Sunday, May 17, 2009

2 Hours of my Life I'll Never Get Back

Ding Dong. "He's here!"

Enter stage left one decidedly geeky vacuum salesman whose life is devoted to educating our family on its surprisingly filthy inhabitance.

He wasted no time in launching right into all of the cutting edge, space-age attributes of this remarkable vacuum system -- which incidentally was approximately the size of our Honda.

Friends, I've never in my life heard a human being speak SO quickly! He would make an auctioneer pale in comparison. It was all I could do to refrain from giggling and mimicking him .... all the while thinking "Are we being Punk'd? Ashton, come on out!"

He painstakingly demonstrated every wand, attachment and feature with the fervor and conviction of a presidential candidate. "YES, WE CAN!" From the caster wheels made of the same material as bowling balls to the steel drum which would collect our enormous amounts of dead skin .... known as dust to the layperson. Apparently, our existence with merely the aid of our God-forsaken Dust Devil has predestined us to a life in a cesspool of lung-clogging, allergy inducing, life-shortening dirty carpet.

At one point, he theatrically gazed with absolute horror & disgust at a small pile of dust that his sweeper had sucked up from our rug. It was truly comical to see his face. In fact, I jokingly told him, "If you're gonna puke, the restroom is that way"!
Although we were promised that this demonstration would last no longer than 30 minutes, he was still charming our socks off almost 2 hours later. What a treat.
Finally, he lowered the boom and presented the cost. A mere $3,000. Roughly the same price as a Disney vacation. But good news, there were several different payment options: one labeled something like the All-American; one dubbed the Blue Collar; and my personal favorite: the White Trash plan.

We decided to pass. Between you & me, we were only in it for the free $500 gift certificate! But of course, it ended up being practically worthless. When I visited the correlating website to redeem our certificate and peruse our options, I discovered that they charge you a ridiculous amount of money for "shipping and handling". For example, to use the certificate on a necklace, you are charged $80 out of pocket for shipping & handling. Can you say lud-i-crous?

Moral of the story? There's no such thing as a free lunch OR a free $500 gift certificate. Paging PigPen: Wanna move in? Word has it you'd be right at home!

5 comments:

Christi said...

Hehehehe...that makes me giggle! Sounds like the guy that came to my house with this bottle of cleaner that he said was so harmless you could drink it...he then took out the spray part and put it in his mouth and ran it through where his teeth USED to be...may be harmless to drink but it can rot the teeth right out of your head! You got to kind of feel sorry for those guys...but at the same time it is 2 hours you will never get back!

Heather Eslick said...

Oh my stars, you make me laugh! We've had similar experiences with the water purifing people. Christy, I think that same cleanser guy came to my house and I was idiot enough to buy it just to get him out of my driveway! Now I have a gallon of pink WATER!!

Jennifer said...

Sounds like the guy that came to my house. He swept up a bunch of dog hair, so I denied having a dog. He described the short, white hairs, and I kept on denying it. Finally - I swear he called her by name - Snowball - are you in here? Those guys are persistent if nothing else.

Alicia said...

That is SO a Kirby guy. It's funny and annoying all at the same time! I should say it's funny when I'm not the one doing it!

The Boccias said...

Are you joking about the names of the payment plans?? Funny story!