"You have to keep the upper hand. Most of the people you sell to are scatterbrained and stupid."

But they're not so stupid. Almost everybody manages to prevent the insistent Colliermen from getting in his door, despite a sales talk designed to make it as difficult as possible for a family to turn down the company's "offer." A person who started listening, liked what he saw, and remained silent when told the cost of the books was only "small change" gradually became committed to buying. The

smart ones didn't listen to a word.

The family is drawn into the talk with questions constructed to make it difficult to be negative. Positive answers are "commitments."

"It would be foolish to have a set like this and not keep it up to date. Right?" the salesman asks. "You could use a service like this in your home. Right!" The commitments pile up.

Does anyone really believe the sales pitch?

"Sure looked like they did." a former salesman said. "Some people just look at the encyclopedia and have to have it. Once you've gotten all those commitments from them, there's just no way for them to back out."

My group's field manager, who drives to the area to be canvassed, told us one night that she had just "written an order" -the euphemism for "sold" -for a family which she was convinced did not want and could not afford the books. But they were psychologically trapped by the commitments and did not back out.

Applicants are told the workweek is 40 hours, 2 to 10 p.m. weekdays. But, as one fellow salesman told me, "After they get you through training and you learn all the shit, they tell you it starts at 12:30" -and the usual hour for ending the work day is midnight. About six hours of required work each Saturday makes the total normal workweek about 65 hours.

The first hour of each workday is another pep session with its numbing presentations. Then there is time for lunch on the way to the area to be covered. Around 4 p.m. canvassing begins.

"SEE THAT man there working on his car? You go up to him and say, Hello, my name is ..."

My time had come, and my field manager was sending me out into the world to give away encyclopedias-for nearly $600 a set. The man was cleaning junk out of his car's trunk and he jumped, startled, when I walked up.

"Hello, my name is ..." We shook hands, and he obediently trotted off when I asked him to get his wife. Boy, I thought, this is going to be easy.

"To further introduce myself, I'm with Collier's, the former publishers of Collier's, the American, and the Woman's Home Companion Magazines...."

Then the man interrupted. My instructors at Collier's hadn't told me what to do when people interrupted.