A question....

While I understand that because of the way my industry markets people to take a timeshare tour, we will always have people come in that have no intention of buying. But the thing I will never understand, is what makes a person that can clearly afford anything they want, subject themselves to a 2 hour (or longer) presentation just for 2 free tickets to a show or 75 dollars cash.

I can understand people without a lot of money taking our tour just to get the freebies.
But can anyone explain to me why business owners or doctors who can afford anything they want do this?

I know how busy a doctor is and how precious their vacation time is, so why would they take our tour just for 59 dollars worth of freebies?

I asked a doctor that very question last summer and he simply said "Because they are free."

Before I sold timeshare, I was the person who could really use free tickets if I were on vacation, but I can't imagine taking 2 hours out of my vacation time for freebies.

Between tours, I sometimes sit out front of the building where the timeshare presentations take place and people exit the doors acting like they were just let out of prison. Often times they will make comments of how they can't believe that they just sat through the presentation. It's all I can do not to yell "But YOU signed up for it!!!!"

By the way, some of these people actually look at their watches and make comments about how they have to hurry to the next resort for another scheduled timeshare tour!
I'm glad they come, the ones who are genuinely interested in hearing what timeshare is all about usually purchase.

As for the "rich" ones who don't need free tickets???? ....someone please 'splain it to me.

Ok, I feel better now, and yes, both of my tours today were well off couples who had no interest in timeshare, but just wanted some "freebies"

I wonder how valuable the 2 hours they spent with me today will be to them when they are lying on their deathbeds...Wouldn't 2 more hours doing something they enjoyed with each other seem so much more important than 50 dollars worth of free tickets to a mediocre music show?

Then again...wouldn't the time I spend posting to this blog seem wasted when I'm on mine?

Safety Inspection: Who's screwing me?

Well, so much for posting everyday. I can't believe I've already skipped the past 4 days.

One reason for not posting is that I was off work two of the days.

I spent most of that time running around getting my new car licensed.

I bought the car a little over 30 days ago. It's a program car (a fancy term for a "used car")

The dealership gave it a state vehicle safety inspection when they got it in on trade, which whoever buys it is going to need to have done since it's required in this state before you can get it licensed. Anyway, since I didn't get it licensed before the 30 days that the inspection slip was good for, I needed to get it inspected again. So I took it to Firestone for an inspection. This car is only a year old and has 20 thousand miles on I didn't expect anything to keep it from passing inspection.....

The Firestone guys told me it needed to outer tie-rods stating that they were "shot" and the wheels might fall off.

The cost for this was going to be 300 dollars.

I can understand their point of view. Here's a guy bringing a car in for a 12 dollar inspection that the state takes most of, and Firestone is only going to make about 50 cents . If I were the shop mgr., I'd try to find something wrong with the car too, so I can make it worth my time and trouble to do the inspection.

So now I've got to decide who, if anyone is trying to screw me.
Was it the car dealership where I bought the car just running it through a half-assed inspection so they can sell the car without spending a lot of money on it first, or was it the tire shop I'm at now that is doing the inspection just so they can make some money.

After the Firestone mgr. told me the prognosis and the price, he looked shocked when I told him not to worry about it, that I'd have the dealership where I just bought it fix it.

He reluctantly called over the intercom to let my car down from the lift and pull it around.

So now I'm mad at whoever it is that's screwing me, I just don't know for sure who it is. I take it to the dealership and explain it to them. They look at it and say the tie-rods are "questionable".....So I'm thinking if they were "questionable" when they inspected it (if they really did) why hadn't they fixed it then?

So anyway, the dealership is putting new tie-rods on it now.

My question is what if I had gotten the car licensed before the 30 days had passed and hadn't needed a new inspection????

I would have been driving a car with either "shot" or "questionable" tie-rods for the next year, depending on who you believed.

I'm gonna have to believe the Firestone shop because about a week after buying the car, I had to replace the brake pads which also would have been discovered and fixed at the time of the first inspection if they had done it right.

Clearly, the only solution is to raise the price of a motor vehicle safety inspection from $12 of which the shop makes .50 cents to $594 of which $582.50 would go to the shop.

The other part of that solution would be that any mechanic working for a dealership that does a half-assed inspection, would have to make his family ride in a car using the parts that were found to be "shot" after he passed it.

