Tag: insanity

Door-to-Door Sales is Harassment with Extra Steps #ChangeMyMind

Background

I came across a particularly egregious video on YouTube with a click-baity title, claiming to advise would-be assholes on how to skirt the law (read: ignore and hope you don’t get caught) when it comes to knocking on doors with a ‘no solicitation’ sign.

PR Punchline

After I posted a comment, enumerating the reasons as to why this was a bad idea, he (or possibly one of his flunkies) replied, contradicting just about everything he said in the video:

“Thanks for sharing your perspective so candidly.

You’re absolutely right your home is your sanctuary, and your wishes about who’s welcome there should be respected. The last thing anyone should feel is disrespected or unsafe at their own front door.

That’s never the intention behind the techniques I discuss. The video is aimed at helping sales professionals understand how to engage respectfully where appropriate and, most importantly, when to walk away.

There’s no mention of ‘walking away’ in the video…

Ignoring clear signs like yours is not something I advocate on the contrary, I believe respecting “No Soliciting” signs is fundamental.

That’s funny, given the title of the video is ,“Turn ‘No Soliciting’ Signs into Sales – Proven Door Knocking Tips”

Appreciate the time you took to explain your experience. Comments like this help remind people in this space that we’re not just knocking on doors, we’re stepping into someone’s personal world. And that comes with responsibility. Wishing you peace and privacy.

The response read like an AI-Generated (or at least, assisted) PR Ploy to deny and walk-back just about everything he said in the video, trying to gas light me, and it chapped my ass something fierce (although it does make for good blog fodder… ) so, I fired back:

  • @0:28 “TURN NO SOLICITING SIGNS IN SALES” [sic] (i.e., the title of the fucken video)
  • @0:34 “Often times, people put a no soliciting sign up because they buy everything under the sun…”
  • @0:58 “They really don’t care if you knock on their door”
  • @1:42 “You have to be careful how you approach the situation…”
  • @2:43, you advise salespeople to acknowledge the sign and then immediately launch into a pitch
  • @3:34, you mock those signs with flippant remarks about not being able to read
  • @5:25, you recommend obtaining a permit only after facing repeated legal pressure

Round Two: D2D Karen Has Joined the Battle

Two months go by, and I’d forgotten about the whole thing, and then out of the blue, this person decides to tag herself in:

Dude someone obviously hurt you.

Sales is just another job like literally everything else. Just cause it isn’t something you would do doesn’t make them the a-hole, they are making a living the same way you are

You may not like it, but plenty of people don’t have any clue what they actually need to take care of, CAUSE GUESS WHAT, they don’t teach that sh** in school. Not to mention, you may be able to do research, but you obviously can’t tell the difference between AI and PR responses so the rest of your “research” is surely going to be just as half-cocked.

Where do I even begin?

No, D2D Sales is Not A “Real” Job Like Everything Else…

Obviously, D2D Sales isn’t like every other job…any more than Amway or Avon is a ‘real’ job. So what’s the difference?

Most D2D Sales positions aren’t actually employees of the organization they work for; they’re 1099 contractors who receive no benefits, no hourly wages, no salary, no transportation reimbursement, and operate purely on commission. Their attrition rates are horrendous, and most people wash out within their first month. If this describes what you do, then you don’t have a job, you have a hustle.

Tell Me How You REALLY Feel…

So next, she offers a bit of self-snitch, letting us know how she really feels about her [unsolicited and unwitting] clientèle:

plenty of people don’t have any clue what they actually need to take care of, CAUSE GUESS WHAT, they don’t teach that sh** in school.

Essentially, she’s saying people are too dumb to take care of themselves, inferring that they need someone like her to come straighten them out… Given her atrocious spelling and grammar, I can imagine there’s quite a bit she didn’t learn in school… such as how to recognize AI-generated content…

A Luddite and a Liar…

Generative AI and AI-assisted writing tools have a very distinctive and sanitized tone, but you can also run them through detection tools (e.g., ZeroGPT, Quillbot, Scribbr, etc.), which I did…

While tools like these don’t offer definitive proof or nonrepudiation, in the unlikely event that the entire post was written by a human (unassisted), they did a great job of mimicking the generic, overly polished, and diplomatic tone of an AI writing tool.

