We still laugh when we recall an encounter we had at our local Sam's Club nearly a year ago when we ran into a sales demo staffed by an optimistic salesperson named Hugo. My go-to strategy for dealing with such overly-eager salespeople consists primarily of avoiding the species altogether. When this strategy fails however, my secondary strategy relies heavily on either avoiding eye contact with or directing disdainful looks in the direction of the zealous person who is attempting to visually or verbally engage me.
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| "Cosmetic" by Jen Halim is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 |
But Dallas was with me on this particular evening, which meant I was not flying solo. So when he was caught in Hugo's web, I was reluctantly drawn into enduring at least some portion of the inevitable sales spiel. Already leading Dallas over to his demo table, Hugo asked if he could rub his for-sale-concoction onto our wrists. I told him I had sensitive skin and several allergies, but Dallas agreed (?) to let him try it on his.
Hugo handed each of us a box of product and asked us to identify any ingredients to which we might be allergic. Glancing at the ingredient list, and now in tertiary strategy mode, I told him the only allergy I had to any of the ingredients listed was to water. Hugo didn’t bat an eye, and actually confided that he had the same allergy. By this time he was rubbing the concoction on Dallas’s wrist (which at the time seemed kind of creepy—although not as creepy as if he had been rubbing it on my wrist….). He tells us the product is stripping away soap residue, etc. and that this product will “perturb” further development of wrinkles.
At this point I interrupt him and comment that the word “perturb” doesn’t mean what he apparently thinks it does. He confesses that it was an SAT word and he’s been practicing trying to use it to impress potential customers, apparently hoping that disarming honesty will succeed where faux wordsmithery has not. Dallas helpfully suggests that the word he may want to use is “retard” but Hugo looks aghast and denies this, perhaps confusing a slang definition of the noun for the dictionary definition of the verb.
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| "dictionary" by stockcatalog is licensed under CC BY 2.0 |
Hugo makes one last valiant attempt to summarize the virtues of his $89 (that’s deeply discounted for Sam’s Club customers) product. It is at this point that I reveal to Hugo that in Dallas, he could not have selected a customer who cared less whether or not he has any wrinkles appearing. To this, Hugo readily agrees (not sure which sales tactic he was employing here). I follow up that observation with one about myself: “…and I already look good.”
This of course had the desired effect of rendering Hugo entirely speechless, for what could he say to that?