So.....that was my two days off, can't wait to get back to work.

Oh...I also spoke with the woman from the post of a few days ago (the amazing story about seeing her over 20 years ago and finally meeting her)...well, we found out in talking that it was unlikely that it was actually her, but we've become friends anyway......so there's a new line. "Hey baby, didn't I see you buying a boombox twenty-five years ago?"

Small world.....

Today I was doing my presentation at the table, and I looked past my couple and noticed an older attractive woman at the table just past mine.

I continued my presentation but every once in awhile, I'd notice her and started to think I might know her.

Finally when I had finished my presentation, My friend Kim, who was giving the woman her presentation got up and I told Kim that I thought I knew the person she had on tour.

I didn't think much more of it until a little while later, Kim was pointing at me and told the woman that I thought I knew her.

They came over to me and the woman told me she was from the same big city that I had grown up in.

I immediately knew where it was that I knew her from ......and this is where it gets a little freaky, especially for her.

I said, You have a son, he's probably about 30 by now, looks like you, same jet black hair?

She said yes, that one of her sons was 29, the one that looked like her.

To get an idea how this woman must have felt hearing me say this to her, imagine it was happening to you.

Here she is in a resort town 6 hours from her home, and suddenly you're talking to a man who says that he knows you, but only from the most obscure memory from 28 years ago!!!

This is going to sound crazy that I remember this moment , but here it goes.

Sometime in 1980, she was at Sears buying a boom box for her son. The reason I remember it is that I was standing behind them in line and had bought the same exact boom box the day before.

Isn't the internet amazing? Believe it or not, I did a search and found this picture of the exact model boom box that we both had way back then.


The other reason I noticed her that day is that she was strikingly beautiful. tall, attractive, and had long jet black hair.

Anyway, this was in 1980...28 years ago!!!

Back then, I was a 15 year old junior high school kid and she, as I found out today, was 32 at the time.

I wouldn't have remembered that moment if it weren't for the fact that I would see her and her son shopping in the mall every so often and I myself ended up working in that mall 5 years later and would see them every few months or so when I worked there.

A few years after that, I ended up working in another mall on the opposite side of that city and guess who I start seeing there....yep, it's her, now she's shopping at this other mall I'm working at....She told me today that she had moved across town right near this other mall.

That was it, hadn't seen or thought of her again until today when she's sitting right in front of me 15 years later and 6 hours away from those malls.

She smiled and was amazed that I had noticed her then, and remembered her today.

She is now divorced, and my friend Kim told me that I had made her day.

Little things like this are kinda' neat.....life is so strange sometimes.

Oh, my tour bought a condo during all of this, so it was a pretty good day.

I also assured the woman that I really hadn't been stalking her all of that time, and she laughed. She has my e-mail and said she'd send me an e-mail when she got home from her vacation.

"Take a boat back to Mexico"

One of my "tours" (that's what we call the people we give a timeshare presentation to) today was a family of Mexican heritage from San Antonio.

Now, understand that this was a family born in the United States, the wife had a degree from the University of Michigan, and the only thing Mexican about them was their facial features and dark hair.

They were not wearing sombreros or swinging sticks at pinatas throughout the presentation.

Anyway, today's post will speak of an ignorant inbred woman in this town who showed these guests that racial bullshit still exists in parts of our country.

While on the tour, I ask them if they had been having a good time while in town.

They said they had, but the wife started laughing and said she had a strange experience at a flea-market this morning.

She was looking at some items at one of the booths and heard a lady standing nearby say something under her breath. "Damn Mexicans".

She asked the lady "Excuse me?"

The lady replied without shame "I wish all you damn Mexicans would just get on a boat and go back to Mexico"

Naturally, the woman was shocked and asked to speak to the flea-market owner.

The lady who had said the offensive remarks informed her that she was indeed the owner.

Luckily, the woman on my tour had remained calm, walked out of the store and left.

Now, first of all, I've included a map, just in case there might be any other inbred redneck hillbilly people reading this blog (No offense) to show you that, no boat is necessary if one wanted to "go back to Mexico".

Secondly, this family had been born in the United States, lived their entire life here, and represented our country much better than the aforementioned inbred lady.

