Saturday night, we had someone stop by to test our water.

They’d come to the door earlier in the week and spoken to Jill.  It was supposed to be a quick, friendly test of your water softener by a local company.  It turned out to be two hours of hell, instead.

The guy was initially 15 minutes late.  We had just ordered pizza to pick up when the doorbell rang.  I’d been seconds away from suggesting we just leave, seeing as how he hadn’t come on time.  I wish we had.

The guy had difficulty walking.  I wish it were the only difficulty he had.  As soon as he came inside, he stood there and simply stared at us.  He was as awkward as anyone could be.  It seemed like he was waiting for us to say something.  It seemed like he was waiting like that the whole night.

He tested our kitchen water.  It was hard.  He tested our bathroom water, and it was soft.  He looked at the water softener downstairs, calling his boss to help identify it.  We talked about the pipes, and discovered that the water to the kitchen wasn’t on the soft water anyway.  He was critical of the line running to the refrigerator upstairs, until I mentioned that I’d been the one to install it (move it, really).

He ran other tests on our water, awkwardly.  He’d take a sample, only to dump it and refill the vial.  Over and over again.  He stammered and stuttered the whole way.  He forgot his line of thought a few times, and often started factual statements with, “I think…"  He used it like others would say um when they’re nervous.  However, his hand never once shook, and his eyes never darted around nervously (though he constantly jerked around as he stammered).

At some point, he started flipping through a book with information about water softeners.  At this point, I was so frustrated just listening to him talk that I was ready to punch the wall.

He pulled out a photocopy with estimates of monthly costs for soap, water, and whatever else.  He flipped over the page to show how their $4000 system was a value as it is, even though they were going to reduce the cost to help close the deal.

I had been done some time already.  It’d been an hour.  The pizza was a lost cause at this point.  I told him we’d need to budget things out before making a decision.  It could be six months before we made a chance, I informed him.

He pulled out a flyer about soap that the company buys, and started talking about how they’d give us $3500 worth of soap for buying a water softener.  I didn’t budge on my resolution that we needed to wait.  I even told him that he could work out any kind of deal and I wasn’t going to agree to anything without thinking about it.  Jill even told him that she’d have an adverse reaction to the soap as part of our increasing desire to remove this guy from our home.  So he told us that they would credit us for their cost on the soap, which was all of $150.  They apparently buy $3500 worth of soap for $150.  Even with another discount, I wasn’t buying anything.  So the guy calls the boss.

The boss wants to talk to me.  I go back and forth a bit, only to have the boss tell me he had received four free systems as part of a promotion from GE, and would sell it to me for cheap.  He had me tell the guy in my house to calculate numbers he seemed to pull out of the air.  Eventually, we had $2395 on the calculator.  The boss wanted to run some numbers and call me back before offering that low, low price.

As I was on the phone, the guy who came over had packed up his things.

The boss called back and told me he’d offer it to me for $2295.  A $4000 softener system with a reverse osmosis system and a credit for nearly free soap.  I reiterated that I needed to look at my budget.  He pushed some more.  I was obviously upset at this point, but kept my composure.  I told the guy I’d have to look at my budget and get back to him.  I finally got him to agree to let me go once I gave him the number to a temporary phone I used about a year ago (which I still have access to).  The weird stammerer left.  Jill and I got in the car and got the hell out of the house.

I called the pizza a total catastrophe and didn’t even bother to pick it up.  We went to California Pizza Kitchen and had a late dinner.  I had a very strong sangria, which suited the evening perfectly, and we proceeded to dissect and discuss the two hours of hell we had just endured.

I’m convinced the stammering and stuttering was an act to make the guy seem harmless.  I’d noticed that he was careful to keep his water samples pure until he wasn’t getting the results he needed, at which time he started using his finger to plug the end of the beakers and test tubes, contaminating the samples.  He was quick to ignore the fact that my kitchen water wasn’t softened like the rest of the house, yet his samples all showed how he could improve its quality by buying a new softener system.  His quality samples matched what we have in our bathrooms.  He pulled all the classic sales tricks, such as stepping out of bounds in giving us discounts as well as deferring to his manager when we wouldn’t budge.  In all, the two hours were intended to wear us down, get us to say yes to move on with life, and screw us over.

And then…

The next day, I’m at a work meeting, and I mention the incident to a few coworkers.  Turns out, one of them had the exact same experience, almost down to every detail, from the same exact company.  They even got the same spiel and the same final price.

I’m willing to give someone a fair shot at some things.  Ultimately, I’m the one who decides to spend money, so I hold all the cards.  If I don’t like something, I walk away.  It’s harder when someone comes into your house with honorable words.  You want to be cordial, but you also want the bugger out of your life.

A search on the web lists thousands of cases indicating the “water softness test” is a traditional scam designed solely to place a salesperson in your home.  If the stammerer has a problem, he makes a terrible salesperson.  If he’s simply pretending to have a problem, he’s good at faking a speech impediment, but still a lousy salesperson.  Even still, I can’t help but think of all the older people who get scammed into believing he’s worth spending any money on.

They wasted two hours of my life.  I’ll never retrieve those two hours.

I also felt dirty from the whole thing.  I should take a shower.  With my adequately softened water, of course.

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