September 20, 2006

  • Conversations With My Seat-Mate On The Airplane, Condensed

    "Hi. What do you do for a living?"

    "Well, uh... Hi. I'm currently in between jobs."

    "Well, what did you do for a living before?"

    "I'd been doing some freelance writing. Some photography." (Note: These are lies, but at least semi-supportable.)

    "Hang on a second..."

    He reaches under the seat to his carry-on bag. He produces a magazine.

    "This is a magazine about what *I* do for a living. It's part of a network marketing..."

    [tune out]

    This happened more than a few times. He'd come back with a slightly more contrite attitude, as if he knew he'd broken some boundary, but then no matter what, we'd end up talking about selling vitamins again after a little while.

    The man was living, breathing, social spam.

Comments (8)

  • ok, maybe it's not *just* the airports that make flying suck.

  • Makes sense. After you've listened to your own sales spiel a thousand times, you've brainwashed yourself. Too bad.

  • but, did you buy the vitamins?

  • If that's the best hustle he can manage, he was probably pretty desperate for a sale. Most salespeople know how to ease in a little better, I think...

  • spam tastes terrible...

  • It sounds awful. I might be tempted to slap.

  • When my husband was in dessert storm, i got swindled over the phone in buying 300.00 worth of vitamins.  Ultimately, i got out of it - but it was not a fun converstion to relay the airways connecting orange county and bahrain (pre-email days).  thanks for the pleasant reminder :)

  • Yeah, that's usually when it's best to tell them, "Sorry, I wouldn't feel right about touching that magazine. I have a resistant staph breakout on my body, and it's pretty contagious. In fact, you might want to scoot over a few seats...."

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