Uploaded August 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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86 Extrovert
1
Is anyone else annoyed by
Folks that are completely over the top,
With personalities magnified,
And oozing charm that just won’t stop.
2
Folks who are artificially polite and attentive;
That smile and joke and clown;
Those back-slapping politicians,
Or used car salesmen at the edge of town.
3
In the year of nineteen seventy-two
I got into a nest of these guys.
I hired on selling door to door,
Those famous Cut Co knives.
4
My bosses were artificial extroverts,
Being both forceful and assertive,
With non-stop scripted manipulation,
Smiling hard at being aggressive.
5
And that is what bothered me,
Because in private they didn’t act that way;
Their pitch to customers was totally fake,
Turning in on and off all day.
6
The boss that took me around for training
Had this Jekyll and Hyde style,
In the car he was stone-faced and silent,
With customers a practiced deceitful smile.
7
I’ll admit I was no good at selling knives,
But I couldn’t bring myself to fake.
To act out a personality not my own,
I judged dishonest and a mistake.