Although he would now be settling down into a life of particularly grumpy retirement, 60 years ago Holden Caulfield, central character in JD Salinger's The Catcher In The Rye, was a 17 year old with a problem mash — or a bunch of them: 'phony' people, low self-esteem, and his wish to hold off fast-encroaching adulthood for as long as possible (he was 6'2" after all).
Caulfield is the proto-slacker, years before his time, and as such his type is not usually considered an essential employee. You know what it's like. The smart-alecky teenager on work experience who despises you and everything you stand for even though he doesn't even know your name. The kind of semi-grown-up who you send out for coffee on a Wednesday morning and he reappears the following Monday without a single word of explanation.
But don't be so quick to show him the door. Holden is the kind of guy you need to listen to once in a while. He's sensitive at heart. He'll tell you when you're being phony. Well, he won't tell you as such, but you'll feel the increased levels of disdain emanating from him as he looks at you with a mixture of hatred and pity.
He's never going to be one of the boys (or girls) and although he can be friendly and open (often as a result of feeling guilty about behaving appallingly towards you five minutes earlier) he will always be the introspective type.
The sales force is not the place for Holden. Although he calls himself "the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life", he will happily tell prospective clients every shortcoming of your product and recommend they don't order anything. Afterwards he'll feel bad and try to say sorry by buying you a coffee (which compensates in his head for the loss of a huge international order).
Marketing, paradoxically, is where he belongs — as an agent provocateur and one-man focus group. He'll tell you how and why your products are awful. And if you can make something that will appeal to Holden, and seem 'real' to him, then every surly teenager in the world will buy one.
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