More "Having It All" Silliness

The August issue of Harper's, which I need to subscribe to again, may be worth looking at because there is an article about Mary Kay Cosmetics, which promised women they could "have it all," but in fact is little more than a pyramid scheme enriching those at the top while the rest of the sales force struggles to make anything from it:

Ash knew from experience that traditional jobs weren’t working for women. As a divorced mother of three, she had built a career in the direct-sales industry, but she’d watched promotions go to male colleagues while she was told to “stop thinking like a woman.” So she wanted her company to be different. From the beginning, Mary Kay ladies could, in theory at least, set their hours around their children’s school days and form business connections among friends and neighbors instead of trying to crack old-boy networks.

Naturally, it didn't work for anybody except Mary Kay and a handful of top sellers. Sales is shitty work requiring people with a certain temperament to be good at it. People have to be able to persuade others that they believe in the product they are selling in order to make anything at it. They have to be able to take rejection time and time again. In other words, persistence and a gift for gab are requirements to be salespeople. Usually people not only don't "have it all" selling but wind up having nothing.

Yours truly never had that ability to b.s.