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.
