I was getting gas this morning when a friendly man with a can of some kind of car cleaner accosted me.
“Wanna see this amazing product in action, mate?”
He was Australian, but that really has no bearing on the rest of the story.
“Not really,” I replied, but it was already too late.
He sprayed about a foot and a half of white foam on my hood and begin wiping with a towel.
“You’ll be amazed,” he smiled while he wiped. “The dirt just lifts away.”
He pulled away his towel and true to his word, the spot he had sprayed was now quite shiny and nice.
“Yeah, that’s great,” I said, glancing at the gas meter to see how close I was to finishing up.
He proceeded to spray several other spots on my car, including a patch on the windshield, all the while excitedly explaining how the magical chemicals inside this wonder can were only recently released by NASA or something. (I wasn’t really paying close attention.)
Finally, he hit me with the offer:
“Normally, these sell for $40 a can at car shows, but I’m authorized to sell each can for only $25 today, and as a bonus, since it’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I can throw in another can for free.”
He was very proud of this last fact, and I was finally paying attention, because I could not for the life of me connect car cleaning spray to breast cancer, other than being around this stuff for an extended period of time would surely cause some kind of tumor to start growing somewhere.
I politely declined his offer as the gas pump finished with a crisp snap.
“No problem, mate,” he smiled. “Have a great day.”
That should have been it, but then I took a glance at my car.
“Hey,” I said. “Aren’t you going to finish cleaning this up?”
“Excuse me,” he said.
I pointed to the shiny spot on my hood that stood out against the several month’s worth of dirt buildup around it.
“You just messed up my hood.”
“I just cleaned your hood,” he said. “With amazing ease,” he added, ever the salesman.
“You cleaned a spot on my hood. Now the whole thing looks like crap,” I said.
“It’s just a demonstration, mate.” (I was getting a little tired of the “mate” thing.) “I’m sorry the product worked so well on that filthy machine.”
“You can’t just clean a spot and walk away,” I told him. “I didn’t ask for you to clean it. You need to fix this.”
“You want me to dump dirt on the clean spot,” he shot back. “Or, do you want to give me $25, and you can make your whole car look amazing.”
“I want you to clean the rest of this for FREE,” I hit the free part, because I wanted to make it clear I wasn’t paying him for anything.
“You’re crazy,” he said and turned away.
I didn’t really have a retort for that, so I just took a deep breath and tried not to think about what a great deal the can of cleaning spray seemed like now.
The Aussie walked up to a truck that had pulled in and began his spiel anew.
“Wanna see this amazing product in action?” he asked the burly driver.
“Get the fuck away from me,” the man raised his fist and the Breast Cancer Foundation remained unfunded as the salesman scampered away.
The truck driver took a look at my shiny spot as he threw away some empty soda cans. He nodded approvingly.
“Shit works good, huh?”
