As I was vacuuming out the van this week, I heard somone hollering at me from the end of my driveway. I turned off the vacuum. Maybe it looked like I was doing nothing to him, but I was sweating, unintentionally, in 90 degree weather to clean out the van so it doesn’t appear that we live in it.
Knocking on a stranger’s door to make a living, even handing out a business card to someone you’ve just met takes a kind of ambition that I haven’t found. I tried to sell skin care products 3 years ago. I was terrible. To do that successfully, a salesman has to come to a point where a new acquaintance is not so much a potential friend but a potential customer. I can’t imagine what it takes for someone to go door knocking. Maybe it’s only a job to them, a way to make a living.
He pulled over on the wrong side of the road to get my business. But it was making me cut off the vacuum that did him in. He’d just made a delivery to my neighbor he said. And how do you like steak? No, we don’t eat steak very often. Just answering his question made him open his door to get out, offering me chicken and seafood. So I put my hand up as I turned to walk away. I said, “Thank you.” and went deeper into the garage. He saw he’d lost me and left. Relatively, he really wasn’t that rude, just the most recent.
Incidentally, (perhaps) a friend couldn’t get rid of a meat salesmen at her door because her children were standing in her way. He became aggressive, and she couldn’t get the door shut. She may have even bought something from him just to appease him. Arrgh. I should ask. This affects me on more than one level, as a customer, a woman, and a mother.
We get so many salesmen in our town, I rarely open the door anymore. Sad, I know. I’ve told my neighbor to call before she comes. So if a friend is reading this and I don’t recognize your car, just step out into the grass and wave so I can see that I know you.
Now, I don’t mind the missionaries. We’ve had several. They can even come in and sit down with me, even though I know they’re selling something too. It’s the aggression that bothers me… the one or two salesmen on the phone who kept talking as if they didn’t hear me ask them to take me off their list, hollering at me above my vacuum…. Desperate times… I guess.
So I used this as a lesson to my 10 year old, ranting about 5 minutes, not to ever be bullied into doing something, and in this case, not to ever be bullied into parting with her money when she doesn’t want to. She’s a gem, our 10 year old, watching and listening to my rant the whole time, not impatient to get back to her laptop, her eyes on me. I don’t get worked up like that often, but I remember my mother would get particularly irked when she thought she was being taken advantage of; I see now that she was motivated to pass that feeling on to me.
I have often thought, cleverly, that I need a protege. But I not only have one, I have three! Three little proteges to sit at my feet, to listen to my endless wisdom. This is what I want to hang on to when their questions are overlapping each other, when they descend on me after school for food and comfort and sign this, and fill this out, and will you call the mall and see if they have such and such in stock…..
Savannah, my little problem solver, said, “We should get a no soliciting sign.” I agreed saying, it should be HUGE, and we should put it on our roof! We had a laugh.
