Thursday, February 16, 2006

Three Salesmen.

Two weeks ago, Epiphany, a literary arts festival, was organized by our college. The festival drew a fair number of students from other colleges and also one rather enterprising encyclopedia salesman.

He stopped me on the second day to show me his wares - a dictionary-cum-thesaurus and a set of encyclopedia. It was quite evident that he couldn’t speak English at all! This struck me as rather ironic, since he was after all selling English dictionaries and thesauri.

However, I patiently listened on as he extolled, in Hindi, the fine qualities of the books he had to offer. I knew I wasn’t going to buy anything, but I always like listening to sales talk. At the end of it all, he came out with the punch line, “Sir, if you bought this dictionary from the bookstore it would cost you Rs. 799. But since this is a special prelaunch offer, I’m giving it to you for only Rs. 299!”

I then explained to him how, despite the unbelievable offer on his part, my empty wallet, and more importantly, my supreme mastery of the English language, meant that I did not wish to purchase the book. “But thanks anyway,” I said as I walked on.


Two days after this incident, I was walking down J. M. Road, when I was stopped by another salesman. He too, was selling the same dictionary and set of encyclopedia!

“Hello Sir,” he called out to me.

“Well, well,” I thought to myself. “What do you know? At least this guy speaks English!”

However, I was in no mood for another sales pitch. “Let me take a wild guess,” I said. “That book costs Rs. 799, but you’re selling it to me for... Umm... Rs. 299?”

The look on his face was priceless!


Incidentally, I was stopped this evening by yet another one of these guys. (One of the perks[?] of walking around so much!) I repeated the trick, and left behind yet another bemused salesman shaking his head.

25 comments:

_dirtboy said...
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_dirtboy said...

hehe... but you should have gone ahead with the second guy and made a worse case out of him..

AND i absolutely hate those bloody salesmen.

btw, any luck with the lady wit a mush??

FifthBeatle said...

abhinav - who's the lady with the mush anyways?

_dirtboy said...

The one at whose mushtache i pointed to and yelled.. The one who calls me gayboy.Just look around you,u'll know.Believe me.Its worth lookin around.Will change your opinions about her

FifthBeatle said...

abhinav - dude, there are SO many females around with mustaches! htf would i know whom you are talking about??

teacup said...
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teacup said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
FateGlimpse said...

hey u've got a funny blog here

FifthBeatle said...

yashita - that's a fine line you're treading there - calling women with mustaches "women"!

fateglimpse - thanks... are you whom I think you are?

The Individualist said...

lol poor things that they are. I know you can always argue back on how you deserve more sympathy. But for money, imagine being played around with and being snubbed by different kinds of people. Sigh @ salesmen. I wish you could get different jobs, not out of revulsion for what you do but out of compassion for you.

teacup said...
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FifthBeatle said...

the individualist - i actually think salesmen have quite an interesting job; insomuch as they get to meet/interact with a large variety of people. sure, some people are rude - but u cant hv it all ur way, huh? besides, u know wht they say, "sticks and stones may break my bones, but names [words] will never hurt me."

yashita - i'm polite to them too. often far more polite than they are. i too hate it when anyone i'm with (it isnt often my dad) is rude to someone else, salesman or not.

_dirtboy said...

Ask anyone who knows which girl calls me gayboy..
Yash-we aint goin to no dungz juss cozz many of "your" kind ARE she-males.
As to the point of salesmen, i hate em, coz they r just too buggin. They ought to know to what extent to advertise what they are selling.If they werent humons, i would hv actually beat the crap out of their type

ishipishi said...

curiosity got me here...

thot i'd seen u arnd...now i rem whre...(@yashita's blog)...and i think...i've been to ur blog b4...

i never seem to get books (any) going cheap ...!

anyway...reading sum of ur previous posts...

Anonymous said...

interesting.

FifthBeatle said...

ishita - ah.. curiosity seems to hv served you much better than the cat, eh :D...

keep reading, you won't regret it...

ishipishi said...

what a comparison arnold...! curiosity killed d cat!...well..i survived even after goin thru ur posts:-)...interesting...keep writing...

FateGlimpse said...

depends on who u think i am

FifthBeatle said...

fateglimpse - you're the female who was with shreevardhini at tht quiz in pspl some time ago?

FateGlimpse said...

yup. were u there too? looks like ur online right now 2, coz i just posted that comment

FifthBeatle said...

fatglimpse - yeah, i was there at the quiz too... though not a very active part of it ;)... and yea.. i guess i was online...

FateGlimpse said...

i think anyone would seem to be in frenzy of activity at the quiz compared to vardhini and me

FifthBeatle said...

fateglimpse - lol... i knew *so* little, my teammate was about to yank his hair out in frustration!! [Not that he was very good at it either ;)]

FateGlimpse said...

we scored a 10, doesn't get worse than that ; )!

FifthBeatle said...

fateglimpse - i dont really rmbr how much we scored... but it was a bit more than 10, i'll wager!