The Loneliest Liberal: Want to buy?

By James Knudsen

More than once, tales of my time in the retail trenches have found there way into this column. I found two such instances and stopped looking. To review, I didn’t like sales. But many do. An old friend of mine – we’re nearing four decades of friendship – has spent most of his adult life in sales of one kind or another, usually involving electronics for home and auto. His career began in the late eighties with a now defunct retail giant in Orange County, California. He ascended the career ladder, eventually becoming manager of various departments. One stint in particular seems relevant during this strange time in which we live.
    As I remember the story, my friend was managing the personal electronics department. The year was 17 Pi – 17 years prior to the introduction of the iPhone. In that long-forgotten, primitive time, personal electronics involved things like Walkmans, cameras that used film, and portable CD players, which, in hindsight, truly were silly. One evening over dinner, he told us about the best salesperson in his department. I purposely use the gender-neutral “salesperson,” because the person in question was a young lady. Further, she was a recent immigrant from the Pacific Rim with limited English. Her technique went something like this. She would approach a customer looking at the items in glass display cases and greet them with “Hello!” delivered with a disarming smile. The customer would ask to see one of the items, and she would happily remove it and place it on the counter. If the customer was male, questions would then follow. “Does this have auto-reverse? Does this have Dolby noise reduction? Does this have auto-focus?”
    It’s worth noting at this point that, besides having limited English, she had dreadful product knowledge. Undaunted, this plucky little lady would simply reply, “I don’t know. Want to buy?” Cue disarming smile. More often than not, the customer would give in and buy the item, which they probably didn’t need, but really wanted. All because she asked.
    That’s often the key to sales. Asking for the sale. Many a neophyte salesperson, struggling to meet their quota, have been told by their manager, “You have to learn to ask for the sale.” For some, it’s easy. For others, like the author, it’s torture. It seems unnecessary at best, and downright rude at worst. If they want the item, they’ll buy it, so goes the logic. To a point, that statement is true. They want the item.
    Want is different from need, so they’re going to require a little help justifying the purchase of a consumer good, whose absence is most assuredly a First World problem. There’s a war of the wills going on in the buyer’s head, with Reason on one side and a greedy little demon that is pure Id on the other. Reason can’t resist a good debate, and the question, “Want to buy?” is the perfect opportunity to engage in a rigorous, well-supported defense of the austere, well-examined life. But before Reason can finish its brief bio of Henry David Thoreau, the three sirens, Want, and Desire & Greed have whipped out the Visa, said, “Yes” to the two-year extended warranty, and John Q. Consumer is basking in the heady rush of endorphins that flood our cerebral cortices whenever we buy something new, shiny, look at all the buttons, I need a cigarette.

Now, as to why this is relevant in this strange time. I don’t know how many of you have noticed, but our President is a salesman. Not a good one, in terms either of morals or of putting impressive numbers up on the sales board. (Yeah, those things totally exist.) Still, he is a salesman, and he knows that consumers – let’s call them voters – are susceptible to decidedly not subtle suggestions. And it’s not a stretch view that that was a deciding factor in 2016. And no stretching at all is required to view the remaining true-believers in MAGA hats, who still flock to campaign rallies, as utterly devoid of Reason. Reason was stabbed in the heart with a wooden stake at the Iowa State Fair in 2015. Actually, it was a wooden skewer holding a deep-fried Three Musketeers bar, which was devoured in a single, gluttonous gulp, moments before Reason was exorcised from an exhausted mind.
    Hey. Greenland. Want to buy?

Copyright © 2019 by James Knudsen