Posted on 10/01/2001 6:53:01 AM PDT by SAMWolf
It's Saturday morning when, suddenly, you hear a knock at the door. Everyone you know is either hung over or cleaning house. They all know better than to attempt any contact with you before noon anyway. It can only be one thing. Religious canvassers. Actually, that's two things, since, like snakes, they travel in pairs. You peek out the window, expecting to see two kids who look like IBM recruits.
Instead, you see a pudgy old lady in a faded print dress, attended by a skinny teenage girl with stringy hair and more freckles than a trout. The girl glances nervously at the slit in the curtain and quickly looks away. Girl Scout cookies? Raffle tickets?
Opening the door out of curiosity, you become the proud owner of a copy of their tract. It was the girl who fooled you. You never figured they'd bring a kid along. You rack your brains for some gracious means of escape, making a silent resolution that next time you'll follow your instinct to stand motionless in the middle of the living room hoping that protective coloration will render you invisible.
Rack your brains no longer! After years of similar experiences, we have developed several techniques for turning those agonizing encounters into hours of entertainment. Here are just a few of the great techniques you can use:
1. Listen for a minute or two with a polite but puzzled expression and then speak in a foreign language. Better yet, make one up. Brand names for electronic components serve as an excellent base for an impromptu language. I've found the following bit to be an excellent opener: 'Fritzen mitsuba micht sony leam spartinza. Nakamichi shpont olufsen takamine. Cheloken eraza fleecht?'
2. Before you open the door, put on a pair of Groucho glasses and pour some Pine Sol in a coffee cup. Then attempt to engage them in a serious debate, spreading Pine Sol fumes by blowing occasionally into the cup as if you are cooling it. See how long you can hold them. Try to remember not to drink out of the cup.
3. Pretend to be deaf. Point to your ears, shake your head, and make intricate movements with your fingers and hands. This can backfire if they happen to know sign language. In that case, switch to being blind.
4. Ask them if they are from the health board about the hepatitis quarantine. Offer them a sip of your coffee.
5. Tell them you are not allowed to talk to strangers until the assault case has come to trial. More effective if you come to the door with a knife or a baseball bat.
6. Using a cordless phone, call someone you haven't talked to for a while. Then go to the door and make gestures like you'll only be a minute. See how long they stay.
This is the most effective for comemrical salespeople, as they judge themselves based upon sales/hour. If you waste their time, they won't come back.
It also works for phone callers. Tell them ok, let me go get my credit card, and then go to the fridge and grab a beer and take a walk around the yard. If you can get them to waste 10 mins/ their productivity goes way down.
Nope. Snakes are solitary. This guy is clueless about both religion and herpetology.
LOL, you never know who might speak Urdu!
The house of Bruck has a rather long driveway, which gives us plenty of time to disappear when the door-knockers are coming. The kids have a lot of fun with it. We call it our "Jehovah's Witness drill."
My favorite ploy with telemarketers is to listen to their spiel, then politely ask them to repeat it. Then politely ask them to repeat it again, etc., etc.
-wrap a towel around your head before you answer the door and ask if either of them knows how to fly a plane.
(no disrespect intended, this being a humor thread)
No, no, no. Their goal is to get in the door. Asking tough questions will send them into spin mode where they simply ignore the question in favor of their canned speech. I say "no thank You" and wish them a great day.
We live on a mountain road now and they don't waste their time. Anyway, the next door neighbors are Mormons and they eat JW's for breakfast.
BEWARE OF VICIOUS ATTACK DOG!
Whenever someone new wants to come out on visitation we tell them to make sure that when the door is answered to give their name, their partner's name and the name of our church (Faith Baptist Church)in the first ten seconds. People come to the door thinking that we are JW's or Mormons, but when they find out that we are from a regular, old Baptist church you should see the look of relief wash over their faces.
One time I was out on visitation with another fella and we approached the house of this one family, the wife was trimming weeds in her front yard. As we came near to her she stood up and had her hedge trimmers pointing at us. As soon as we introduced ourselves she lowered the trimmers and smiled and invited us to come out back by the pool and have a Coke while we visited with her and her husband.
We don't go out with the purpose of converting people on their doorstep, although we will not turn anyone down who wants to accept Christ as their Savior right then. When we go out our purpose is to visit people who have visited our church and see if they have any questions and leave some literature, a tract, and a video that we have. If we go out "cold-calling" our purpose is to let people know where our church is, when the hours of service are, and to give them a personal invitation to come out some Sunday if they can.
Anyways, thanks for the post.
-ksen
Mormons Answered, Verse by Verse
One guy, after talking with a pair of JW's for a while, had the local JW's go through the pain of 1) finding out where he went to church and 2) telling their doorknockers never, ever to talk to anyone who went to church there.
Nothing works better than converting their missionaries.
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