The tasks were multiple. The bush by her front door needed trimming, as did the shrubs and trees around the path that leads from her screen porch to the back yard. The screen porch also needed a good sweep.
It was a beautiful day, blue skies and puffy clouds and still-crisp late spring morning air, so the work was a pleasure. With three exceptions. The boxwoods were thick with pollen, which my trimming cast in thick particulate clouds around me as I worked. There were gnats by the thousands, blossomed out into the world with the first warmth and rain, pressing in like willful pollen around my eyes.
And there was a door to door salesman, one of those aggressive young guys in company monogrammed t-shirts who ride through neighborhoods on their knockoff electric Segways. I was in the zone getting stuff done, and had no desire to hear from him about how he was just there because he was doing work for a neighbor, and had a special deal to offer on internet/phone/roofing/tree work/gutters/windows. He hummed around on his wheels, pausing briefly on the sidewalk in front of my Moms' house to fiddle with his tablet. I put out as radiant an "I am a Man Working who does not Wish to be Disturbed" vibe as I could. He moved along.
Once that was accomplished, it was time to head over to Safeway to get groceries for the next week. Mom doesn't need all that much, but the walking involved in shopping has become too uncomfortable as the years have progressed, so I'm happy to oblige.
The last couple of weeks, I've also picked up a few things for a dear old friend of Moms' from the neighborhood. She lives alone like Mom does, and is in treatment for cancer, which makes life a bit more difficult.
Yesterday, we'd gotten some over the counter meds for her, and Mom and I dropped by her place to deliver them. While Mom waited in the car, I walked them in and then chatted with her friend for a bit, because of course I would. As I was preparing to leave, she said, "Hey, David, looks like there's a salesman at the door. I don't want to talk to him. Could you run him off?"
It was the same dude on wheels, of course, and as I headed over to the door, he wheeled over to the car where Mom was patiently waiting. Great.
I went out, and he was mid-schpiel with Mom. "Hey there," I said. "We're not the homeowners here."
He continued with the pitch as if I hadn't spoken. "We're not the homeowners," I repeated. "We're dropping medicine off, and the homeowner has cancer and doesn't want to come to the door."
He looked at me from the perch of his machine, with bright and uncompromising eyes, behind which seemed to be a non-sentient process with only limited reply options. There was no evident emotional response to "medicine" or "cancer."
"Well, I can come back later, then."
"No," I said, a little more emphatically. "She has no interest in anything you're selling. She does not want to come to the door."
"I've helped seventy percent of your neighbors save money today," he continued, lying so brazenly it could get him a position in the current administration.
I ignored that, and shifted to a more sympathetic tack. "Look, I know it's hard going door-to-door," I said, getting into the car. "Did it myself for a while. All those turndowns aren't easy." Oy, that was a merciless job.
There was a faint hint of a reaction buried under the sales pitch, and it wasn't the relief that comes when the souls who are doing those godforsaken jobs realize I see them as human.
It was defiance.
The blunt algorithm that seemed to have control of this particular human fished for an automated retort. "I'm good at what I do. I'm a good salesman. Every no is one step closer to yes. Every no is one step closer to yes." With that more-than-a-little-rapey sales mantra hanging in the air, he wheeled backward.
"I am not going to let you bring me down. I am one step closer to yes."
And with that, he whirred away on his little machine wheels.
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