Door to Door Day
I’m a door-to-door salesman. My job is to go up to a door and do a cold sell of whatever product I have been given to sell. It is not what one would call a life-changing job or career.
It started when I was in grade school and had to sell magazine subscriptions for the PTA at school. Then came wrapping paper at Christmas and Chanukah and candies at Easter. Doing this type of door-to-door selling was easy. My mom was always with me and she also made the calls to relatives and her friends and co-workers on my behalf. I did well.
Then as I grew up the products I had to sell were bigger. Raffle tickets for my high school band trip to Great Adventure. And of course more magazines. Only this time I had to make the sale. I did not make as much money then and prizes weren’t for me anyway.
So it only seemed natural, when I graduated from college and couldn’t find a job in my chosen profession, teaching, that I would meander to work using the only employable skill I felt I had experience in – door-to-door selling.
Today the product I’m selling is vacuum cleaners.
When I go up to a door there are numerous types of people and responses I get.
One is the “Invisible Man”. They want you to think that nobody’s home, despite the fact that I can see people inside the house peeking through the window shades. No doors are answered.
Then there is the infamous “Door Slammer”. They are the ones that open their doors and wait until I say, “Hi, My name is Harvey, I’m here today to…” and the door is slammed in my face.
Of course, occasionally I get the “Naked Lady or Man Tempter” depending on who’s home. They are the ones that are expecting someone else, their spouse, lover, postman… For the most part they, too, close the door hurriedly in your face, though occasionally I have been invited in, not so much to get them to buy what I’m selling but for me to buy what they’re selling.
There’s the “Listener”. They open the door and stare at you blankly until you’ve finished your whole spiel and then say, “Sorry not interested” or “We already have one of those.”
You don’t get very far when the “Kid” answers the door. Four-year-olds are not very adept at lying and will inform you that no one is home, or their mother is in the shower, but you can come in and wait. That usually doesn’t work very well when said person from the shower comes out with a towel wrapped around them and you, a strange person, are standing next to their 4-year-old child.
You get the idea. I could write a lot about others that I run into on any of my door-to-door days, but I gotta’ stop talking and sell something.
I seriously think it’s time for me to seek out a new profession…unless any of you are interested in purchasing a vacuum cleaner.
I hear there’s a call for pre-school monitors to supervise 3- and 4-year-olds during lunch. Maybe I’ll try that. What could possibly go wrong?
