jennings rampage

I don’t have to leave the house for the excitement to find me.

October 14th, 2006 | by Scott Jennings |

It was time to stop putting things off and start cleaning my kitchen, so I put on my not-fucking-around headband, cranked the Justin Timberlake, and got to work.

Doorbell! Doorbell! What the shit? I put my sponge down, put my jeans on, and got the door.

A travelling saleswoman! What a charming anachronism for my Saturday afternoon! She was quick to assure me that she wasn’t here to sell magazines or vacuum cleaners, then quickly launched into a sales pitch for a miracle cleaning solution available nowhere else but my front door.

I suppose that catching me mid-dish was the perfect time to sell me a miracle cleaning solution, so I took the pitch. She started by abusing a white cloth with an ink pen, and then miraculously vanished the fresh stain with a few squirts of miracle solution and a bit of manual agitation. For her next trick, she cleaned some of the brake dust off one of my tires, and demonstrated how the miracle solution would keep my wheels cleaner longer by moving brake dust from a different part of the wheel to the clean wheel and showing that it just wouldn’t stay there. As if that wasn’t enough, she cleaned my driver’s side window, asked me to notice the lack of streaking, and attempted to smudge the clean window with her fingers, and failed. This miracle solution can replace every cleaning solution in my home — it’s a carpet cleaner, floor cleaner, spot remover, glass cleaner, countertops, stove tops, it does it all. And it even works better than Spray-n-Wash, which, as a slob, I depend upon in order to wear a shirt more than once.

Well, I guess I’m just a little impressionable, and I’m definitely a fan of the lost art of the personal sell, so I was sold. Wrap it up, kind saleslady, how much is the damage?

This is a deal, I was promised. I get a gallon of the concentrated miracle solution (which is to be diluted 10:1 for regular use, and will easily last a year), all the scrubbing pads used in the demonstration, and a spray bottle with the levels for the concentrate already indicated… for just $68.00.

Uhhhhh.

I didn’t drop sixty-eight clams on cleaning fluid. I offered the “ooooh, that’s a bit more expensive than I was anticipating” face, said I didn’t have the money to spend today, and despite the three payment options I was offered, didn’t close the transaction.

We shook hands and I wished her luck. Then I took off my pants, got back in the kitchen, and managed to get the work done without a miracle.