Yesterday afternoon, I was in my office and H was upstairs doing her homework and the doorbell rang. I looked out and there was a young man standing there, no car visible anywhere, and I didn’t recognize him, so we didn’t answer the door. I watched him walk away from our house, up the street and into the neighbor’s driveway to ring their doorbell. Didn’t think much about it.

Then, last night around 8:45 p.m. (wayyyy past dark) the doorbell rang again, so J answered. This young man started out with a nice introduction, selling magazine subscriptions (4-5 year long subscriptions!), blah, blah, blah. J said he wasn’t interested. The guys said, “But it will really help me out, keep me off the streets (where he was, actually), can’t you just help me out a little bit?” J said, “No, I’m not interested”
“Well, your neighbor, Bob, said that at first, too, but then he was kind enough to help me out.” And so on, back and forth, until J almost had to push him away to close the door. J even suggested the young man call him at his office the next day, because he was always looking for salespeople (really just wanted to get him to go away), but the guy didn’t want to do that. Those magazines must really pay a lot of commissions!

I hear stories about these guys all the time. Some company pays them, takes them to neighborhoods, puts them up in cheap hotels and pushes them hard to make sales. Since the “Do Not Call Registry” has taken away one form of revenue for these scumbags, they’re starting to venture back into the neighborhoods. Creeps me out.

FYI: The top five lies told by door to door salespeople (I think our guy told four of them)