The Last Non-Marketer on Earth
Could this be the hardest job in the world?
To most people, selling comes as second nature. We’ve actually sold the planet’s resources several times over, so it should be third or even fourth nature by now.
But selling did not come naturally to me. I was born with a rare condition which removes any inherent desire to market products and services. It even quells the need to repost my boss’s latest LinkedIn dribblings.
Doctors have told me the part of the brain which performs this function is occupied, in my case, by something called ‘a conscience’.
When I was a kid, my teachers bemoaned my ‘underactive imagination’. I showed no aptitude for creating fake scarcity or urgency, even failing to act aloof enough to attract invites to teen WhatsApp groups which excluded exactly one ‘uncool’ student.
In reality, I studied hard at not selling. At night, I would practise thinking of nothing, thus decreasing my desire to be included in teenage WhatsApp groups, which I definitely didn’t want to be in anyway. I watched every pitch on Shark Tank to increase my powers of ambivalence and even imagined saying ‘meh’ to the groundbreaking business ideas they did invest in.
On my eighteenth birthday, I was recruited by the Samaritans. It was for a role…
