Eric Church might enjoy the job he has now, but that wasn’t always the case. The North Carolina native recalls the worst job he ever had, when he first moved to Nashville.
“I had an awful job. I’ve had a lot of awful jobs,” Church says. “My worst one was when I first came to Nashville. I got a job at the Shop at Home Network. I worked midnight, graveyard, midnight to 8:00. That was bad enough but then I would work all night, go home, shower and then I had writing appointments all day because I was trying to get a career started. I’d go write songs and get meetings, just trying to get signed. And end up getting done at 3:00 of 4:00 with all of that, I’d go home, take a shower or sleep for a little bit and then I had to be at work again at midnight.”
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As if the schedule wasn’t challenging enough, it was what Church did at the Shop at Home Network that made it so much worse.
“I sold knives from midnight to 7:00 or 8:00 AM,” he says. “And, anytime somebody calls you at 3:00 or 4:00 AM, and needs 200 knives for $19.95, it’s automatically an alarming situation. I was young and I’d been in a lot of these people’s shoes, I had done this – I knew they were drunk. I knew what they had done. They’d just come home from the bar, flipped on Shop at Home and said, ‘You know what? I need that.’”
Perhaps fortunately, Church lost the job soon after he started.
“The reason the job didn’t last long for me is that I was maybe the worst salesmen in history because I ended up talking a lot of these people out of it,” Church says. “I’d say, ‘I’ll tell you what man, go to bed, call me, I’ll be here in the morning. If you get up in the morning and want these knives you call me back.’ Because I knew what was going to happen.
“They bought 200 knives for $19.95,” he continues. “First of all some of these people you didn’t know whether you should call the cops. What do you need 200 knives for? Even though I’m selling them – what do you need them for? So, it was awful doing that job. And then they got rid of me because, they were like, ‘You’re the worst. I can’t believe you’re talking people out of it.’ I was like, ‘Man I know. I’ve been there.’I’d want some to talk me out of buying some of the stuff I’ve bought at 2:00 AM.”
Church’s upcoming album, Desperate Man, will be released on October 5. Pre-order the record at EricChurch.com.
Photo Credit: Getty images/Tim Mosenfelder
