Yesterday afternoon the doorbell rang and there was a young man standing at my door, college age. He was awkward but friendly, and didn't strike me as the brightest kid I'd ever met. He started in with a pitch about how his mother was forcing him to embarrass himself by trying to improve himself -- he was doing magazine sales for fundraising for a theater trip. (Do college kids even do that? It's nearly always h.s. kids around here.) He had an interesting twist: "I know you don't want these magazines, nobody does, but we will be sending them to soldiers in Iraq so you'll be able to support our troops." I never really had time to decide whether this was all on the up and up or not or ask for the appropriate i.d.
Somewhere in there he asked me what my favorite school was, and I told him I'd attended Brigham Young University. Much stammering ensued, and he looked like he wanted to ask the obvious question but didn't think it was polite, so I just said with a smile, "yes, I'm a Mormon." He literally stepped backward and looked like he wanted to run away (I wondered if I'd need to reassure him that most of us really don't eat babies and that I personally never intended to try it so the neighborhood children were safe from me). He recovered and then said that he'd dated a girl who was Morm . . . I mean LDS but she was sort of stalking him now (oh great, weird Mormon damage control needed?).
Well, turns out they'd been dating since he was 16 and he was studying the Mormon church but he needed to know for himself if Joseph Smith and prophets and so forth were true but if it was he'd change even though his mom would disown him, etc. etc. Honestly I don't know where the stalker girlfriend part came in because it sounded like he still liked her a lot and was considering a future with her. He wasn't very coherent and I was starting to wonder if he was playing with a full deck. So I just made some kind of neutral supportive statement about not changing his religion for her sake, that he should only do it based on his own personal convictions, and what school did he attend?
He then returned to his sales pitch. Turns out he was looking for a $49 contribution. I said "I'm really sorry, but I'm unemployed at the moment, which is why you were able to catch me at home, and I'm afraid that's more than I can afford right now." He immediately told me that my neighbors so and so were also unemployed and they just helped (Oh, OK, in that case . . .). Then he started telling me about his melanoma and pointed to something on his head I couldn't really see, and I said I was so sorry about that and he said "it's okay, I'm not going anywhere!" and something else salesmany.
I told him, "I've enjoyed talking to you and I really do wish you well, but I'm afraid I'm just not going to be able to help you right now."
"Okay, fine," he said, and stomped away, mad. And I just stood there shaking my head. It was just a bizarre encounter. He was so mad when he left -- is he gonna return and key my car because I didn't pony up 50 bucks? Did he make up the whole Mormon girlfriend just to create some phony common ground with me? (He obviously has some familiarity with some LDS ideas) And melanoma? I mean, if he had it I'm sorry and am impressed with his overcoming and moving on, but how manipulative is that?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I'm fairly confident that the guy wasn't playing with a full deck.
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
That sounds like fun...
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
Wow.
Though I think it's more likely that he's been trained to say just about anything to get a sale, but I think the girlfriend part just happened to be genuine.
I mean, what you basically learn from reading things like "Think and Grow Rich" is that if you keep asking, people will eventually say yes. They don't really get into why people say yes, which is that you've gotten so annoying, it becomes worth their while to get rid of you.
Posted by Javert (Member # 3076) on :
Wait a minute. There are LDS and Mormons on this board!?
Aaaaaaahhhhhhh!
*Runs away*
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Javert: Wait a minute. There are LDS and Mormons on this board!?
Aaaaaaahhhhhhh!
*Runs away*
*chases after Javert with religious texts designed to coerce unbelievers into servitude involuntarily*
*remembers it has been years since he has run even half a mile; loses breath after 30 seconds of running*
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
Javert, don't run. The quick movement attracts their infallible hunter instincts. And what ever you do, don't bleed. They can smell fresh blood over the internet.
Uprooted, Salesmen are magic. The create reality by mumbling mysterious words of power. You just ran across a bad one, both bad in an Evil Use-My-Powers-For-Personal-Gain way, and bad in an I couldn't sell fire to semi-frozen Eskimo's but my boss is making me say these stupid things--way.
Trust me. I'm a good magician. I knew all the rules for being a good salesman. Including the rule #4--never trust a person who says "trust me."
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
The paranoid part of me sort of believes that some door to door sales training programs actually teach people to act twitchy and not-all-there in order to generate sympathy sales. Either that or the profession attracts more than its share of this kind of person.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
quote:The paranoid part of me sort of believes that some door to door sales training programs actually teach people to act twitchy and not-all-there in order to generate sympathy sales
I'm thinking about Office Space right now.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Either that or the profession attracts more than its share of this kind of person.
I'm fairly confident that door-to-door sales attracts a lot of the kind of people who can't find or keep any other job including those who are twitchy and not-all-there.
Posted by Javert (Member # 3076) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_raven: Javert, don't run. The quick movement attracts their infallible hunter instincts. And what ever you do, don't bleed. They can smell fresh blood over the internet.
So Mormon's are fundamentally like the T-Rex from 'Jurassic Park'?
I knew it!
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
No, we work in packs, or at a minimum teams of two. We are much more like velociraptors than T-rexes (or should that be T's rex).
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
Copies of the T Rex.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
OK, I just had the funniest picture in my mind of little velociraptors on bicycles, wearing short-sleeved white shirts and black ties.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I'm suddenly seeing a children's books "Raptors on wheels".
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
Helmets, they always wear their helmets, and a big pile of books on the back.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
quote:Originally posted by pooka: Copies of the T Rex.
*snort*
Posted by Evie3217 (Member # 5426) on :
Pooka, velociraptors don't read books!
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
No, but their prey does.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
You mean all this time when we said we were preying for you, you thought we meant that we were praying for you?
[ April 09, 2008, 04:20 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by Uprooted (Member # 8353) on :
See, this is why I love Hatrack. Who knew when I was typing this up that I'd be rewarded with an image of little white-shirted velociraptors on bicycles to make me giggle all night?
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: You mean all this time when we said we were preying for you, you thought we meant that we meant praying for you?
*giggle*
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: OK, I just had the funniest picture in my mind of little velociraptors on bicycles, wearing short-sleeved white shirts and black ties.
Posted by Evie3217 (Member # 5426) on :
My mom was in my room while I was reading this (she's visiting from home) and I was trying to explain to her why I was laughing so hard. I'm not sure she got it.
Posted by TheGrimace (Member # 9178) on :
just a small attempt at potential explanation of someone behaving like that (though I don't know that it is applicable in this situation):
A good friend of mine got talked into selling educational texts door-to-door the summer between freshman and sophomore years in college. They did the normal sales pitches about how if you're really motivated you can make umpteen thousands of dollars etc etc... instead he spent probably the worst summer of his life basically living out of his car in rural mississipi, no knowing anyone, barely scraping by enough profit to keep said car running and keep the rent up on the little room he was renting. I'm sure some of his interactions with his prospective customers were rather akward as he was pretty desperate and/or depressed most of the time (not having any real contact with friends or family for 3 months, being in a very foreign environment since he was from urban Michigan, and barely making any money trying to sell multi-hundred-dollar book sets to often very poor families...) Even being a pretty normal guy it was definately wearing on him a lot even a month or two in... so that kind of thing could be at least a partial explanation of the odd behavior.
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