The Virgin Filter Queen

My previous post spent so much time on milk, ice cream, and a peachy predicament that I didn’t mention a side job in the summer of 1955. The Meadow Gold dairy found enough work for me to have a summer schedule from 11:30 to 3:30, a half hour for lunch, and then another four-hour shift from 4:00 to 8:00. Always a workaholic eager to earn money for the next school year, I looked for a way to make use of my mornings.

The only opportunity I could find was in sales, which promised “flexible hours and unlimited earnings.” To be honest, they should advertise this employment as “flexible earnings and unlimited hours.” Skeptical, I answered an ad for Filter Queen vacuum cleaners. The sales rep, who I will call Super Salesman, was a real livewire. He had a flair not only for selling vacuums but also for recruiting people to work for him. (He got a cut out of the earnings of every salesman he hired.)

Super Salesman made a great pitch, emphasizing that at $300 a machine and a 30% commission, every machine sold meant a cool $90 commission in your pocket. That was more than I made in a 48-hour week at Meadow Gold. Even if I only sold a few vacuum cleaners all summer, it would be well worth it.

Super Salesman’s spiel for Filter Queen explained that it wasn’t simply a vacuum cleaner (pronounced in a descending tone, as in dead cat). No, he said this was a “cleaning machine,” which he pronounced in a rising tone, like victory parade). According to the sales rep, the Filter Queen cleaning machine utilized a unique filter which enabled it to purify the air in the house at the same time that it cleaned the carpet. “Not every vacuum cleaner can do that!”

I’m not making this up, it’s what Super Salesman told me. He gave me tips on how you can turn on a prospect’s vacuum cleaner, switch the lights off (and pull the drapes if it’s too bright), then with a flashlight beam pointing behind the prospect’s own vacuum cleaner, see all the dust it spews back into the room. Next he would perform the same flashlight demonstration behind a Filter Queen, and Eureka! No dust!

I was less than rhapsodic about the virtues of a Filter Queen cleaning machine, but it seemed like a reasonably well-built appliance, and if someone needed a vacuum, why not buy it from me? With no direct sales experience behind me, I loaded the demonstrator Filter Queen in my car, and drove around the neighborhood until I got up the nerve to try my luck. My unrehearsed pitch was something like this, when a housewife answered the door.

“Good morning, ma’am, I’m working my way through college selling vacuum cleaners. Are you interested in a vacuum cleaner today?”

“No, not today.”

“Alright, thanks anyway. Sorry to bother you.”

You can imagine how quickly I moved through a neighborhood with that lightning sales pitch. After a week of no sales, I went back to Super Salesman, and told him I wasn’t cut out for door to door sales.

We had a long talk, and not just about Filter Queens. He was a Fundamentalist born again Christian, and asked about my religion and church. I told him I went to a Baptist church, but I might as well have told him I believed in graven images. He belonged to a Bible church, “the church of Jesus,” telling me it was better than any “man-made church.” He said it was like comparing a Filter Queen to a mere “vacuum cleaner.”

I was amazed that he used the same rationale for saving souls as for selling vacuums—but without the flashlight.

He wanted to save my soul, but that could wait. For the moment his goal was to convert me into a salesman. We set a time when Super Salesman could show me the ropes of selling a Filter Queen.

A few days later I met him at his house and we drove away in his car with my demonstrator. He said it didn’t make any difference what house we picked, he could help me sell a cleaner that day. All I had to do was to go with him and watch.

We walked up to a house, he knocked, and did all the talking.

“Good morning, my fine lady, and how are we today?”
“OK.”
“I bet you’re up and busy today.”
“That’s right.”
“Doing your cleaning?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you’re too busy to listen to some dumb vacuum cleaner sales talk, right?”

He had her smiling, crawling into the palm of his hand. She just beamed and said, “Uh huh.”
“Would you like to have someone help you this morning? Would you like for someone else to do your cleaning for you?”
“Well, I don’t know.”
“Listen, would you do me a favor? I’ve got a new salesman with me that I’m training, and I’d like to show him how we demonstrate our unique equipment. But I need a hard-working lady of the house to help me. Could you do that?”
“Me? I can’t do that. I’m just . . ..”
“A hard-working housewife? Fine. Perfect. Now all you have to do is sit down and watch. While I clean your carpet and furniture. Ask any questions that come to mind.”

Enjoying the attention and flattery, she let us in and sat back in an easy chair to watch the show, as Super Salesman went into his act. He set his machine in motion as he continued to stroke and flatter this prospect. He joked about how mad she might get when he threw sawdust on her clean floor. Then he quickly sucked it all up with his Filter Queen. He asked to borrow her old machine and had her turn it on and switch the lights off, drawing the drapes. With his flashlight he showed how her own vacuum was “dirtying up” her clean house. But when he turned on the Filter Queen and flashed the light behind it, there was no “dust storm.”

“Now, ma’am, have you cleaned your house, and do you consider it clean?”

“Yes, I just finished cleaning.”

“Well, I’m too polite to call you a liar, but my cleaning machine isn’t polite, and it will show you that your house is still dirty.”

He began vacuuming again with his resident Queen, this time on another part of the carpet that she had gone over with her old machine. After that he took off the floor attachment and put on a furniture attachment. He asked her to get up from the easy chair to clean it, and even vacuumed under the cushion. After fifteen minutes or so he turned off the Filter Queen and took the filter out, showing it to the lady. The once white filter had turned dark gray.

Super Salesman said he just wanted to show her this ultimate cleaning machine and break in a new man, and thanked her for letting him use her house. As he began packing up his equipment, she asked about the Filter Queen, its price, and guarantee. He kept telling her he wasn’t really selling machines that day, he was only training a salesman, and in fact he only had this demonstrator. He didn’t even have a new machine in his car. But if she was really interested in buying one, he would take care of her. She offered to make a down payment.

When we left the house, he had hundred-dollar check in his shirt pocket, and promised to deliver a new machine the next day.

I had barely spoken a word the whole time, awestruck by the whole performance. Finally, back in the car, I managed to congratulate him on his sale, but told him he was lucky to find a dirty house.

“Are you kidding? I had to work around and talk an extra ten minutes to make sure the filter showed some dirt. That’s the cleanest house I ever saw.”

Super Salesman was so smooth-talking, he could work for Satan selling vacation homes in Hell.

He turned his charm on me, persuading me to give it another try at selling.

My second round as a salesman was as unsuccessful as the first.

I considered myself a hard worker. My constitution and determination had enabled me to pull tassels in the ninety-degree heat of a cornfield sauna, and to withstand the minus thirty degree cold to load ice cream from a freezer. But my upbringing and conscience did not allow me to sweet-talk and hoodwink unsuspecting housewives into making questionable purchases.

I was glad Super Salesman was not there when I returned my demonstrator, still a Virgin Filter Queen.