Death of a Salesman part 2

You may remember our not too distant encounter with a Kirby vacuum cleaner salesman. After that day, I vowed to never let another salesman into our house. I even thought about hanging one of those "no solicitor" signs up by the front door. I didn't do it because somehow they seem rude and I didn't want to scare off the neighborhood children who come by to sale jumbo sized buckets of cookie dough every year. By the way kids, you cashed my check weeks ago, where in the world is my dough?

Anyhow, a few days ago I opened the door to see this man standing a good ten feet back looking sort of scared of the 110 pound yellow puppy we keep around. It was time for me to start dinner, I had two kids pulling on my legs and all I heard was how he wanted to clean the carpet in two rooms of our house for free, no strings attached. I admit I was skeptical. So I said, thank you, but no thanks. He kept on. He was persistent. He assured me that there would be no strings attached and he just wanted to do this for free advertising for his carpet cleaning service and if they did a good job maybe we could tell our friends and neighbors. So. I SAID YES. Not even thinking of the Kirby guy from yesteryear.

Five minutes later as the "technician" was knocking on our door, Mike came up behind me smirking and saying you know this is gonna be those Kirby guys again. I was mortified. I told him it most certainly was not and that these kind people just wanted to clean our carpets for free. And then I opened the door. And I saw Dustin standing there with his Kirby vacuum cleaner box in front of him. Smoke may have come out of my ears, I'm not sure. I was just so mad. I just looked at him and said "you're NOT going to try and sale me a Kirby vacuum cleaner." He actually started laughing. I had to tell him all about our former visit with his kind and told him that we were not interested in purchasing a new vacuum cleaner and that even if we were there was no way we could afford a Kirby. I told him not to bother coming into our house because he was just going to make me mad.

He stood there smiling. Then he begged me to let him come in, clean the carpet and he promised not to talk to me because he wanted to leave us with a good impression of Kirby. I let him in. He did a fairly good job of not talking to me for the first five minutes. However, as I was cooking dinner he would come in ever so often to tell me some sort of lame joke. I swear Kirby must send all of their salespeople to the same comedy school. After thirty minutes, he was finished with the carpet and had me come inspect it. I admit, our three month old carpet was apparently filthy. He had twenty white circles of paper filled with dirt and dog hair from our playroom. It was disgusting.

He then started the sales pitch for why we should buy a new vacuum and I had to remind him that we had no money for one. He just told me that we were Kirby's target market and that didn't have to pay for it all at once. There was a monthly option! Of only $40 a month! And it would more than pay for itself because we would no longer have to pay people to come clean our carpets. He thinks we pay people to clean our carpet. How sweet.

To make a very long story a little bit shorter, before he left he offered me the rock bottom/no profit price for a brand new Kirby. $980. My friends, I have never wanted anything so badly in my life. One of my deep, dark secrets is that I love to vacuum. So I took the piece of paper with the once in a lifetime offer on it and showed it to Mike. He looked at me and said "okay." I said, "really?! we can get it?" And he said sure we could get it but then we wouldn't be able to put in a backyard because our money would all be gone. With a dejected heart I crawled back to the Kirby guy and told him to leave and never come back again. I believe my words were "Dustin, get thee behind me." In hard times, we pull from the word of God to find strength.

So now I try my best to vacuum with a happy heart every time I pull out our Dyson. It's a good machine, but it's no Kirby. If only those neighborhood boys would come back with my cookie dough I think everything would be better.