Charmed Life
“Death of a Salesman” is one of my favorite plays. I know, it’s not original—many people love it. (And many hate it.) To me, it is so quintessentially American, the whole idea that one can reel in suckers and take their money all the while grinning and smiling and spinning convincing yarns. And the idea that some people have the gift for selling—that some people are sales artists—and others (alas, poor Willy Loman, to whom “attention must be paid”) are not. They’ll forever be dragging a full cart of Fuller brushes, or bibles, or land in Florida (“Glengarry Glen Ross”) behind them, never lightening their load and filling their pockets. But the sales artists—they are a wonder to behold.
I was reminded of this today at the mall. I had just left Nordstrom’s and was on my way to the food court to get my daughter some lunch before we hit the indoor playroom. Suddenly from out of nowhere, a young woman appeared, pointed at my nails and said, “Ridges! Let me show you how I make them disappear.”
Now, right away, I felt like I was on top of a mountain and looking over the edge—I could see where I was headed if I took the plunge. But I wasn’t in too much of a hurry and I was curious—it had been so long since someone actually performed a sales pitch for me. So I followed the woman to her cart in the middle of the walkway—it was called Seacret Cosmetics or something like that—and let her take my left hand. She produced a rectangular buffing block and proceeded to rub it over my nails, all the while talking to me about the glories of the block, which is made with Dead Sea salt, etc., and about how amazed I would be once she stopped buffing and revealed my new and improved thumbnail. She talked and talked and talked, much of which I couldn’t hear over the din of the mall.
“One, two, three,” she said, and pulled the buffing block away.
Sure enough, my thumbnail glistened. But I barely had time to take in the grandeur of it before she placed a droplet of cuticle oil on my hangnails and smoothed them down. Then she rubbed on some lotion and told me to compare my left hand with my right. She was right: the left one glowed. The right one—un-buffed, un-oiled, un-lotioned—looked pretty dingy.
“Wow,” I said—or some variant of that.
She walked over to her cart and plucked the cardboard package containing the buffing block, the lotion, the cuticle oil and a nail file off and brought it over to show me, all the while talking about how it wasn’t yet Black Friday so she could give me a discount, a very good price, etc. etc. At this point, even though I was completely cognizant of the fact I was being played—and I was admiring her skill at doing so—a small part of me started to get, well, suckered. When she held out the package and told me to hold it, I did so. I recalled learning at some point earlier in my life that a key step in sales is to get the customer to take the product in their hands. Maybe it’s because once it’s in your hands you feel it’s a part of you. Or you feel, well, I’ve come this far….
Whatever the case, with her two free hands, my saleswoman proceeded to take out a pen and paper and calculate all the savings I would receive just for being me, just because. The usual price for the set, she told me, was $79. But for me, for today, it would be $49.
I didn’t hesitate very long. I certainly didn’t so so for effect, as I’ve done while haggling in various markets around the world (still ending up paying too much, I’m sure). But, no matter, she was knocking the price down even more. One second later, I could now have two nail kits for $49.
“Ok,” I said. “Well, I need to be on my way for now, but I’ll walk back by here on my way to my car.”
“Let me write down your special price on a paper,” she said. When she went over to the cash register to do so, she hit me with another sales trick. She showed me that she wanted to give me a price of $29 for just one, but the computer wouldn’t allow her (a red “INCORRECT” box popped up). The best she could do was $29.99 for one. But I had to buy it now.
By this time my daughter was squirming and I was starting to enjoy the pitch less. Plus, I wanted to see if my nail stayed shiny over the course of the next hour or so. “Well, I’ll take my chances and just walk by on my way back,” I said.
She pulled out a chart from under the cash register then and showed me a box with the number “120” in it. “I’ve sold this many today already,” she said. “One woman just bought five.”
It was noon. There was no way she had sold 120 nail kits since the mall opened a few hours before. Sales pitch or not, I was starting to feel insulted. Did she think I was that dumb?
I left then. My daughter and I lunched and spent a pleasurable half-hour in Tiny Town. All the while, I kept looking down at my thumb to see if it still shone. It did. And now, as I’m typing this eight hours later, it’s still shining. And I keep thinking about that saleswoman, and wondering if she’s a top seller, and wondering how many folks she reeled in today. I wonder how much money she makes with every sale, how much she makes in a year.
I just googled the nail kit and found it on Amazon (listed for $25). What a treat it is to read the reviews and see how many people got pitched this product at the mall…and that while most didn’t buy it there, they did buy it at Amazon and love it. “The buffing cube is the best that I have ever used.” “This kit is wonderful!” And so on.
As for me, I’m going to keep tabs on my left thumb. If it’s still shining in a week or so, I might ask for it for Christmas.
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