Anyway, the family on tour and I all laughed that the lady made the "boat" comment.

That's it for today....It's funny how the racist ones always seem to show their stupidity when trying to say something bad about people different from themselves.

I think people shouldn't hate other people because of what nationality they are.

I think people should hate people for the reason I do, because many of them are just fucking stupid....no matter where they are originally from.

Mexican Food & Tourists

One thing is for sure, coming home and blogging the days events makes me realize....I really don't have much of a life.


Work was predictable.



I ran into a friend as I was about to leave work and decided to go eat way too much Mexican food.


Okay, if you must know, I sell timeshares in a popular resort town. (I'll address more on that in the coming posts...but don't prejudge me.....yet.)



Anyway, this resort town is coming back to life after a short off-season and it feels good to look around on the way to the Mexican restaurant knowing that our money season is here again.


We walk in and there are several tourists enjoying their meals.


I can't help but wonder where are these people from and what kinds of lifestyles do they have back home....wherever that is.


I also wonder just how many of them are going to be going on a timeshare presentation during their stay just for some free stuff, tickets to a show or 100 dollars in cash..blah, blah, blah......

...Until the chips arrive and those thoughts vanish as I start to fill up on too much chips and salsa.


As usual, once the food arrives, I'm stuffed and could just as happily leave without eating another bite, but...being American's, that's not in our culture, so I do what we do and proceed to eat the entire meal and then complain about how miserably stuffed I am.




As I sit there telling my friend that I'm stuffed, I realize the sad truth is that in this country, we eat more in one meal than most people in the world will eat in 3 or 4 days......or longer.

Now that I've fulfilled my need to achieve obesity, I once again scout the room and wonder just who the hell all of these people are and what drives them to this town year after year.

And then I start to feel fortunate......fortunate that I live in a town that other people choose to spend their vacation time in,.... fortunate that I make a great living because of that fact,....and fortunate that I am feeling overly-stuffed because I was able to eat more in one meal than most people in the world will eat in 3 or 4 days......or longer.

Life's not so bad after all........

Rain......Rain......Rain

Not much to post tonight. I just sat here for 30 minutes writing something here but then I decided against posting it.

It was about rain, and how great it is to not have bright, sunny, 75 degree days everyday....

Then my phone rang and someone dumped a bunch of negative crap on me....they wanted me to say it would be okay...I did that several times, but they just kept on feeling sorry for themselves because they hadn't sold lately (Did I mention I'm in sales?)

This person asked how I sell so often and I told them it's because I don't care if I sell or not, it just happens.....and really that's my secret. Sure I care deep down, but on the surface, you'd think I don't need you to buy my product...that makes you want it even more and I think that's why I sell more than anyone else I work with.

The truth is, I believe this person is truly defeated, she has given up in her first week....she is over-analyzing every reason she isn't selling. If she would just relax the sales will come.

I guess that's my advice.....relax !

Relax and enjoy the rain, sooner or later the sun will shine again.

The beginning

This is my first post.

I was watching the movie "We are Marshall" and it made me think about life and how quickly it can be gone. Since I had done nothing productive today, I felt like I should....so since I'm not doing anything right now to help me secure the next Nobel Prize, I thought I'd do the next best thing and create my very own blog...enjoy.

Nothing eventful comes to mind today other than it's St. Patrick's Day and raining hard.
I hadn't even realized it was St. Patty's Day until about an hour ago.

It's one of those lazy rainy days off from work and I've been here all day taking it easy.

I remember as a kid at school, this was the day when you had better be wearing green or you'd get pinched. I also remember my mom making corned beef, cabbage, and her traditional green mashed potatoes...she mixed cale into the potatoes to make them green. we also had another strange family tradition, she would wrap a quarter in foil and put it in the potatoes and whoever got that in their serving was to have good luck all year long. I haven't thought of that for years...it's sad how as we get older those kind of things disappear from our lives.

Today, there was no corned beef, nor mashed potatoes of any color, and the only quarters around my house are safely stored in a jar atop the refrigerator or rattling around in the clothes dryer.

I did have a nice chunk of salmon followed by a couple of Reese's peanut butter eggs for dinner tonight...Maybe that will become my new tradition, minus the quarter.