the phone how much to charge his or her latest sucker, I mean customer. For the first week, they left me alone to learn how to wield the calculator and memorize the differences between various types of policies. Then one morning they announced I was “going live” and the phone began to ring before I had time to utter a strangled, “No! Wait! Stop! I’m not ready!” Suddenly strangers were telling me what they wanted quoted and I was supposed to retain enough presence of mind to go to the right chart and add up the correct costs. I had a panic attack. However, panic didn’t buy me a reprieve. I was forced to say words out loud to strangers on the telephone. Fortunately, insurance salespeople tend to be gregarious, so while I was shakily slamming down the big fat buttons of my adding machine, my phone buddies would regale me with tales about their mornings or afternoons. Eventually, I calmed down enough to get the hang of the system. I probably became fairly adept because when the company moved to larger quarters, I was asked to train the male newbies who had to sit in executive chairs with armrests and got paid more for doing the same job as the women only with more personal phone time. Company policy. One of my early trainees was a brilliant young woman who caught on in about thirty minutes. We spent the rest of the week whispering about the thrills of opera. We’ve been inseparable ever since. So that was one good outcome of being an insurance rate clerk. Another good thing was being part of a class action lawsuit against our employers. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 had just been put into law. Since every new Act requires multiple offices with hundreds of employees to enforce it, Los Angeles got its very own headquarters staffed with young zealots eager to bring equality and justice to the underpaid workforce. An enterprising secretary who ran her department but was forbidden to sit in a chair with arms made a judicious phone call. Before her shoe could drop, we were being interviewed and asked what tasks we performed and how much we were paid. Months later we received hefty checks correcting the company’s salary discriminations. I can still feel the righteous zest with which I spent mine. We moved, my husband and I, to Long Beach because it was that era and he was stationed at an army base nearby. So I got a job as an insurance clerk for a private insurance agency. This time there were only four desks facing the front door and we were allowed to put tiny vases of flowers on them if we wished. My boss was a woman of steel who taught me how to keep an accounting journal and to stop ironing flat the hems of my skirts. What does this insurance babble have to do with writing ad copy? I told you that skill did not come naturally to me; it came in stages. The insurance years taught me a few tricks about sales that came in handy later. First of all, to sell insurance you have to sell an idea. It’s not a shirt you can put on display in blue, green, and pink. It’s an intangible notion that is based on fear. In order to sell lots of it you have to learn to listen to people and discover what frightens them most. Once I stopped panicking and learned to encourage people to talk, I began imagining what would make their lives easier and less fearful. It worked. I turned into a fountain of baseless enthusiasm. Many of our customers rode motorized golf carts for the disabled and needed their own special auto policies. Most of them had family members who took care of their insurance but one particular customer insisted on taking care of his business, on his own, in person. The only difficulty was his speech was almost unintelligible. Plus, he spat at you as he tried to talk. They more frustrated he became at his inability to make himself understood, the more you had to wipe your face. None of the other clerks could cope and it fell to me to interact with him when he rolled into the office. This led to my greatest breakthrough in communication. I’ll spare you the details except to say that we came to a mutual understanding and his requests were fulfilled. My office mates said I was the most patient person they’d seen and made me the specialist for similar cases. It was their loss. In truth, I got more out of the conversations than anyone else. The world and the people in it have always been a mystery to me, particularly during those formative years. I was an alien from another planet, deserted without a universal translator, but thanks to that brave man, I got to experience clarity in communication. All it took was finding the right way to listen. The world is still a puzzle and I’m often told I don’t know how to read a room. Much of the time I don’t really know what people are saying. I still need that missing translator. Yet sometimes something clicks and I’m actually able to hear and comprehend. Listening. That’s it, folks. That’s the first step in learning how to write junk mail that people keep on their desks instead of tossing in the trash can.