Do you remember when you were a kid, and your school/girl scout troop/baseball team/insert-your-group-here sent you home with those fundraising plastic cups, or hoagie order forms, or boxes of candy bars? You went door-to-door to sell them, didn't you? (Unless you were one of those lucky few whose parents worked somewhere with a bazillion co-workers, so they sold, like, thousands of candy bars for you, and you won all the selling prizes, while kids - like me - whose parents said, "It's your school. You sell them yourself" scrabbled together orders for, oh, 32. Maybe. Yeah, I've got a wee little chip there.)
Thank goodness nobody thinks that's safe for kids anymore - Lovely Girl and Handsome Boy are spared those memories in their childhoods. (Can you tell I hate-hate-hated selling stuff as a kid?) Well, now that kids don't sell door-to-door anymore, the field is wide open to everyone else. But, I never buy stuff from people I don't know who show up at my door, for three reasons. One is larcenous, one is villainous, and one is just plain icky-ous:
The Larcenous Reason:
I don't buy from people who show up on my doorstep asking me to buy magazines, because I'm still waiting for the ones I ordered from those girls who said they were paying their way through college by selling magazines. Oh, that, and they were competing with other college kids to try and win a Spring Break trip if they sold the most magazines. That was 1992. I wonder if they've graduated yet...
The Villainous Reason:
I don't buy from people who show up on my doorstep asking me to buy something big, because of the vacuum salesman that I politely turned down (and did not allow in the house) back in 1998. Turns out, my neighbor across the street called the cops and had him arrested. Why? Well, after I shut my door, said vacuum salesman decided to case my house and try to find a different - and unannounced - way in.
The Icky-Ous Reason:
I don't give contributions to people who show up on my doorstep asking for charitable donations because of this one year, when a local charitable group (NOT where I live now) knocked on my door well after dark, with flashlights, looking for contributions. Legit or not, that's just creepy.
So, I'm not a big fan of buying from the door-to-door peeps. Buying from brick-and-mortars (with bookstores, the Apple Store and TJMaxx the only notable exceptions) aren't really my cup of tea, either. Give me an internet connection, a credit card, and a secure shopping site, and I'm all set.
But, that's another post for another time...
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