Things I Tell My Wife by Matt Knutson

“I thought we went over the rules for who we let in the house,” I reminded Sera after she had sat through an hour and 20-minute vacuum demonstration in our entryway.

I worked a little later than normal on Wednesday and was unamused to find a sales pitch standing between me and the couch after a busy day. My normal shut-it-down mantra toward door-to-door sales fell to the wayside, and I navigated between my wife, an incredibly expensive vacuum and a high school girl who was a month into her new job to get to my computer and ignore what was happening in my own home.

Did door-to-door sales really still exist? The business model is so old, and I would assume so ineffective, that it wouldn’t be worthwhile for any employer to continue this practice. I’ve come up with a few reasons why I’m not a fan.

1. Strangers don’t belong in my home. When we moved to our home and immediately had a solicitation, I coached my wife on how to respond.

Mainly my advice was to say “no” politely, yet firmly, and get the door closed. You never know when someone may claim they’re selling a product but actually has an evil, ulterior motive, and I’d rather not be on the news as the latest couple swindled by a crafty thief.

Unfortunately our home doesn’t have a window by the door, or a traditional peephole, so we have no way of knowing who is knocking unless we actually open the door.

Sera would later reveal to me that she didn’t intend to let the salesperson into our home, but she was hoodwinked when she was told they had a “special gift for the lady of the house.”

Like a kid drawn to a van with “free candy” painted on the side, my wife opened up our home to a vacuum salesperson for a can of Crisp Waters Glade Spray. I’m not sure how it worked, but it did.

2. It’s a huge waste of time for someone who knows they won’t buy the product. It dawned on me then that I had been transported back to the 1950s. I imagined how husbands would have handled the unwanted situation back then and came up with two possibilities.

A. Kick the person out of the house immediately.

B. Make their wife listen to the whole presentation to dissuade her from making the mistake of inviting the salesperson in.

I opted for Option B.

After an hour and 15 minutes of vacuum education and hands-on training, the presentation was over. Sera had learned what the best qualities were in a vacuum, how all the attachments worked and why this one was far superior than the current vacuum we use.

It legitimately was better, but our two-year-old $25 Black Friday vacuum was not about to be replaced by something I’d need to take a loan out in order to afford.

3. The products are always expensive and purchases are driven by fast sales. It was clear to me very early on that we wouldn’t be purchasing this magical device.

Sure, it would pick up Beesly’s dog fur better than the current vacuum, and it works great on non-carpeted floors, but I’m not going to pay over $2,500 (you read that right) for a vacuum that doesn’t also transport me to work. When our salesperson refused to tell Sera the price early on in their conversation because “we weren’t at that part yet,” I knew she was wasting her time and ours.

Besides the point of the unaffordability of this piece of equipment, who actually needs a home so clean that it requires a $2,500 vacuum cleaner? And can’t most people who can afford such a vacuum cleaner usually just hire a maid service to clean the house for them? I’ve never been in the position to have that service, but I’d guess it’d be more affordable.

Thankfully, my wife was on the same page as I was. She may have been fooled into letting a stranger into our home, and she may have been too nice to cut off the presentation halfway through, but she was not going to even consider purchasing this home cleaning device. I was prepared to intervene if necessary, but I proudly wasted time on Facebook as Sera closed the door to our salesperson. Hopefully next time she won’t be so easily swayed to let him or her into the home.

 

Rochester resident Matt Knutson is the communications and events director for United Way of Olmsted County.