Is there anything worse than salesmen?

Okay, I understand that not all salesmen are the greasy, horrible stereotype that give salesmen a bad name. But a lot of them are. Enough of them that we have all encountered them multiple times in our life. And when I encounter one, I am just left with such a sick, dirty feeling that makes me want to wash my hands afterwards.

So you have to ask, why would anyone aspire to be such a despicable person? I am a firm believer in the economic theory of human behavior, that is, there must be a strong incentive to motivate a person like that to exist. In other words, in some situations, it must be more lucrative for a salesman to be a greaseball, than for a salesman not to be a greaseball.

I’m hoping that this trend is going out of style. I kind of feel like it is a generational thing. I don’t know if it is because my generation is a bunch of pansies who don’t like conflict, or just a bunch of savvy technocrats who know that we can do a quick search online and find a better price across town with free shipping. But I do know that people of my generation tend to react harshly to the hard sell. In other words, when confronted with a jerky salesmen, we just leave, rather than dealing with it. Of course, I am dealing with the small segment of the population I know, so it’s not exactly a scientific study.

I can say that for me personally, in at least in one situation, the hard sell directly caused me to go with the competitor. Unfortunately, however, I was placed in a situation over the weekend where I did end up buying from the place with the slimy salesmen. And I hated every minute of it.

From the minute we got there, I was disgusted by them. They immediately started pressuring us, going on about how high quality their stuff is vs. the other junk at the other stores, mentioning about what a “steal” these prices are and how they won’t last long, and bad mouthing all the owners of the other stores. This last part in particular rubbed us the wrong way, since A) we happen to like one of those stores and have spent a lot of money there in the past, and B) I just think it is bad karma to bash other people so much. Also, the guys went on and on about how their business is based on recommendations and how this guy recommended 5 people because he likes the place so much. Well, let me tell you, I won’t be recommending anybody, that’s for sure!

The worst part is that they make you complicit in their stupid salesman dance. Being faced with this very salesman-y approach, we started thinking, “Well, this guy can obviously dicker on the cost. So if we don’t get some money off, we’re suckers.” I hate feeling like this, mainly because I am, in fact, a huge sucker. And I’m already feeling bad about all of the money I’m about to drop, so why do I have to be so stressed about making the actual deal?

Evie didn’t help matters either. First, she put us in a bad position to begin with by running immediately over to the bed we liked the best, yelling, “This is my bed, I know it!” and then climbing in and trying to take a nap. Second, she had an uncanny ability to sense critical moments and interrupt them, asking to go to the bathroom or something similar.

So after the guy whiffed on a couple of lob balls we tossed him, such as, “We’re thinking about adding the bookcase, but we’re kind of on the fence,” and, “Hmm, shipping is pretty expensive.” We decided to walk. The price was significantly over the maximum we set for ourselves and we weren’t really in a hurry anyway, so we figured, “what the heck?” Worst case we would get some time to think about it, and come back next weekend.

Low and behold, 10 minutes later we were signing on the dotted line for $250 less than they were originally saying. This is probably the worst part of it all, that we had to go through the whole sham to get the good price. Ugh. But at the end of the day, it ended up being a good price, so we did it. And the salesmen didn’t learn a thing.

So what do you think? Do you like the thrill of dickering down a salesman? What do you do when faced with the hard sell? Do you have some particularly noxious story about a greaseball salesman? Share in the comments!