Thomas Cooper, 49, spent nine long years as a sales representative--eight of those spent servicing 7-Eleven convenience stores and other shops in and around Detroit.

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Pudwill first visited Hong Kong from Germany in the mid-1970s as a sales and marketing representative promoting Volkswagen vehicles.

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Mr Galsworthy spent most of the last decade there working as chief sales representative for Fuller's, a big, London-based brewer.

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"Our Valentine's Day sales make up 20 percent of our entire sales, " said Gae-ra Lee, public relations representative for the cafe.

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"Right now the future is looking kind of cloudy, " said a sales representative at a San Francisco Bay Area Circuit City (nyse: CC - news - people ) when asked about the HD DVD format on President's Day, despite a pitch for the format blaring from a big-screen television on the other side of the store.

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