Ding Dong! It's the Kirby Vacuum Man!

Today I was called upon by a clean cut young man who shoved a bottle of free hand soap in my face and offered up a carpet cleaning. Now I know why he was there; to sell me something, not to scrub my carpets out of the goodness of his heart, so I immediately started to say no. He said he needed to do one more cleaning before he could call it a day, and that if I let him in, he'd get credit toward some trip to New York. Not wanting to deprive him of seeing the Rockettes, and seeing as my living room carpet is in extraordinarily sad shape, I caved. Mistake #1.

He went back to his truck and got a large box. Oh man, this is where I should have slammed the door and drawn the blinds. I thought this guy was from a carpet cleaning service or something that I maybe could actually have afforded saying yes to; turns out he was a Kirby salesman. Shit. The guy is already lugging the box in, so I felt bad saying no at that point. Mistake #2.

"oooohhh...aaaahhhhh...."

He came in, started taking all the shiny parts out of the box, going on and on about how all the parts are metal and that "this baby is built to last a lifetime". Uh oh, built to last a lifetime = I can't afford it.

I pointed him to the room in question, and he asked if it had been vacuumed recently. Well, not today, would it be easier if I did that? He indicated that it would be, so I whipped out my Eureka and did a quick once-over. Then he put this little dirt pad in the chamber, vacuumed for about 5 seconds, and stopped. He took the dirt pad out and it was COVERED in crap. "Wow, you must have missed a spot!" he said gaily. Well I guess so, smart ass.

He proceeded to do this 40 more times over the course of the next hour. 40 FUCKING TIMES. I know because I counted the pads after he'd left. He'd vacuum for 5-10 seconds, stop, change the pad, keep going, apparently trying to make the point that I live in dirty, filthy squallor and that only his vacuum could save me. Point taken, dude, nothing I didn't already know.

S: "A Kirby picks up more than 90% of the dirt in your carpet. A Dyson only picks up about 55%. And that's a $600 vacuum!"
K: "Yeah, that's a lot of money."
S: "It sure is!" [gives me the impression that his machine MUST be less. I was impressed at this point, and $600 seemed pretty reasonable]

After his hour of vacuuming (and an hour of me PLEADING with him to use the vacuum bag instead of constantly stopping with his dirty pads, I GET IT, MAN...I GET IT!), he sat down and showed me the price. $1795. WHAT THE FUCK! I should have told him to get out right then. Mistake #3.

K: "I can't possibly afford this. I don't want to waste your time."
S: "Hey, you're entitled to the shampoo I promised you. I'll just do that and be on my way."

Half an hour of him ooh-ing and aah-ing about how clean my carpet was getting, and he finally stopped. He then showed me the easy payment plan. I told him again I couldn't possibly afford it. He called his boss for the better price..."Just to see what I thought of it." He managed to go from $1795 to $1295. I realized at this point that it was a script, the old "I'll call my boss, and I'll stick my neck out to help you out," routine. I told him I couldn't possibly and that he should probably go. He THEN took the vacuum and ran to the back of the house. I should have kicked him out at this point, but I didn't want to be rude. Mistake #4.

"Hang on...let me get my boss on the phone
so he can have HIS turn at anally raping you!

I chased after him and found him in my son's room, vacuuming his BED. He showed me the dirt pad, and promptly informed me that all the crap on the pad was DUST MITE SHIT and DEAD SKIN.

S: "Isn't that DISGUSTING?"
K: "Yeah, that's pretty bad."
S: "Do you want your son sleeping in THAT?"
K: "Well, if you finish the rest of the mattress, he won't be anymore!" [attempting a joke]

Salesman was NOT amused. I figured out at that point that he was past the point of being nice and it was time for him to go.

S: "Do you really want to risk your son's health by NOTbuying this vacuum today?" [condescending "you're a bad mother" tone of voice]
K: "EXCUSE ME???"
S: "He's breathing all of this junk in EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. You want that on your conscience?" [getting heated, realizing he's really not going to talk me into this]
K: "I'm going to have your broken nose on my conscience if you don't get out of my house right now."

Salesman got nasty at that point.

S: "I've spent all this time and you're really going to do this to me?"
K: "Wait, let me think about it...YEAH."
S: "I can't believe this."
K: "Believe it. Get out."

He called his boss again. Apparently, his boss was in the truck outside the whole time, circling the neighborhood for other victims. He silently packed up and stormed out of the house.

I shook my head in disbelief, and sat down to pen the story. About half an hour later, I had another knock on the door...ANOTHER FUCKING KIRBY SALESMAN, HOLDING ANOTHER FUCKING BOTTLE OF HANDSOAP, READY TO WORK ME OVER AGAIN.

I told salesman #2 that he should leave immediately, because his buddy was just here and he wasn't too happy that I wasted 2 hours of his time.

S2: "Haha, wow, I'm sorry, I guess I have my street assignment mixed up."
K: "I guess so, Alan already got a hold of me."
S2: "Oh, you got Alan? He can be kind of pushy."
K: "That's the understatement of the year. He couldn't stop talking about dust mite poo."
S2: "But isn't it a great vacuum? Lemme tell ya, my wife loves hers! Maybe I can come in and get up some of the stains that Alan missed!"

[slams the door, screams "NO THANK YOU!", draws the blinds]

I peeked through the blinds just now and saw ANOTHER ONE skulking around across the street.

My God, it's the Attack of the Kirby Salesmen, descending on the neighborhood like locusts. I don't think it'll be safe to leave the house for at least a week.