Pess,
I'd love to watch you deal with a visit from a couple of boys from Salt Lake City:)
Salt Lake City? They're easy! It's the Witnesses that can be tough!
Posted by pessimist at November 10, 2005 07:27 PMWell, now that you mention it..., yeah.
Posted by DaveH at November 10, 2005 07:32 PMLast year some smuck showed up at my door with the same catalog. His closing plea was that I should buy from him because he wasn't selling drugs for a living.
Posted by rlp at November 10, 2005 07:42 PMI guess I'm lucky. I haven't had to deal with anyone selling anything since I built a fence and started letting my crazy German Pointer hang out in the front yard.
Posted by dorita at November 10, 2005 08:34 PMLast year I had several of these people at my door. It was really depressing because it was all part of some larger scam being pushed on and through them by a subscription selling company that (I believe) was collecting money not only for the subscriptions but from the government as some kind of jobs training program. Twice it was a young black guy and twice it was a young black woman and they had a nearly identical and heart breaking spiel which began with something along the lines of "I know that you legitimately expect that I'm going to attack and rob you, but unlike all the other black people you know I'm actually trying to better myself and I"m a good person" (not in those words, but some variant). It turned out that they had been airlifted from their own lives and given the task of selling a certain number of subscriptions, for a certain number of points, which could be converted to money or to something else, but which in no way resembled actual job training. They had been trained in a Uriah Heep level of humbleness, and to play on your (theoretical) liberal guilt. I finally pointed out to them that their job-masters were blanketing the same community over and over again which meant that their chances of actually selling subscriptions was going down. We had some interesting talks but the whole magazine subs. thing is a scam at the very start and piggy backing it on some bogus jobs program is even worse.
aimai
Posted by aimai at November 11, 2005 03:53 AMI agree with Aimai. I used to work in a building that had a similar operation being run out of an office next door--young people selling everything from flashlights to books. Every morning as we arrived to work we got to listen to the manager instruct the fledgingly sales people. Bottom line, all of these techniques like "help me out" are taught to them by their managers.
Posted by Alan at November 11, 2005 04:08 AMI actually tried to show one of these people how she was being exploited. I showed how the magazine subscriptions were actually cheaper--I'd be better off renewing the ONE subscription that I was even interested in myself; I'd save half the subscription rate. And somehow I got her to tell me how much she gets per subscription. And it was a byzantine structure, in which she only started getting MONEY from her sales job if she sold a gazillion subscriptions. The rest was all "credit" for some valueless training, I think. I said to her, "You're a good speaker, you tell a compelling story. You'd be better off going door to door just asking people to contribute to a college fund, $5 a shot, which would be cheaper for them and you'd get way more money out of it."
It sparked a kind of meltdown on her part. Because she had been sold on the fake-exploitative organization, not so much on the "bettering myself" crap. So while she could recognize the numbers. She also just couldn't compete how she could do something on her own.
Posted by emptywheel at November 11, 2005 05:30 AMMy wife has a soft spot for these salespeople - she grew up dirt poor and did fundraising and sales efforts like what these criminal organizations masquerade as.
And, yes, they're criminal. These companies look for people willing to lie with a smile, to sell and spin fantasies for themselves and belive the companies promises, even though most us know the lies even before they were issued out of a manager's mouth. The whole ball of wax is full of immoral people. What they may do is not illegal in the eyes of the law, but they're still criminal.
Next time they come by, I'll ask if he wants to make some real honest money and help me floor the family room for $10/hour.
Posted by idiosynchronic at November 11, 2005 07:05 AMDear Idio, I can remember in the seventies (the only cool decade of the twentieth century)when Moonies came to our door peddling something, oh yeah, donations to Reverend Moon. These kids were zombies, and Americans were urged by somebody on the radio or was it television? to bring them in and ask them their names, addresses etc in an effort to deprogram them. Are you kidding? What if they murdered us? Those fucking kids grew up and founded The Washington Times newspaper and are all probably millionaires now.
Posted by Mal Feasance at November 11, 2005 08:04 AMNo Mal, the kids didn't become millionares, Moon did. Most of those kids, if they weren't rescued by de-programmers, probabally died young and under horrid conditions.
I;ve met two moonies in my life. One in Washington, D.C. outside the White House when I was on my senior trip in high school, he was confused but saveable. The other I saw outside the Charlotte airport while I was doing business for a former employer. It was raining hard and he really was carrying flowers as he walked in a hard rain, pathetic.
The Washington Times was founded on blood and bones.
Posted by rlp at November 11, 2005 08:22 AMI just don't answer the door.
Posted by practical at November 11, 2005 08:45 AMThis sense of entitlement that younger people today have instilled in them is an interesting thing.
N=1
Not a good sample.
Posted by degustibus at November 11, 2005 08:54 AMHe's only a representative of a much larger sample of my direct acquaintance, degustibus. At my real world job, I am in direct contact with hundreds of kids just like this magazine 'salesman'. They aren't much different in their attitudes.
But when one has a crowded schedule, and little time for expansive documentation of such things, one has to cut to the chase.
Posted by pessimist at November 11, 2005 09:11 AMpractical is right, I don't answer the door and phone, that's what voicemail is for. Just because I don't have a moat, doesn't mean anyone who wants to sell crap can walk up to my house. Hate salespeople, hate 'em with a passion.
Although sometimes, when a telemarketer calls, I'll sit on the line while they go "hello, hello?" Or, as my son does, I ask in a slimy voice "what are you wearing." They hang up quick!
Posted by iamcoyote at November 11, 2005 09:54 AMThe only thing worse is a Kirby vacuum cleaner salesman. I had a guy who basically got into my house on false pretenses ("a free demonstration of our new carpet cleaning service") and I figured he could clean up the dog pee stain that I was going to have to hire someone to clean up. He did clean the dog pee, but it was hardly worth it, especially dealing with his snit at the end.
Posted by me2i81 at November 11, 2005 10:52 AMHad something similar happen to me end of last month. Cute young black man on my doorstep launches into a spiel so rapidfire I really couldn't understand what he was talking about. Something about him getting to go to college (here in Berkeley, I want that, don't I!) and earning points which presumably involved me spending money on something. He was carrying a clipboard but didn't show it to me (usually it gets thrust into my hands right away). When I said, "No." He asked why and I said, "I have other things going." Then he said, "Why did you let me talk when you knew you were going to say no!"
... ah ... I got it and I started cursing and laughing as soon as I shut the door. I was wasting his time.
Posted by Glenn Ingersoll at November 11, 2005 01:20 PMI got to talking with one of these salesmen "saving up for college" and finally I got him to admit that he had a police record and that made it hard for him to get work. This company mops up with these guys - from what he said, they have to pay their own motel room and meals and that, by contract, they have to complete x number of years to be rehabilitated. And that they are moved all around the country - he hadn't seen his kids in a year; they were staying with his mother. Now, i maybe that was a lie, too, but it did sound like exploitation of the underclass.
Posted by Kathryn in MA at November 11, 2005 02:39 PMYep, had a visit from the same guy. Getting points, improving himself; could talk his way out of a steel trap. But he made the error of laying the 'white guilt' thing on me, and while I mulled that over in my mind he opened his notebook, where I spied a couple hundred dollar checks written out to him by several fixed income seniors who live down the street.
I called the cops.