Musings
Trust
Trust
Why are people so hard to trust? Why aren't people genuine and why do they feel the need to manipulate and connive?
One unassuming Friday evening, around 9pm, while enjoying a game of boggle, someone knocked on our front door. Mike answered to a girl who asked if she could vacuum one room in our house for a school project. Mike told the girl no thanks because our entire house is hardwood floors. She pleaded that it was for a school project and she just needed one more for the day ... she would just vacuum our welcome mat and be on her way. Mike saw no harm in that and was happy to help out.
She excused herself to return a few minutes later w/ a vacuum. Five minutes later a whole crew, with enough gear to clean a department store, barged into our home and set up shop in our family room before we could even blink! What's going on!? Turns out these were Kirby Vacuum folks doing their in-house demo to get us to purchase their $2,000 product, on a whim! Hello!!!?? I don't know about you, but I personally do not throw around $2,000 unless it is a well thought out purchase ... and something I NEED. Did you not hear that we have hardwood floors!?!
They started their demo, deliberately marketed toward making you feel shamed and guilty that your house is filthy so that you'll be appalled and jump at their product. After 30 minutes of this, Mike had had enough and indicated it was time for them to leave. Mind you, it was now 10:00p, far too late for any door-to-door demos. The main leader of this demo was disappointed when we told them we were not going to buy their product that night. After their attempts at wheeling and dealing to get the price down to $1400, we were still not budging from our emphatic NO. We indicated, though, that perhaps in the future, when we have carpeted floors, we would consider a Kirby. The man had the gall to march off in a huff and explain "We only do sales through in-home visits." Well, when the time comes, I'll look up the local office and schedule another in-house demo. "Oh, well, we don't come to the same house twice!" Well, that sounds like a horrible business philosophy ... your loss buddy. In fact, now we never want a Kirby vacuum, not when the representatives selling them are people like you!! For the record, his name is Chris out of the San Jose office, in case anyone is taking notes.
We shooed them on their way and vowed to never get a Kirby. And, for the record, we hopped online and saw that you can easily purchase a Kirby vacuum from a number of sources, not just in-house visits. What a total scummy salesperson!! We went to bed w/ a sour taste in our mouths regarding door-to-door pushers.
The next morning we woke up and started a walk to old town to visit the farmer's market. The first portion of our 6 block walk is very residential. It was in this portion that we came across a man that stopped us for some help. He explained his truck had broken down 5 blocks away, he called everyone he knows and no one is available, he needs some gas, he needs to get home, and could we just help him out in any way, etc ... Mike suggested the greyhound station just a block outside of old town, but had no intentions of giving him the handout he was looking for. The man sputtered off some senseless excuse for why that wouldn't work and then carried on his way.
Why does it seem like people are always out to get you!? I like to think that, for the most part, people are good, nice, and are well-intentioned. But experiences like these, back to back, sure get me guessing and force me to put up an ultra-speculative guard.