Yesterday we invited a sales person into our home to give us a quote on granite for our kitchen. His prices are awesome and he knew all about granite. Therefore we have signed a contract with his company but…. and here’s the big but….

we went through hell!!

This sales guy was a “talker.” When he finished his sales pitch we knew all about his family, his history, his interests, his assets, his holdings, his marriage, but he never once asked anything about us..

He wasn’t interested in us and we are interesting folks. He never found out we are musicians. We have homes in central Michigan and in the U.P. and we came to Florida because of my mother. My cousin was Stephen Foster. We have four children between us and we’ve been married for 30 years.

Once, when he said, “I don’t know what you did for a living,” so I said that John was a pilot and air traffic controller and I worked for a hospital, so I at least get that much in, but he didn’t follow up on anything. He didn’t care.

We could have yacked about our history as long as he did .. maybe longer, and we may have wanted to, but we weren’t given a chance.

Today (day two) he took off on a lecture about the internet and the risks thereof, so I finally broke in and said, “I have at least 10 websites, I have been the webmaster for a major hospital, I know all about the risks, I understand the internet…” but still he didn’t pause and continued as if we needed to be educated. Believe me, I know more than he does!!

Two hours later he finally left.. We had hardly gotten a word in sideways and we were exhausted and John hasn’t recover all day.

No matter how good the job turns out, I feel we’ll have some bad feelings. Why can’t some people learn to be quiet. Listening is a skill.

His price, product, and knowledge sold us so he didn’t have to do much. We didn’t need to hear about his uncle’s and his father’s successes, his finding a rare/valuable painting, his wonderful abilities, etc.

It would have been nice if he’d taken a breath and sounded interested in us. If he’d said, “Tell me something about the two of you.” The truth is, he didn’t care about us, his clients, his purchasers. All he wanted to do was to sell himself.

I asked if others would take over the process now that he’s sold us on the granite installation and he said yes, so we went ahead with the deal. Hopefully our involvement with this individual will end now that the contract has been sold.

We’re still worn out!