Bright Future In Sales

Well, it's kind of a brilliant song. Toll Booth Inspectors (Interstate Managers) are among the top 3 professions with highest suicide rates (the other two, cops and dentists). This album really describes the suburbia life, especially people who come to manhattan to work from jersey and long island (the band is from jersey). I think it's very well done. This song goes with "Little Red Light" hand in hand.

It's incredibly sarcastic as a song--the person in it DOES NOT want a bright future in sales!! And if I make it home alive, I'm gonna get my shit together Cause I could live like this forever You know I've come too far and I don't want to quit

he DOESN'T like it

Let's work in sales!

A briliiant song about an outlook from working in a dull, dead end job, waking up drunk daily. And being promoted to sales, And really trying to prove himself.

I get the impression here of a naive lad who's been promoted too fast into a job he can't do (and incidentally has lost his driving licence while enjoying the benefits of the position!)

I was so excited when I got this album and despite the weirdness of this song [I didn't listen to alternative music at the time and alternative music is known for its lack of popularity probably due to its strangeness], I thought it was absolutely great! I get the feeling that it's about a young guy in a job that he doesn't really like, doesn't quite know how to do and wants to quit, but enjoys the benefits. He really just wants to drink and have fun, but he knows that he has to get his shit together, buckle down and make himself focus so that he doesn't lose his job or else he'll be screwed.

i love the sound in this song that comes in between "i think i had a" and "black wallet", "in my" and "back pocket".

The point of the song is this:

He, the story writer, doesn't want to end up as another person living the "American dream" of having a pointless job where the only escape is alcohol. Getting "promoted" to sales is basically a dead-end job, and is often the butt of a lot of jokes. The story writer wants to avoid this fate, so he's going to "get his s--- together" and do something with his life.

I swear to God this is about the play: "Death of a Salesman" wiki the summary.

I'm not sure if anyone else has thought of this, but if not, I'm happy to be the first one.

Anyway, I just listened to this song and couldn't help but think of it as being a sequel or "follow-up" to the first track on the album, "Mexican Wine." It makes sense if you think about it - it opens with the narrator "sleeping on a planter at the Port Authority" (a major bus terminal in NYC), and he "[doesn't] remember where [he's] from" - that is, he wakes up drunk in the bus station, which seems a likely result of his "[having] another glass of Mexican wine," which is said several times in that song.

After waking up drunk in the bus station, he regrets the choices he has made and comes to the conclusion that he needs to "get [his life] together" because he "can't live like this forever" - the main lyrics of "Bright Future in Sales."

The first two tracks on the album are basically two parts of the same, linked-together narrative - it's really brilliant songwriting on the part of whoever wrote it, in my opinion.

To be honest when I hear this song I always think of Jim from the office in the early seasons