A nickel at a time

A plastic bottle only costs a few cents to make. Staying afloat in this business requires determination, perseverance, and a commitment to nurturing relationships. You have to sell a lot of plastic bottles to make a living. And all that driving, flying, meeting, talking, pitching is really hard for someone with anxiety. Truth be told, there are deals we missed out on because I was just too scared.

When I was 10-12 years old, I used to go work on Saturdays with my dad at his manufacturing job at Becton Dickinson (we just called it ‘B-D’). He would give me odd jobs to keep me occupied, and I felt like I was contributing. More importantly, I got to spend time with my dad.

As the years progressed, we moved and my dad got other jobs in the plastic business. His last one brought us to Rhode Island to be the manager at Rosbro plastics. I kept spending Saturdays with him at the factory. After a few years, he left Rosbro to start his own blow-molding company, Luben Plastics (named after his parents Lucille and Lou Beneduce). This meant I was in the factory helping out a lot–except I was actually starting to help, because I’d been around these machines my whole life and knew how they worked.

I’m good with my hands and I like to work hard. After high school I started working at the factory full time. Spending Saturdays with my dad was great, we were best pals. But something about the pressure and grind of working together day-in and day-out introduced a lot of friction. I think that’s one of the things that makes me saddest.

My anxiety really bloomed in my teenage years, so by the time I started working for my father, I was afraid to go almost anywhere except home, the factory, and the gym. But when the factory ended up short of work, I had to go out into the world with my anxiety raging inside me, and sell.

Sometimes it was too much, and I would crash my car into a telephone pole so I could say I had an accident and that’s why I didn’t make a sales appointment. Driving to solicit customers in New York took hours, because I kept stopping at hospitals, just in case. Many nights, my wife thought I was in a hotel, when I was actually sleeping in my car in a hospital parking lot.

Decades later, life is pretty good. I get to spend a lot of time with my wife and my grown kids, we enjoy summers on the boat, or out in Chatham. But every moment is a little sweeter because I know what it took to get here, battling through the fear and the tears to sell plastic bottles, five cents at a time.