Hogan's Zeroes

C Is For Concrete Salesman With Feet Of Clay

What's the link between cement and Japan's Zero fighters? Read on ...

Having followed Mrs Nesbitt's lead on A and B in previous weeks, I am piggy-backing her C Is For Cow and posting on the C theme today. It was Singleton’s poignant post The Last Hello, that mentioned concrete (as opposed to concrete shoes) which acted as a memory trigger, reminding me of this incident, so I really have her to thank for this post. And I'd like to say a quick hello to Bruno, whose unusual run-in with a salesperson is chronicled at Sorry I'm Old And Edgy. Okay, so here goes ...

We’ve got a concrete driveway. Perfectly functional. In good shape. Beautifully contoured, because that’s the way I planned it, even before the house was built. But a coupla years ago, a leading company had set up one of those stop-and-sell stalls in our shopping centre. Because I’m the sort of guy who attracts the attention of salespeople like bees to a honeycomb, they got in my ear. Wouldn’t I like to upgrade the plain concrete? No. Wouldn’t I like to give it a makeover? No. Wouldn’t I like them to come around to the house and give me some ideas on how it could be improved?

At this point, I relented. Note – I didn’t surrender. I sort of relented. Which is very different from caving in. So the salesman came around at the appointed time. Very punctual. Very thorough. Very switched on. Very professional. I was given some compelling ideas and half an hour of great presentations.

``Right, now let’s go inside and sign the paperwork,’’ I was told. Paperwork? Er, no. The alarm bells were ringing in my head – which is not to be confused with the sound of bats fluttering in the belfry. I certainly wasn’t signing any paperwork.

Give me a quote, I said. And I would think about it. The quote arrived in the mail. I opened it and gasped in horror. I closed it quickly, hoping that it would magically go away if I studiously ignored it for long enough. Next day I got a phone call from one of their sales team. Was I happy with the quote? Er, no. Not really. I pointed out that I did not think a fully-functional driveway needed $1300 worth of colour added to it.

There was a slight pause. ``Does the quote really say $1300?’’ The salesperson sounded suitable stunned. So I fished the quote out of the envelope. It didn’t say $1300. My eyes began to spin and I felt as though the room was a giant roller-coaster. The quote said $13,000.

Eventually I found my voice, but it was more like a croak. ``Thirteen grand?’’

``Is there a problem with that?’’ asked the voice on the other end of the line.

All I could say was, ``That’s more Zeroes than the aerial sequences in the film `Pearl Harbor’.’’