Would you like to buy a....

As I was cleaning my floor today, I was reminded of the time the door to door salesman selling cleaner asked me not to tell my neighbors about LA's Totally Awesome Cleaner, since I paid $1 for the exact same stuff he was selling. I have listened many such people over the years, and I realized that a lot of my experiences with salespeople have been quite funny. So, today I would like to offer my top 5 experiences with sales (other than the Totally Awesome experience), and good excuses for anyone interested:

#5 When we were first married, I received a visit from a vacuum sales girl. It wasn't Kerby, but another pricey vacuum that we certainly weren't interested in. She gave her pitch, vacuumed my front room, and asked me if I was interested. I told her it seemed like a very nice vacuum, but I also presumed it was more expensive than I would like. She said that, yes, the upfront cost of the vacuum was more than most, but over the years that evened out. She asked me how much money I had spent on vacuums and vacuum bags over the years, and I told her I had only spent $5, for some bags Greg had found online on a huge discount, and I had received the vacuum as a gift, so doing the cost-analysis, it would take me about three life-times to make up the cost difference. She didn't make a sale.

#4 Some friends invited us to go to a free dinner and fire safety meeting at a restaurant one night, and so we went assuming it was a public safety sponsored event. Instead, it was a fire security company trying to sell all sorts of expensive detectors and first response schtuff. We enjoyed our dinner, and listened politely to his presentation, then when he asked us if he come to our home to give us an in-home estimate for what we should buy, we told him that it might not be to his advantage, seeing as we were getting ready to move in about three weeks. (We didn't mention that the move would only be about three blocks away)

#3 One fine summer day, I received a visit from a Kirby deep-cleaning salesman. He gave me his speech that it would pull the dirt right out of the pad, and asked me where the dirtiest floor was in my house for an example of the power of the cleaner. I turned around and realized that by far the dirtiest carpet was on the stairs, and when I informed him of that, he told me he would need special permission to do the stairs, and never came back.

#2 This is one of my favorites. I had a knife-salesman come to my house once, and upon showing me his wares, he cut his finger. He took one look at the blood and nearly fainted. He asked if he could lie down for a minute, and spent 20 minutes on my couch after wrapping his finger with a band-aid, trying to decide if he should go to the hospital to get stitches. Once he stood up, the idea of trying to sell me anything was a little beyond him.

#1 Last summer, I received a visit from the kind sales people at Winder Dairy. They were very kind, and gave my girls all sorts of samples, but when I saw their prices, I was not overly keen to sign up. I took the pamphlet, and said I would discuss the option with my husband, and even gave them my phone number. Well, I was in and out of the house quite a bit over the next few days, and received two messages from Winder Dairy. The first message was quite typical, asking if I had decided whether or not to use their services, and the second was a little more intimate--the salesman ended the call by saying, "I love you." There followed a rather embarrassed pause as he realized what he said, and I have never heard from Winder Dairy again.