Kirby Vacuum Cleaner[/caption]Carol Forsloff---He knocked at the front door in that old-fashioned way of years gone by, wearing a white shirt and a broad smile, asking the question, “Can I clean your floors for you?” In the new America there are still some things that never change, like the door-to-door appearance of a Kirby salesman.
For decades in big cities and in small towns across America, Kirby vacuum cleaner sales people were ushered into homes with smiles from the woman of the house who hoped her man would buy her that most-longed-for modern gadget: a vacuum cleaner. In those early days, the basics were all most dealers had, a machine that rolled across the floor in an amazing way that picked up dust and dirt and made a woman's life so much easier than it had been before It was the entry into middle class to have something shiny and new so that a heavy broom and a lot of work was no longer needed, when a vacuum cleaner could do the deed in so much less time.
It was a different time, when typically sales people came to the doors of neighborhood homes selling everything from religion to vitamins to pumpkins from the local farm, going door to door with Bibles and products, as people welcomed them in with ready smiles and often invited that traveling salesman to have a bite to eat or a hot or cold drink, depending upon the season. And no one knows how many of these traveling salesmen married the farmer's daughter. That was often how business was done, on foot with a knock at the door signaling the arrival of someone with something new.
So it was with that same anticipation on a November day of the familiar, a young man cleaned the rugs, offering his good work as a sample of the illustrious deeds that could be performed with the shiny machine with all of its gadgets that doesn't just clean floors and furniture but can do large-scale cleaning of an entire home interior.
But what are the usual responses a salesman gets who knocks on a stranger's door in modern America? James Moir, the smiling and pleasant fellow who arrived at our door with his Kirby vacuum cleaner, said he never knows these days how he might be treated when he arrives at a stranger's door. 50% of the time the people refuse to have him go in or might even become aggressive and threatening. Still he smiles and offers the positive as well, that people have invited him for dinner and that he finds his job interesting, challenging and somewhat of an adventure.
Kirby has been in the business of selling vacuum cleaners for nearly a century. It was the vacuum cleaner of a great grandmother, grandmother and mother, and although this writer never purchased the product, having a reasonably new and adept vacuum cleaner in the home and an anticipated move to Hawaii in the coming months, it was a celebration of sorts to observe that some things never change, like a young man happy with his work in cleaning a carpet and knowing that the next person might be not just a welcome mat but a sale as well.
nice article
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