Window Of Opportunity

Telemarketers can be annoying – to say the least. They call at the most inopportune times. All right, I’ll admit it; any time they call would be an inopportune time for me!

Thanks to the Do Not Call list, these days, I don’t get a lot of these calls. But before that welcomed list came about, telemarketing calls at my house were frequent – sometimes two or three a day. I’m not sure why they thought I’d be such an easy mark; I have never and will never buy anything from a telemarketer.

As I said before, telemarketers are annoying and simply hanging up on them wasn’t nearly satisfying enough. So, I usually tried to find ways to have fun. There are many ways to do this. Since a telemarketer is also a salesman, who drive me insane, they generally won’t shut up long enough to realize no one is listening. I’d lay the phone down and go do something else – just to see how long they would ramble on. I think the longest one went somewhere around twenty minutes! Or, I would engage them in conversation as if I were interested, let them tell me everything about their product – and then hang up. I had a few other methods of dealing with them too and what I tried to do was get them to hang up instead of me. That’s easier said than done.

One day, shortly after my wife and I bought our first house, a call came in from someone selling windows. I told the guy he’d called just a few days too late and that I’d just recently purchased fourteen windows. (I didn’t tell him they came with the house). I thought that would get rid of the guy but no such luck. He wanted to know what company I’d purchased my windows from and if I was happy with them because, he said, his company’s windows were far superior to any other. He added that I would still save money on heating and cooling if I were to purchase fourteen more new windows from him!

“So, you want me to just throw away the other windows I bought?” I asked.

Oddly enough, that’s exactly what he suggested! I hung up.

A few months ago, even though my number is on the Do Not Call list, I got a call from... yep, someone wanting to sell me windows for my house. I thought I’d try the same routine. This guy had a new solution for me. “We will buy your old windows if you purchase new ones from our company and have us install them.”

Really? I perked up!

The guy had already quoted me a price for my new windows so, I told him I’d be willing to make such a deal – and gave him the price I would be charging for my windows. Of course, my price was higher than his – by a lot. Hey, I’m entitled to make a profit aren’t I?

The guy on the phone said that wasn’t the way it worked, that the seller doesn’t get to set the price. Since when? I’m pretty sure that’s the way the free market system works. And hadn’t he, the seller, set the price for the windows he wanted me to buy? I said as much, to which he again replied that wasn’t the way it worked.

“So, you’re telling me you get to set both prices? Hardly seems fair.”

This time, I won. The guy hung up. But not before mumbling something about me being impossible to reason with. Hmm. Maybe I’ve found a new calling. My window of opportunity. I could become a telemarketer!

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Connor

by Dormaine G

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Bette A. Stevens

Pure Trash

Bruce A. Borders is the author of more than a dozen books, including: Inside Room 913, Over My Dead Body, The Journey, Miscarriage Of Justice, and The Wynn Garrett Series. Available in ebook and paperback on Apple®, Amazon®, Barnes & Noble, Kobo®, Diesel Books®, and Smashwords®, or at www.bruceabordersbooks.weebly.com. Bruce A. Borders also serves as the Vice President of Rave Reviews Book Club http://ravereviewsbynonniejules.wordpress.com

Toast For Sale

I’ve never been much of a salesman. Probably because I don’t want to bother people anymore than I want to be bothered myself. I just figure no one needs me to tell them what they want to buy. But that wasn’t always the case.

When I was about six years old, I used to come home from school every day and make myself a couple of pieces of toast. I’d spread the toast with lots of margarine (not butter, I happen to think margarine tastes better) and top it off with a thick layer of my Mother’s homemade strawberry jam. Then, I’d go stand on our front porch and try to sell the toast (as I was eating it) to passing motorists. I’d yell at the top of my lungs, “Toast for sale! Toast with strawberry jam – just twenty-five cents a slice!”

We lived on a busy street and in the few minutes it took me to consume my two slices of toast, I offered my sales pitch numerous times – enough to make myself a little hoarse on occasion. But I had to yell loud otherwise people inside their cars wouldn’t have been able to hear me. Every once in a while, I’d get lucky and catch someone walking by and I could say my spiel in an almost normal voice.

I did this for quite a while. We lived in that house for about three years, and most days I was outside at some point trying to sell my toast. That’s a lot of sales pitches. Yet, in all that time, I never sold a single slice of toast. Amazing, I know. Imagine – no one wanting to buy homemade toast from a six-year-old, grimy kid. The only thing I managed to do was get an awful lot of strange looks from people. A few of them even yelled back, but I could never hear what they had to say – maybe because I was still loudly blabbing away myself.

Eventually, I gave up on the idea of selling toast. As it turns out, homemade toast is not really a big seller. Although…

Years later, I tried to convince my kids one day, that they had to pay me for the toast they’d made. “Twenty-five cents a slice,” I said.

It didn’t work. Guess I’m still not much of a salesman.

Bruce A. Borders, author and songwriter, has over 500 songs and more than a dozen books. Over My Dead Body, The Journey, and Miscarriage Of Justice, his latest books, are available on Apple I-Pad®, Amazon Kindle®, Barnes & Noble Nook® and Sony Reader®, Kobo, Diesel Books, and Smashwords. For more information, visit www.bruceabordersbooks.weebly.com. See Bruce’s Amazon Author Page at www.amazon.com/author/bruceaborders or view his Smashwords Profile at www.smashwords.com/profile/view/BruceABorders