Please do not sell me your wares.
The National Do-Not call list starts here in Canada September 30th. Details here.
I worked several jobs throughout high school and University on the other end of these phone calls; selling everything from newspaper subscriptions to symphony tickets, asking if people wanted painting estimates on their homes or if they wanted to donate to their alma mater.
I actually said those words, “alma-mater”, it was in the script.
If we get everyone on this Do-Not-Call list it will severly hamper the job market for students, new immigrants, second and third job-holders… and let’s not forget the failed biz school graduates with nothing left to manage in their lives except the offices where this above-listed bunch of shrubbery work.
This is not a bad thing.
While I can understand what is happening on the other end of the phone, I do not like to be called. I do not like to buy things over the telephone almost as much as I do not like to buy things at my front door.
Today I said no to the cutest little girl guide you could ever meet.
Doorbell rings.
“Hi sir, would you like to buy some girl guide cookies?”
Internal dialogue: “Are they made out of real girl guides?”
I glance at the mom waiting at the end of my walk, eagerly supporting her daughter’s weekend habit of peddling wares to strangers.
Internal dialogue: “How can I get out of this?”
External dialogue: “How much are they?”
“Four dollars.”
Internal dialogue: “Four bucks! For cookies? What’s your cut, you little thief? Half? All? You’re not even a girl guide are you? Can I see a badge?
External dialogue: “Four bucks, eh? Hmmm… what flavours do you have?”
“Mint chocolate.”
Internal dialogue: “Yes, I have an out! That better be all you have.”
External dialogue: “Is that all you have?”
Mother (stepping forward): “Yes, the new flavours come out in the spring.”
Internal dialogue: “Yes!”
External dialogue: “Oh, I’m so sorry. I don’t like the mint chocolate. I’d buy to support you but the cookies would just go uneaten. I’m sorry, good luck.”
I close the door on the defeated and am relishing in my success when I look up to see Trish looking at me.
Internal dialogue: “Oh shit.”
Trish: “I have four dollars. I like mint chocolate cookies.”
External dialogue: “Highway robbery, at our own front door. No way - that kid has to earn her “ripping off strangers” badge somewhere else.”
———-
Now, some of you, and Trish, may think I’m cold hearted, but the Girl Guide cookies are the gateway product sold at your door. Next thing you know I’ll start buying other things from salespeople. Books, magazines, vacuums, meat. Soon I won’t go out to the store because I’ll have deluded myself into believing that anything worth having will eventually come to me. I’ll stay indoors, never go out, waiting for that next hit, that next ring of the doorbell, that next phone call from a telemarketer. That is the real danger, that right there.
This has to stop somewhere.
Might as well be at the start.
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