I have the lamest job. I sell heating panels for swimming pools. Most people who get a pool, or buy house with a pool already there, have no idea how much it costs to heat it. So they end up only using it during the summer time, when the summer heat is enough to warm up the water.
 
Sure, some people have these crazy ideas of keeping it heated into the fall, as they’ve gotten a lot of fun out of it. But when they get the first bill? Never again.
 
So that’s where my company comes in. We make these flat, plastic panels that go on the roof. And a pump pushes water through them during the day. Each panel, which is about a half inch thick, is filled with these tiny tubes running up and down the panel.
 
The idea is that the pump pulls the water out of the pool, pushes it through those tiny tubes in the panels on the roof, and then by the time the water goes back into the pool it’s been heated by the sun. Have you ever felt how hot your roof gets when it’s sunny? Even in cool weather?
 
That’s the idea. If you had a timer set up on your pump, and set it to run during the day, it keeps your pool heated well into fall, and even in winter. And the electricity cost of the pump is WAY cheaper than it is to heat the pool with a regular heater.
 

 
Sounds cool right? So why is my job so lame? Because ever sales call I go on is about a two hour drive, one way. And while I do make a pretty fat commission on each sale (about a thousand bucks) I need to have at least five appointments for every sale.
 
So I drive two hours to these people’s house. Give them all the features and benefits, show them how much cheaper it is. Then they ask the price. Which ain’t cheap. For a regular size pool you need a lot of panels. And everything included is about ten grand.
 
Keep in mind when I visit these people, this is the first they’ve ever heard of this.Well, almost. They get a postcard, asking if they’d like a cheaper way to heat their pool. They call and schedule and appointment, and then I show up. And try to sell them a plastic thing they need to put on their roof for ten grand.
 
Not easy!
 
And it’s boring as crap driving all over the place. But I recently went on this sales call, that was a little, how shall we say, interesting.
 
Now, when I was in high school I delivered pizzas. And saw some crazy things. Topless housewives. Drug parties. All kinds of stuff. But driving to people’s homes and sitting down with Mr. and Mrs. Homeowner was nothing quite like that.
 
Until this last call.
 
Turns out this guy just won a ton of money. I didn’t ask how, but he was really excited to show me the big dirt hole in has backyard where his pool was going to go. It was in this house, (which he told me at least six times) which was the largest in this new, exclusive neighborhood. In a gated community.
 

 
He also said he made sure the builders put his house together first, so he could be the first one to move in. He said that’s why his was the only house with lights. The rest of the residents weren’t moving in for at least another month. Half the houses weren’t even sold yet.
 
Now, right off the bat I knew this guy wasn’t going to buy. Because he didn’t have a pool yet.He couldn’t even buy the panels to get ready because they were still tiling his roof. With this really expensive tile. That I was going to tell him he needed to cover up to heat his pool. To save money. Which he had tons of.
 
So there I was, wondering how long I was going to have to listen to this goof tell me how rich he was, and how many girls he was going to have over at his house (he was in his sixties). I kept glancing at the clock, knowing I had a two hour drive back home.
 

 
Then he asks me to look in his pool. I didn’t know what he meant, but he said he didn’t know if it was deep enough. I walked around, looking in. Now, some pool are deep, some are shallow. It all depends if you want to swim laps, or practice your swan dive.
 
So I ask him. What do you want to do? He said he wants to have parties with girls in bikinis and wants them to have fun. Maybe have so much fun they decide to jump in the pool naked. This guy actually tells me this, in his backyard. Next to a hole in the ground. Naturally, I’m starting to get a little uncomfortable.
 

 
So I say, well, girls love a pool just about like this, so you should be good. But then I get an idea. An idea I shouldn’t have gotten. This guy’s got tons of cash. And I work for a company that not only sells pool heating panels, but we subcontract out a bunch of other stuff. If I could sell him all kinds of equipment for his pool, I get a fat commission on every single one.
 
So I start making up stories. Telling him how many people I know, and how they all have these mad pool parties that attract all the big boobed bikini girls to come over. And how the water makes them want to take off their tops and jiggle around in the water.
 

 

 
And he’s eating it up. Really believing. And I’m thinking I got a big fish on my hook, when he asks me to check out the dept. He actually wanted me to get into the hole in the ground. There’s this small rope ladder, and I climb on down.
 
And right when I get to the bottom, that motherfucker pulls up the rope ladder. And starts laughing. And it sounded like he was talking to somebody else. That’s when I noticed that his pool didn’t have a shallow end. Just a big rectangle dug into the Earth. Walls straight up, about eight feet.
 
Finally he came back over to the edge, leaned over.
 
“Hey, man, I’m really sorry about this. But that’s how I won my money. I paid this woman online to write me a money spell. It would only work if I sacrificed somebody. And she would only do it if I got paid first, and if I didn’t find somebody to sacrifice, she’d take me,” he said. Like this was some natural fucking thing that people do every day.
 

 
Naturally, I thought he was kidding. That he was just having fun with a salesperson. I can understand. Maybe somebody sold him this house, so he wants to have his revenge by telling me that lame story. Only it wasn’t a lame story.
 
Because the next time I saw him, it was the next morning. He shot me with some dart that paralyzed me. I was knocked out. But still conscious. I was breathing, and I could move my eyes around, but that was it.
 

 
The last thing I remember, before I died, was the shovelfuls of dirt hitting my chest.
 

 
 
 

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