One up to the fridge salesman

Sunday was Mother's Day here in New Zealand and with Mum having just moved here without a fridge (I don't know why) my brother Vaughan and I decided to do the proper thing and buy her one. Talk about a Laurel and Hardy event. Vaughan's girlfriend had told us we had to get a fridge/freezer with the fridge on the top so it'd be easier for Mum to get into. But they were all about $100 more. Surely it's neither that expensive to engineer the fridge on the top, nor that hard to lean down to get into the fridge. We traipsed around about four places before we came across a 20% off sale and Ken the switched on salesman. Up until Ken all the sales people had been happy to answer our questions and let us go, but Ken was in for the kill. Vaughan and I weren't going to be intimidated, oh no.

Vaughan said that he was after a fridge for Mum and Ken must have picked me as a friend because at one point he asked what sort of fridge my Mum had. Duh! Do we really look that different?

One of Ken's opening gambits in trying to get us to buy the more expensive fridge-on-top model was to ask me "Why do you work?" Without even waiting for my answer he sailed straight into line two of this winning sales pitch only to be interrupted with me saying"I don't work. I haven't worked for ages." His semi-stunned look had Vaughan laughing, but Ken wasn't thrown off for long. His second gambit was to ask me why I put petrol in my car; Sorry Ken, wrong again, I don't have a car. At this point I felt it only fair to tell Ken "And before you go any further, no I'm not married, I don't have a girlfriend and I'm not gay either." All of this was in good humour and we all chuckled as Ken sought to find the winning sales pitch.

But Ken wasn't to be put off, he then tried the "She's your Mum, you owe her" track. Which we do, but we were still pretty set on the fridge-on-bottom for $100 less, so we asked for a few minutes to have a think about it. Vaughan rang Melissa, his girlfriend and got a bollocking for even considering the fridge-on-bottom model, so we went back in and bought the fridge-on-top one.

So in the end Ken won. No extra discount, not even a crappy toaster thrown in. And we left thinking we'd won! Maybe everyone did.