(Of The Unwelcome Kind)/Take I"
The Reckoner>
Most are positive and rewarding, such as the Black veteran's daughter I met at a medical clinic for people who lacked adequate coverage -- or cash -- for specialized services, like dental care. She credited my article, and her quotes, with prodding the VA into helping her father get services that had been languishing in red tape.
Some are stressful and disturbing. Call it a cliche, but you always stumble across the aggrieved CEO or county politico at the grocery store, right after your paper runs a story that really pisses them off, triggering the inevitable, "You'll-never-work-in-this-town again" speech.
Others fall into the head-scratching category, which is how I'd describe what happened a couple Saturdays ago, at Murrow's Frugal Acres. I was toddling around on my cart, when a woman with frizzy blonde hair rushed into my line of sight. "Danny?" she said.
"Sorry, my name isn't Danny," I responded.
"Well, you remind me of him. You look like a musician..."
Oh, Lord, here we go, I tell myself. Outwardly, I smile. "Lots of people tell me that. Anyway, I do know Danny, and he is a friend of mine. We met at one of The Stables' open mike nights."
"The Stables? I haven't been there in a long time. Are they still around?" the woman asks.
"They just celebrated their eighteenth anniversary, so yes, they're still around."
"Oh, that's cool." We blah-blah-blah a little bit more, until she jabs her finger in the air, and asks, "You're still wearing the mask? You know it's not effective."
I smile indulgently, though she can't see it behind the mask. "If it was good enough for folks in 1918, it's good enough for me," I respond.
"Well, this might help you..." She whips out a folded piece of paper from her purse, and pushes it into my hand. "You know what Zooms are, right?" I nod. "Well, I'm hosting one for this particular product, which might change your life."
I take the paper, and stick it in my pants pocket. "Sure, I'll check into it, and see if I can make it. Thanks so much."
With that, I say goodbye, and head from the banana aisle, to the bread counter, where the Squawker's waiting for me to continue today's shopping trip. Just as we're about to launch ourselves to the frozen foods cases, I hear a man's voice call out behind me: "Don't listen to her!"
(Of The Unwelcome Kind)"/Take II: The Reckoner>
"You know the masks work. They are safe, and they do make a difference, right?" he asks.
"Oh, don't worry about it," I reassure him. "I wasn't going to take it off, and I'm not going to this Zoom session, or whatever it is she's pushing. I was just being polite."
The man flashes me a knowing smile. "Good."
"Yeah, it's like when the neighborhood cat lady follows you around the parking lot, demanding that you sign her latest petition against something-or-other," I continue. "It's not worth the headache to argue about it. I just listen, and go on my way."
"OK, great. You have a good day now!"
I unfold the paper, and steal a quick glance at it, as I rejoin the Squawker. The Zoom session is pushing a skincare product or supplement of some sort, plus a "workshop experience."
I've seen this come-on many times. You bait the hook by dangling some type of freebie out to the fish (the skincare cream), as a lead-in to your real purpose -- the seminar or workshop or whatever alleged life-altering experience it is, that costs a fair bit of loot to attend.
But if they do show up, and/or pay, it presumably opens the door to bigger, badder and costlier come-ons, all designed to lighten the wallet. The trick is to seem low-key and neighborly enough, so you won't see any of this coming, until you've stuck around a little bit.
That's when the penny drops. The Murrow's trip is really just an excuse for this woman to hit people up with her well-oiled pitches, all tailored to the appearance and demeanor of whoever she's decided to bushwack.
For me, it must have been my hair, which cued up her opening line ("You look like a musician"). Those who don't share my apparent rock star looks get a different pitch, I'm sure.
It's also a pretty brazen act, since most businesses don't want people hitting up their customers -- hence, the "NO SOLICITING" sticker you'll invariably see plastered on the entrance doors. If anyone caught the woman working her pitch, they'd shoo her out on the spot, and probably slap a permanent ban on her presence.
Then again, there are probably aren't a lot of managers actually running a store this large. If my apartment complex thinks one maintenance man can handle four massive buildings, I shudder to think of what kind of logic Murrow's might be using to justify a similar maneuver.
At any rate, I doubt the Pitch Lady -- make that, Virtual Cat Lady (Zoom Session Style) -- notices, nor cares. Whether it's some type of questionable side hustle, or she thinks it's the dream gig of a lifetime, I can't really tell, but her body language and insistent tone suggest that she's digging in for a long stay.
She's not resting until she's hustled everyone pausing to recheck their grocery list, it seems. At any rate, the Squawker and I pass her by, staring silently ahead. I avoid making eye contact (successfully), and leave her to get on with it.
Like I told the older gent, I don't want to get sucked into an endless, circular argument that goes nowhere, and resolves nothing.
There's a Joe Walsh album title that sums up these unwelcome random encounters better than I ever could, and it goes like this: You Can't Argue With A Sick Mind. So there you go, then. May you dodge your cat ladies more successfully than I seem to manage these days . --The Reckoner
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