Lies I've told Salespeople

I just got an email from a friend about unsolicited sales pitches from acquaintances, which should really be counted as the 8th Deadly Sin-- "Thou shalt not fowl thine own social nest by pitching to thy friends." I got so hot and bothered by the sheer effrontery of such an experience that I began recommending techniques to discourage it from ever happening again, and in so doing, I remembered a brimming double-handful of times I've been outright Bad to other people simply because they tried to sell me something.

Commerce, in itself, is not a sin-- I know this. People must somehow be persuaded to purchase things, even things they hadn't previously considered purchasing. But there are limits, I say, limits on when you can pitch, and ruining things like a little hard-won peace at home or out walking is just unforgivable.

See, I got burned once, really bad, on a magazine subscription service who called me at work-- where my JOB was to answer the phones, so no fair-- and the woman mumbled her pitch at me while I was distracted with three other phone lines and RECORDED me agreeing to a four-year subscription to Jane. I would write their company name here in all caps on the blog and take pains to mention it many times so that it might ping a search engine or two, but I can't because I entered the checks I wrote to them into my register under the name "Motherfucking Charlatans" every time. Anyway, I tried to appeal on the grounds of entrapment or something, but the head service representative got on the phone and, very professionally, gave me a yell-down ebonics hell-ride. This company and I went back and forth several times until my genetically-programmed nice girlness failed spectacularly and I yelled an expletive and paid them off in full.

Since then, I've had absolutely no compunction about telling great big fabulous lies to people who try to ensnare me with an unsolicited pitch. I take a special joy in it, tempered only by the smallest draught of guilt, and fully expect to see it on the itemized receipt Hell will give me for my soul come Judgment Day:

1) Two skeezy dudes with patchy facial hair showed up at my apartment in Austin, which CLEARLY forbids solicitation, and tried to sell me magazines because they could win a trip to Panama or something. I told them that just that afternoon I had been fired from my job and then I cried, openly, right there on my doorstep. They were stunned, and then one awkwardly shook my hand and told me it would be OK. For a few seconds after they left I stood behind my closed front door and thought, "What the fuck was that?" And then I gave myself a mental high five and regretted not getting a nose and boob job and acting in soaps.

2) Back when I had a land line (oh, the folly) I used to get solicitation calls all the time, even though I'd put myself on Texas's "Do Not Call" list, which I'm convinced was little more than a cunning fiction. I've been told by a former phone solicitor that it's best to just hang up right off the bat, so the solicitor can get on to the next number on the list and hopefully make some money, but first, that's just too much of a leap for my manners (lying, apparently, isn't), and second, if it allows phone solicitors to make more money, isn't that just perpetuating an unmitigated evil? So I told one once, "Look, I have these seizures, and it totally feels like I might be about to get one, so I have to go lie down down." IT worked so well that I actually started answering the calls Caller ID identified as ANONYMOUS and developed some good standby lines: "My kids just set something on fire", [in an all purpose European accent] "I'm visiting in this house and will put the phone back now" and for irony, "I have to go-- there's a solicitor at my door!"

3) People on Guadelupe Street, the main drag in front of the University of Texas, solicit to students all the time and I definitely had my share. I was much nicer then, and often waited for the end of a complete sentence to fit in my "No, thank you, I'm not interested," but then I realized that most of them talk in run-ons, and that there's an unspoken buy-in involved in just listening. Obligation grows on you like some fast-acting fungus if you don't snap out your disinterest right at the beginning. "I'm broke!" was surprisingly ineffective, and even worse once the credit card companies started in on you, so I moved on to "I don't believe in money-lending," but by far the most effective was the Crushingly Personal Non-Sequitar. I stumbled upon this one by accident, but it's like Round-up on a converastional weed:

"Hi, did you know you can save 15 percent on all your lingerie purchases by opening a free account with--"

"I am so depressed right now I don't think I can stand it anymore. I honestly don't."

"Oh. OK."

Why won't a simple, forceful, "No" do? I don't know. Truthfully, I don't think I've given myself much opportunity to practice those, and many painful, pointless, and embarassing chapters of my life could explained just that simply. In fact, I once took this stellar self defense class that taught that the best thing to yell in an attack isn't "help!" or "aaaaauugh!" which both feed the attacker's power jones, but rather, "NO!" And we practiced this a lot-- a whole big room full of women shouting "NO" over and over again-- and I swear it was the weirdest feeling. Soon I will write a whole blog post on the "NO" and my difficult relationship with it, but for now, just know that it's so sticky and uncomfortable for me that elaborate, soul-damning lies come to me easier than that one little syllable.