The Lovely Art of Soliciting: Part 2 The Reckoning
My phone rings, the shrill metallic sound of the ringer almost makes me jump as I walk home from the train station. I was deep in thought and was replaying my job interview in my head. It could be them. I don’t know why they would call now. But you never know. I grab at my cell phone in my pants pocket and hastily answer.
“Hello?” Silence.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Joseph Collins?” I hear a voice with a desperately hidden Indian accent answer back. “This call will not be charged on your sprint account.”
“Great.”
“How are you Mister Collins?” he asks. When he says my name it ends up sounding more like Mister Colons.
“I’m doing well, yourself?” I say then hear a dead pause as the man on the other side of the line tries to formulate a response. I’m probably the first person he has gotten this far into a conversation with.
“I… am doing well thank you for asking,” He says in a shaky manor, then continued the conversation at hand. “ Mister Colons, how much do you pay a month for your cell phone?” This, my friends, is the qualifying question. I know it well.
“I don’t know like 90 dollars a month,” I say knowing what his response will be.
“Wow, ninety dollars!” I could have said thirty and he would have given the same basic response.
“Mister Colons, what if I told you that you are qualified for a free gift of two phones for a monthly charge of only $59.99? You’d say that’s pretty great right?”
“Sure…”
“Mister Colons,” he began to say again. Hours later I would tell this story to my girlfriend Siobhan, which I would attempt to impersonate this friendly solicitor and she would tell me to stop because of how annoying it was. Needless to say at this point I was ready to hang up. So I cut him short, “Listen in truth I’m really happy with my cell phone at the moment and I really don’t want to switch.”
“Mister Colons, with this deal you would get two free phones-”
“Well I live alone,” A lie. “And I would therefore have no need for a second phone.” The truth.
“Mister Colons, the two phones would be equipped with voice command dialing meaning you wouldn’t have to dial your friends all you’d have to do is just speak into the phone and it would dial for you. Plus you’d get an extra 100 minutes on your plan and calls after 7pm would be free.”
I was now intent on just crushing his argument. “Well I currently don’t use even close to the minutes I have now and my free nights and weekend start at 6pm.”
“Mister Colons-”
“Please call me Joe.”
“Mister Colons, you probably have to pay extra for that right?
“I do.”
“Mister Colons, with this plans you wouldn’t have to pay extra and this phone would be equipped with the internet.”
“My phone has the Internet plus it has GPS tracking and a camera. Does your two phones have any of those?”
“It also has the internet for only an additional 15 dollars.”
“This would be added to the 60 dollars monthly charge you said earlier right?”
“Yes.”
“Plus the 15 dollars?”
“Yes.”
“So in short your asking me to switch my cell phone plan to a plan that gives me an extra phone I don’t need, extra minutes that I won’t use, for a phone that isn’t as advanced for pretty much the same price?” Ladies and gentlemen, I have sunk his battle ship.
“Mister Colons, -” He continued somehow.
“Please call me Joe,” I say.
“You wouldn’t have to give up your old phone.”
“Oh?” Believe it or not I was actually being entertained by this phone call at this point. In fact I was laughing to myself as he spoke. Unfortunately because of my fit of laughter, I was unable to properly hear his explanation about how the calls on my new cell phones would be cheaper. However I did hear him end the sentence with, “So basically you could keep your old cell phone for it’s features and you could have our free phone for making calls.”
“Do you know how illogical that is?”
Silence.
“Hello?”
Silence.
Hearing this man’s attempts at a sales pitch brought me back to those cold winter nights of going to door to door in search of some thrifty person who was willing to save a buck or two on beauty supplies and being shot down time after time. However after my phone call with the Middle Eastern man, which either ended as a result of my phone suddenly losing signal or out of his frustration at his failed attempt at a sales, I began to contemplate the situation. I originally started talking to him because I knew how bad sales is. Out of pity I listened to him. However I never had any intension of switching plans. But in the long run did I actually do the crueler thing by not hanging up on him?