Conclusion

Exposing myself to uneducated people making bad-faith arguments on the internet is probably not a good use of my time or energy… but it does make for good post fodder.

…A Few More Words…

It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost a year since the anniversary of when it all went down.

There have been a lot of new and exciting changes in my life, things I’ve working for and toward for many years are starting to come to fruition. Success is something to be proud of, to enjoy, to look forward to. This seems (to me) to be the natural order of things but that just isn’t true for everyone.

Some people fear success – are terrified of it in fact. They don’t believe they deserve it, they don’t think they can hold on to it – it makes them feel vulnerable;  the more you have the more that can be taken away.

When he first told me about how he burned his school laptop in a bonfire, I assumed this was a triumphant middle finger to the establishment he’d grown disillusioned with. I never recognized it for what it really was – an offering to Damocles, and a cry for help…

“Take a puppy, abuse him, kick him, mistreat him – he’ll revert to feral carnivore. That his litter brother, pet him, talk to him, let him sleep with you, but train him – he’s a happy, well-behaved house pet.

Take another from the same litter, pet him on even days, kick him on odd days. You’ll have him so confused that he’ll be ruined for either role; he can’t survive as a wild animal and he doesn’t understand what is expected of a pet. Pretty soon he won’t eat, he won’t sleep, he can’t control his functions; he just cowers and shivers.”

– Robert Heinlein, Citizen of the Galaxy

I began writing this post over a year ago. At the time, I wasn’t quite sure what happened to the friend I’d lost track of – all I knew was that he was in a bad place, and there was nothing more I could do to help him. I felt angry, bitter and betrayed. In fairness, he wasn’t the first person to make a fuck out of me… and probably won’t be the last – good-natured people are often taken advantage of.

###

In time, that anger gave way to reason. I reminded myself that mistakes are how we learn… or don’t. In any case, they give you pause for thought. It’s not my place to dictate to anyone what they should or shouldn’t do with their life. Everyone has the right to go to hell in their own way. All one can do, all anyone can do, is the best they can.

“…Mate, go do what you gotta do.”
– Sassy the Sasquatch

The Nature of the Scorpion

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”
– Ernest Hemingway

“Not that you lied to me, but that I no longer believe you, has shaken me.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

There’s an old fable that tells of scorpion that begs a frog for a ride across the river. The frog replies, “if I give you a ride on my back, you’ll sting me!”

The scorpion assures him, “if I sting you, we’ll both drown!”

The frog accepts this as logical, and agrees to take him across the river on his back. About half way there, the frog feels a sharp pain, his legs go numb – they begin to sink.

“Why did you do it?” asked the frog, “Now we’ll both die!”

“I couldn’t help it,” replied the scorpion, “it’s in my nature!”

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In other variations, the frog is replaced with a fox. Perhaps this was to illustrate that even a creature as clever and resourceful as a fox is not immune to the cruel indifference of nature.

A modern retelling has the fox place the scorpion on the end of his snout where he can keep an eye on him, flinging him off at the moment he raises his stinger. Interesting, but I think it misses the point (pun intended); The fox learns no lesson and instead, confirms only what he already knew to be true.

The last variation of the story replaces the scorpion’s fellow traveler with a tortoise. According Bidpai (as retold by Maude Barrows Dutton):

Halfway across he was startled by a strange rapping on his back, which made him ask the scorpion what he was doing.

“Doing?” answered the scorpion. “I am whetting my sting to see if it is possible to pierce your hard shell.”

“Ungrateful friend,” responded the tortoise, “it is well that I have it in my power both to save myself and to punish you as you deserve.” And straightway he sank his back below the surface and shook off the scorpion into the water.

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The scorpion pretends to understand logic and can parrot reasoned arguments, but he is and will always be a slave to his nature. Is there any point to being upset at a scorpion for being a scorpion?

The lesson here (if there is one) is this: You can only trust a scorpion to be himself. And if you are going to try help him, you’d better have thick skin.