The Problem of Working From Home: Issue 3

The third issue I have with doing the job of my dreams (and involves working from home, which is in short: awesome) has to do with God.

No, not God Himself (he’s welcome to stop by anytime), but his cronies. The door-to-door salespeople that arrive on his behalf. Yeah, them. I am ALWAYS home when they come by to sell me ‘the word’. At first it was amusing because I got to ask all these questions I’ve always been curious about. Like do they pay to go on their missions? Yes. (It is quite expensive.) Although the church helps them out. Yes, they get use of a car. (Which I might add is pretty nice and always meticulously clean.) They only stay in one place for about 6 months or so before they are shipped off to another place/country. It was really quite interesting. But now my questions have been answered and every 4-6 months a new crew comes to the door to see if I want to have more conversations. Which is fine. They are nice and actually, ever since I asked if they could vacuum in reply to “is there anything else we can do for you today?”, they have been making themselves a tad more scarce. Sad really. I was only joking.

It is the two old ladies who cram flyers through my door that you really need to watch out for. They act all sweet and nice and try to lure me to their church with the promise of cookies. They stand too close and force flyers into your hand. They prey on politeness. They ask you questions that you can’t answer without sounding religious–thus creating an opening for you to be forced to attend their church. I swear they get points for everyone they manage to haul in. Their motivation is alarming and it’s almost creepy how manipulative they are. You have to be so firm it borders on rude. And they are just two innocent looking little old ladies. Trust me, they aren’t. I even know their car. My daughter can’t figure out why I crouch on the floor and peek through the blinds to see if it is them or just UPS when someone hits the doorbell in the afternoon.

It’s to the point where I try and screen my door calls, but so far, it doesn’t work very well. The other day, I ignored the door. Not a good call on my part. It was the power company to warn me that they were going to turn off the power to change our meter. And yes, I was using electronics. They don’t like it when they suddenly lose power.

Still, it is better than the sales calls I used to get at work in the library. It was never the good companies calling to offer me up to 60% off their titles.