CaptG
Member
I was eating my sandwich yesterday at lunch, just finishing actually, when someone knocked on my door. It was a young man, early 20s with a fancy bottle of air freshener in his hand. He starts right off with this gift is for you for giving me a couple minutes of your time. My immediate response is "I am not buying anything, here is your gift back, don't waste any more of your time". He gets this forelorn look and says that even if I don't buy he will get paid for giving me a demo. I ask him what he is selling and he says "Kirby vacuum cleaners". I am not a stranger to these sales tactics or to the Kirby sales pitch DAMHIKT. He has another young man with him, a trainee I find out, and a young lady driving the car that is the boss and "closer". A light starts to flicker in my few remaining brain cells. I ask if they are going to show me just how good this machine works. His reply was they were going to clean my house. I say does it do just carpet or can it do smooth floors also? It is great on smooth floors was the reply. The light is at 500 watts now and I am smiling. Show me this amazing machine I say and they start grabbing boxes and heading for the front door. No, not in here, says I, follow me. I take them to my shop, yes, the one with a 1/4 inch of saw dust for a carpet. In all fairness, I do have a little door mat size rug in front of my office door to wipe off the mud when I go in to do paper work or run the laser. I built the office mainly to keep the laser out of the saw dust, and just use a push broom a couple times a day on the tile floor to keep it kinda clean. There eyes bugged when they saw what they were walking into. For the next 45 minutes I directed them with "will the hose attachment pull the saw dust from this table saw under frame? How about under this bandsaw? Does it have the power to pull these metal chips from this toolroom lathe chip bed? Does it have an attachment that will reach under the laser and while you are there under the desk as well? They did, and they picked up a lot of sawdust, lol. The two guys had a sense of humor, the young lady was not as amused. When the demo was over and she wanted to know what it would take to sell me one, I reminded her that I was very emphatic in the beginning that I was not going to buy, That I would let them demo only because I was told the young salesman was going to get some pay for this and who am I to keep him from getting some honest pay. Oh ya, If they had any more trainees that needed practice, bring them by in a few weeks and we could do it again. My money says I never see them again, lol. The shop is still a ways from being "clean", but it is closer.
