In 1970, I traveled with my new bride 2,000 miles from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania to Los Angeles California; I was going to pursue a career as artist. My time at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh was up, and I was going to seize the day. Walt Disney Studios was my most illustrious rejector, but no one wanted my services. I registered with a job counseling service and got a referral to a company that sold encyclopedias, door to door.
I thought of my door-to-door experience when, on a recent week, I was visited at my home by three different salespersons. One person wanted to sell me a home security system, another wanted me to buy some religious books and the third offered to dispose of my spiders or ants. I declined all the offers, then posted on a neighborhood social media page what I thought was a humorous take on the activity. A rash of clenched pearls and twisted knickers broke out as commenters weighed in on what the salespeople were doing.
When I was selling stuff by rapping on doors and ringing bells in Los Angeles, I never saw a sign that said “No Solicitors,” nor were there “Ring-Cams.” You knocked, and if someone answered, you delivered your pitch. If you got a “turn down,” you went next door. There were municipal ordinances requiring the company to obtain permits to solicit, but the company never did. Salespeople got dropped off in a neighborhood, and when the cops got called, we went to a predetermined pick-up site and waited for the van. The person who visited me recently attempting to sell home security systems, spent almost a week in the neighborhood, walking north and south and east and west, trying to earn his commission.
Earlier this year, an enthusiastic group of people waving American flags worked the street I live on. I answered the door and admitted a young man who attempted to sell me a vacuum. He dirtied my floor and cleaned it, and even got dust from my bed pillow. When I declined all his pitches, he called his boss. She came in and asked what it would take to get me to “yes.” I told her that there was no number that I would agree to and reminded the original salesperson that I used to buy the contracts that vacuum sales generated. After my stint in door-to-door sales in Los Angeles, I got a job as a manger for a small loan company. One of the ways that the company acquired customers was to buy contracts from vendors. One of those vendors sold vacuums. I would run a credit check based on the information the salesperson had gotten from the customer, and either approve or decline the purchase of the contract.
I don’t subscribe to the idea that everyone who knocks on my door is potentially a bandit. (My bandit climbed into my Los Angeles apartment through an unlocked front window.) Companies employ contractors to sell their product by knocking on doors and making a pitch to the resident. I can choose to do what so many others do, which is to ignore the knock. I have an old-fashioned peephole which allows me to survey the landscape before I open the door, and a “bing-bonging” Bluetooth doorbell. Knock, ring, I open the door, listen, learn, and say “goodbye.” That is the approach I take to handling the outrageous practice of door-to-door sales. In the movie Tin Men, Richard Dreyfuss and Danny DeVito portray two shady door-to-door aluminum siding salespeople. But still:
You don’t have to open the door.
cjon3acd@att.net