What Insubordination Did Colonel Sanders Do With Prudential Life Insurance?

Question

I've been recently somewhat inspired by the story of Colonel Sanders, someone who experienced failure after failure and moved from job to job over his life, eventually going on to found Kentucky Fried Chicken, one of the largest fast food chains in the USA.

Many of these stories I read online (such as Wikipedia and numerous other sites) mention that in one particular job for Prudential Life Insurance he was fired for insubordination.

I have been searching around various websites, but haven't been able to find any further information. Does anyone know what exactly he did to get fired?

I'm interested to know if perhaps there was a moral reason he may have been insubordinate or something more to this story.

Answer 1

According to this wiki entry on Colonel Sanders, he was notoriously hard to get along with. Prior to Prudential Insurance, he had gotten fired from two jobs as a lawyer, one for getting into a fight with a colleague, the other for getting into a fight with a client.

In selling, there are two things likely to get a salesman fired: 1) Not selling enough and meeting your "quota," and 2) Not getting along with the sales manager or other higher ups.

Given his history and the charge of "insubordination," it was most likely the latter. We can infer that Sanders knew how to sell, given his later history with KFC.