Sherri King was quietly sitting on a bench downtown when I approached her, but I noticed her immediately—maybe it was her red shirt, red shoes and red hair.
Sherri enjoys working as a sales representative to pay the bills, but her real passion is poetry. She seeks to motivate and inspire with her art and has recorded her own inspirational CD.
Flagpole: What do you do here in Athens?
Sherri King: I work for District Specialty Supplies. I sell school supplies to principals in all 50 states: elementary, middle and high school. I’ve been doing it for 11 years.
FP: And what does your job entail?
SK: I’m a sales representative. I do calls over the phone.
FP: Do you sometimes find it difficult doing sales entirely over the phone?
SK: No, actually, once you get your clientele and you get the feel of people and everything—’cause I’m a people person anyway, so it was pretty much easy for me… It’s about your selling techniques. You have to make a person feel relaxed with you, comfortable with you. It’s all about making a person get into you.
FP: So, [principals] will buy school supplies in bulk from your company…
SK: Oh, yeah. They buy a lot from me. A lot. They deal with me. My customers deal with me. So, when they like me, that’s all I need.
FP: Had you ever done [similar work] before you started working there?
SK: Um, I had done customer service work, but I had never done anything like that before. But I was very strong in the customer service field.
FP: Where did you work before?
SK: I worked at Dial America. I was the top sales rep there… And I’m the top sales rep at District Specialty Supplies, also. And I also worked at HCS Marketing, which sold OSHA manuals to like different big-time jobs, telling them about safety skills… on the job and everything. So, I had a lot of experience in that field.
FP: What kind of schooling do you have?
SK: I did a lot of intake at Athens Technical Institute. I did some online at Kaplan University.
FP: And was that customer service-oriented in some way, or did you study something else?
SK: Yeah, I did some retail marketing at Athens Tech… [Classes] were pretty cool. It was pretty cool, pretty laid back.
FP: Where are you from?
SK: I’m from Greene County, which is a little town of Woodville, Georgia, but it’s Greene County, all Greene County. You ever heard of Reynolds Plantation, Lake Oconee? That’s it.
FP: So, when did you move to Athens?
SK: Oh, I moved to Athens like, oh my God, I want to say I’ve been in Athens… basically since ’98.
FP: What brought you to Athens?
SK: Just [that] I like Athens, it’s a fun city, and Greene County was a little too small for me, because I like to be around different people, and I just thought [Athens] was more on my level.
FP: Do you have any family here in Athens?
SK: My baby sister lives in Athens and my brother lives in Athens.
FP: Do you spend a lot of time with them?
SK: Yeah. We go shopping, me and my sister. Me and my brother, we hang and we watch basketball… We watch football, just sports. We watch sports.
FP: And what do you like to do around town?
SK: I just find anything of entertainment. I like poetry; I do a lot of poetry. I like to do poetry.
FP: Oh, poetry, that’s awesome.
SK: I do a lot of poetry. I like to do things like, most of the time [my friends and I] do a little of dance club, [we go to] bars—different things.
FP: So when you say you like a lot of poetry, do you go perform poetry?
SK: Yeah, we do poetry—we used to do it at the Bulldog Cafe, but they closed down. So now, they do it at the Suburban Lodge. We also used to do it at, what’s it called, New Earth; we also used to do it at New Earth, too, but they stopped doing that.
FP: So, like, “open mic nights?”
SK: Open mic night, yeah. I like going to the open mic night.
FP: What is the subject matter of your poetry?
SK: Well, it’s about anything dealing with inspiration or anything motivational, is mostly what I target on.
FP: Inspirational—like spiritual, religious?
SK: Well, sort of religious. It’s more [like] religious-inspirational. Also, I like to tell people things for their own good, like advice… Actually, I have an inspirational CD that I did last year, and it sold pretty good. I sold copies around Athens… It was Daily Vitamin: Take One.
FP: Daily Vitamin: Take One—that’s a good title. What was on the CD?
SK: It was very good. I had, like, music in the background as I was motivationally speaking. It was music in the background, and it was just real good. I had about 10 tracks, 10 different poetry tracks on it. It was real good.
FP: And would you just bring it to open mic night to sell?
SK: Well, I did bring it to open mic night, and I also had a CD release party where I actually would sell them… I had a big old CD release party.
FP: Oh, and where did that happen?
SK: It was at the Bulldog Cafe, but they done closed down. That was on North Avenue.
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