one thing i really miss from corporate sales is the slow unraveling of everyone around me.
sales is stressful. the quotas are heavy, the customers are demanding, and the pressure never really ends. the obvious signs of burnout are easy to spot, but there are also quieter ones, little signals that someone is sinking into what you could call corporate depression.
the first is education. when someone suddenly decides they need an online mba, even though they never mentioned it before, that’s not ambition — that’s usually a cry for help.
the second is airline status. when a salesperson becomes obsessed with hitting the next tier, it usually means they’re spiraling. i remember once flying to chicago on december 30th, just for lunch, and flying back the same day. it wasn’t about chicago. it was about the airline points.
the third, and most serious, is whisk-y. not just buying more bottles, but diving deep into regions and styles. i had a friend in seattle who proudly told me he only drank scotch from islay. we even argued about how to pronounce it. the whole conversation was absurd — two burned-out salespeople debating peat while quietly falling apart.
and the company’s answer? quarterly video calls with hr where the sales team does breathing exercises over zoom. lawsuits and mental health claims piling up, and their defense is, “well, we had them exhale together.”
corporate sales was many things, but above all it was a master class in pretending everything was fine while quietly losing your mind.