There was a knock on my door this lazy afternoon.
I opened the door. There stood a stocky, goateed man in a suit and tie.
"Would you be willing to vote for me?" he began in short order.
"S-sure..." I said with affable hesitation. "What are you running for?"
He gave his name to me and extended his hand. I looked at it through my screen door without moving.
At this point he brought out a pamphlet of magazines.
"I wanted to be a fireman, but for certain reasons I'm going in a different direction. If I accumulate enough points, then I get to be fire chief," he said.
I restrained the urge to corkscrew my face into a mask of bewilderment, amusement, and uneasiness." However, I did keep my eye contact away from his.
"Do you have any advice that you'd like to share with me in my goal of becoming chief?"
I offered one of my favorite two keys of great leaders. "Be persistent," I said. Remembering in the next instant that he was in the process of trying to sell me magazines, I wished that I'd said "Be humble" instead.
"Did I wake you from sleeping, sir?" he asked with a note of concern. "No," I replied with a note of annoyance.
"I'm not really interested in buying magazines," I said to match my body language.
He proceeded to talk about things other than magazines, while continuing to extend magazines toward me. I reached around the door and took one of the leaflets, thinking that he would leave me to examine them and decide whether or not to make a purchase at my leisure. Instead he took the conversation to a new level of in-your-faceness.
"I have a sponsor here with me today. If I were to give you a comment card would you say that I'm the nicest guy who's come to your door today?"
"Yes," I said with guarded accuracy (technically speaking).
Here's a graduate of Salesmanship 101. Or, if he and his possibly fictitious sponsor were nearby, perhaps Casing The Joint 101. Maybe even Evangelizing 101, with the curtain waiting to rise on his pivot from fire-chief-candidate-in-a-magazine-sales-based-election to a recipe for checking into heaven?
Now he brought out a clipboard. "May I please have your first name, sir?"
Ballgame!
2 comments:
You're nicer than me. Ida told him to get lost! Friday I came home to find an evangelist pamphlet (I won't mention the religion, but you have three guesses and the first two don't count...yes, it was THEM)....laying on the kitchen table. Luckily Troy had been home, and evidently he was the happy receiver of that little bit of media. I wouldn't have answered the door. The last time they stopped here, I answered the door (the kids were young) and they held up a bible asking if I knew what book they were holding. I shut the door. Mean? Possibly. But in this day and age, door to door solicitation is UNCALLED for! (thanks for letting me vent, man!)
Chief Wanna-Be did say "Jesus loves you" as I closed the door. I had no reason to doubt his sincerity there, but after feeling manipulated throughout the conversation, it was hard to give him more than a polite I'm sorry, no thank you while closing the door. What's downright rude is when I go door-to-door offering my math tutoring services with a frank and honest "Do you have any young children here today that I can multiply with?" and they just slam the door like I'm some kind of animal. Geez!
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