In our continuing series in which Irish Timeswriters consider their alternative careers, Kathy Sheridanremembers how, after an around-the-world trip funded by Eddie Jordan's bank, she ended up trying to sell tele-ads
AT 18 I DANCED down the avenue of Loreto Convent in Bray for the last time, to the beat of Martha Reeves the Vandellas' Dancing in the Street.That song still gives me goosebumps. So, after five years of boarding school, iron discipline and fuzzy films about Marcelino, a little boy who became a friend of Jesus, to which loopy, hippy destination was I headed? Westmeath. Which was a bit of a downer. As classmates took off to wait tables in Cape Cod or to work in factories in England to earn their college fees, none of it seemed nearly energising enough for a dreamy low-plains drifter. In the absence of any goal or plan, Westmeath it was.
So while I pondered some hazy life in a far-flung galaxy I got a summer job clerking for a young vet called Kieran Bredin – the brother, it would later turn out, of my Irish Timescolleague Deaglán de Bréadún – then working for a TB-testing task force. All that summer we hared through midland counties in his little Fiat, singing along to Bob Dylan and Bert Kaempfert, fighting about the North, jiving with chairs after scoffing big dinners in the middle of the day in rural aytin' houses, and bouncing up interminable boreens before knocking back curdled cocktails of milk and whiskey from rancid tea cups in cold, lonely farmers' kitchens at 10am.
The only downside was the actual testing. Once the animals had been funnelled into the cattle crushes for injection, the clerk’s job was to note down the breed and sex (yes, by taking a look underneath) of the animals in the official yellow book.
As the “summer” job stretched into winter, conditions became more liquid. Anyone struggling to stay upright in slithery knee-deep muck while attempting to get a look at the undercarriage of a maddened manure-spurting bullock has to learn the hard way.
My solution was elegant: I decided to judge their sex by looking in their eyes. Soft, distracted look? Female. Edgy, ready to bolt? Male. Belated apologies to all the maddened farmers and district veterinary officers in three counties. Really.
Obviously, that couldn’t continue. Vague thoughts about becoming a vet were killed off by the prospect of seven years’ sweaty application followed by serial manure muggings. Social science was a clean, respectable choice for a girl, though. UCD, here I come.
In a resigned frame of mind I allowed my sister, a nearly-qualified nurse, to lead me into a Bank of Ireland branch for the requisite loan. Educational purposes, I said. They were startlingly co-operative, so much so that she got one, too, while exchanging bon mots with Eddie Jordan – yes, that one – across the counter.
Then randomness intervened. A second sister working with a glamorous American airline could avail of 90 per cent discounts for siblings – but only while she was single. And she was about to get married. What with the first sister (finally) qualifying and all that Bank of Ireland money just sitting there, social science couldn’t hold a candle to an around-the-world trip, with a working stint in Australia and some jolly random stops in Las Vegas, Hawaii, Fiji and bits of England.
Belated apologies to Bank of Ireland. (I’m still a customer, if that’s any consolation.) Also to my more responsible sister; to all those kind people who tried to steer me towards a glittering academic career; and to my daughters, who are reading all this for the first time – and that’s only because they’re vaguely grown now.
While I’m at it, a general confession and apology would also encompass Grace Bros’ department store in Sydney (for various transgressions involving the fruit stock while in its employment) and the delicate Spanish woman with the evil eight-year-old for whom I au paired in Majorca, whose husband’s nocturnal perambulations caused me to flee at dawn without even a hasta la vista.
Apologies also to the many unfortunate employers back in Ireland whom I graced briefly with my presence through a temporary employment agency. Chief among them would be the kind Suffolk Street stockbroker who pretended to believe I could type (resulting in my secreting hundreds of pages of typo-ridden expensive headed notepaper in my bag every evening); the cosmetics company that imagined I knew how to manipulate an ancient switchboard that involved the pulling out and sticking in of plugs, resulting in indescribable chaos; and, not least, the clothing company where I worked very happily, if episodically, for a good while, until the boss fired me for insubordination. (Well, he was my boyfriend at the time.)
By now I was in my mid-20s, still moonily watching out for that extraordinary distant galaxy fashioned with just me in mind, but with no idea what I’d do when I found it. Travel was always an excellent escape route, but, never having been one for hostels, tents or camping stoves, money was a prerequisite. As Bank of Ireland was still awaiting repayment of the “education” loan, that was hardly an option.
Then, one day, while leafing through the recruitment ads in The Irish Times, I came upon a job I didn't even know existed: tele-ads. I had no more interest in selling ads over the phone than I had in joining a nunnery. But the money was fabulous. Six months down the road the loan would be repaid and I'd be ready to roll again. I applied, awarding myself a supersonic typing speed on the CV while simultaneously signing up for a three-day touch-typing course.
After several rounds of interviews designed to measure knowledge of The Irish Timesand interaction with other humans, they gave me a job. I don't recall a typing test.
Anyway, I was now a tele-ad girl. "Good morning, Irish Timesclassified advertising, how can I help you?" That was the easy bit, when people phoned in, effectively offering themselves up to my, er, sales patter. "Wouldn't you like to advertise your old boneshaker" – replace with "bike" or "sofa" as appropriate – "for three days instead of one, and I'll give you the third day free?"
They nearly always said yes, because it usually made sense. Honestly. The hard bit came when you landed in, after a night of iffy German plonk in some chancy club, to be handed a page of ads from a rival newspaper and told to cold-call the advertisers.
Though cursed with a terrible memory, I can still conjure up those mornings. To this day I am never, ever rude to a cold-caller. It is the job from hell. Although that isn’t why I threw in the towel. That came when one of the cold calls was to someone advertising a donkey. She turned out to be a sweet old Galway woman, obviously in need of a good chat. She agreed that she’d love to place an ad in our paper. “And would you like to place it for three days, Mrs Casey, and I’ll give you the third one free?” Of course she would, without even asking the price. Meanwhile, with a hot sting of conscience, I realised that the ad was going to cost her more than she was asking for the donkey – if she managed to sell it.
It’s different now, as I discovered sitting with Leslie in our smart sales department last week. There is no longer such a thing as a tele-ad girl. Even the young ones seem far more assured and grown-up than I was then. There is no gender disparity. She hands me a list of cold-call candidates for the sake of old times and I cower away. Is there such a thing as a sales gene?
The very day that the donkey and Mrs Casey left me in despair, randomness intervened again. An internal ad went up for an administration job in our London office. I grabbed it. It was 1977, and my arrival in London was sandwiched by Fianna Fáil's election landslide and Elvis's death. The city was a fantastic contrast of street parties, with loyal subjects celebrating Queen Elizabeth's silver jubilee and the Sex Pistols spitting out their version of God Save the Queen– "the fascist regime / they made you a moron" – their punk-rock followers moping around, gobbing and swearing, with safety pins stuck through their eyebrows. In this great rocking city there was a protest and a badge for every taste, from the Anti-Nazi League to vegetarians. And Fleet Street was still its beating media heart.
With no plan or goal of any kind, this low-plains drifter had managed to push open the door into a great, limitless world, where I watched Maeve Binchy and Conor O’Clery move with mastery and assurance. And possibilities began to take shape.
