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Well, here I was trying to create a friendly atmosphere with this general manager before I went into my actual presentation.  That attempt was cut short with a strongly stated suggestion that I get to the point.

I don’t believe I was 5 minutes into my presentation when he suddenly arose from his chair and menacingly told me to “get the f___ out of here.”

Now I have been sworn at and sometimes quite creatively, but never in a business setting, so I was temporarily paralyzed by this unanticipated outburst.

After a short period, I regained my composure and instead of reacting indignantly, I instead thought of a popular television series Columbo .  The main character (played by Peter Falk ) was a bumbling, absent-minded police detective with a lived-in looking wardrobe complete with a rumpled overcoat.  His trademark mannerism when he was onto the perpetrator of a crime was to place his hand to his forehead and say “excuse me but……..”

I don’t know why this came to me when it did, but as I was placing my materials into my briefcase, I looked up at the menacing figure across the desk from me (I had my rumpled overcoat on), placed my hand to my forehead and said:  “Excuse me but I have to make a living doing this and I have another appointment after this and I sure don’t want to make the same mistake I made here.  Could you please tell me what I did wrong.”

To my surprise he started laughing and said:  “You’re allright kid.  Sit down.”

I ended up making thousands of dollars in commissions from that company by not reacting to anger with anger.