JVD

The job: Car wash attendant / sales greeter

My age: 16–20

Hourly wage: $5.00 – $30.00 per hour

The day my friend told me he was making serious money drying off cars, I did not hesitate. “Can you get me a job?” He could. Next thing I knew I was wearing a green jumpsuit, pulling cars off a conveyor line, and learning that a $10 tip was possible from a stranger who just wanted a clean windshield.

That was the beginning of my real sales education. I just didn’t know it yet.

In the early 1990s, washing your car in Chicagoland was a serious business. Turtle Wax, the company whose yellow cans of car wax sat in every garage in America, had expanded into standalone car washes, and they were packed. You pulled in, a greeter assessed what you needed, your car got vacuumed and prepped, rode the line through the wash, and came out the other side where attendants dried it down, cleaned the windows inside and out, and sent you on your way.

On busy Saturdays we had twenty people running that operation. At the top of it was Paul Ktenas.

Paul was a large, confident man who commanded respect without asking for it. When you started at Turtle Wax, Paul decided what you were ready for. You vacuumed first. Then you learned to drive cars onto the line. Then, when Paul decided you were ready, you learned to dry off on his car before you ever touched a customer’s. There was an order to things, and Paul enforced it. I respected him immediately.

I worked my way through the ranks, eventually drying cars and pocketing tips. On a good Saturday I walked out with $50 or $70 cash. For a 16-year-old in 1991, that was real money.

Then Paul asked me if I wanted to be a sales greeter.

Sales greeters ran the front of the house. Your job was to meet every customer who pulled in, read them fast, and guide them toward the right wash. We had exterior-only options, and then the Turtle 1, Turtle 2, and the flagship: the Ultimate Turtle. On top of the wash, there were add-ons, hand waxes, Armor All treatments, full details.

The pay structure changed everything. Base salary plus commission. Hit your minimum add-on threshold and you earned a spiff, roughly 30 cents per car. Miss it and you earned your base and nothing more. Sell a hand wax at $35? Another $5 in your pocket. String enough of those together on a busy Saturday and you weren’t making $5 an hour anymore. You were making $25, $30.

Same green jumpsuit. Six times the pay. The difference was entirely what you did in the 90 seconds a customer sat in their car waiting to pull forward.

I got good at it fast. I learned to read people, the minivan mom who just wanted clean and out, the guy in the BMW who actually cared about his paint, the regular who came every week and just wanted to be recognized. I stopped pitching and started listening. Once I understood what someone actually wanted, selling them the right thing wasn’t hard. Most people don’t resist a good recommendation from someone who seems like they know what they’re talking about.

In three years as a sales greeter, I missed my spiff threshold exactly once.

The best lesson I got from Turtle Wax didn’t come from a win. It came from Paul yelling at me.

We were running a special, hand waxes for $25, down from $35. I was fired up. I started selling them to everyone. In about two hours I had sold ten hand waxes.

Paul came to find me. He was not happy.

“You can’t sell any more hand waxes.”

I didn’t understand. I had just sold ten in two hours. I thought he’d be thrilled.

He wasn’t. Every hand wax pulled one of his guys off the main line to do the detail work. I had created more demand than the operation could supply. The line was backing up. Customers were waiting. I had outsold the capacity of the business.

It was the first time I understood that sales and operations are two sides of the same machine, and if they’re not in sync, you don’t have a win, you have a problem. I’ve thought about that moment in almost every sales role I’ve had since.

The car wash also taught me something about generosity that I’ve never forgotten.

We always knew who the big tippers were. Word traveled fast, and when a known tipper pulled in, everyone quietly angled to be the one drying their car. What I noticed over time was that the generous customers, the ones who tipped well, who said thank you, who treated us like people, got the best service every single time. Not because we were transactional about it. Because generosity creates energy, and people respond to it.

You never lose by being generous. I haven’t found an exception to that yet.

I also worked alongside a crew of first-generation Mexican-American immigrants who often held two or three jobs simultaneously. These guys worked harder than anyone I’ve been around before or since. They didn’t complain. They showed up. They were proud of their work. I spoke a little Spanish and learned more from them. They reset my baseline for what hard work actually looks like, and I’ve carried that with me.

One more thing: Paul once tapped me and my coworker Jim Valdez to represent our LaGrange location in a regional hand-waxing competition across all fifteen Turtle Wax locations. Speed and quality, judged together. Jim and I finished in the top three. We got a trophy.

I got paid to compete in a hand-waxing competition. I still can’t fully believe that happened.

Turtle Wax was the first job where I understood that compensation is not fixed, it’s a function of skill, hustle, and the ability to connect with strangers quickly. The commission structure didn’t feel like pressure. It felt like freedom. The more I developed, the more I earned. That equation has never left me.

Learning to sell at a car wash in LaGrange, Illinois, in a green jumpsuit, talking to hundreds of strangers a day, that’s where I found out I could do this. Whatever this is. Reading people. Building rapport in seconds. Making a recommendation and having someone trust it.

I use those skills every single day. The jumpsuit is gone. Everything else stayed.

No job was wasted.