Pyramid peddlers be gone

You know if there's any group of people that get on my nerves six ways til Sunday it's pyramid peddlers. I swear I get irritated just thinking about them, those wide-eyed weasels with their cheesy conversation starters and their supposedly slick spiel on how to get rich quick. I don't mean to sound overly nasty but I just think the planet would be a better place without these people.

Meryl and I were accosted at the local Wal-Mart by a man-and-woman team just the other day and in the children's toy department of all places! They paid her a compliment and, being the well-meaning stupe that I am, I answered back with a sincere thank you and follow-up reply. That's when the guy mistook my expression of gratitude as his opportunity to get his foot in the door. I was quick to cut him off once I caught on to the game.

First of all the guy was sporting a lightweight tan jacket zipped up to the neck so all potential marks could easily read the pyramid scheme logo on his lapel. I suppose that would have been a worthwhile tactic were it not for the fact that anybody with half a brain would have recognized the label as a well-known Ponzi scheme. Sure, the company he represented may sell the occasional mortgage, insurance package or investment instrument, but you can tell by the look on the guy's face that the way he plans on making money is by getting other people who are equally as gullible as he was to sell their integrity along with the names and numbers of their friends and family. I'm no genius but even I can spot the shady smile and rapid-fire schlock coming out of someone's mouth that in essence negates whatever he's saying and instead serves as his own pisspoor attempt to delve into my pocket or social network or both.

How gross!

While I was quick to rat this couple out to customer service, I don't know what good it did. On the relatively few occasions I've been targeted by these types of people, the most recent onces occurred at a Wal-Mart or Sam's. Once two guys from the Bush-backed cult known as Teen Challenge solicited me for a donation as I was walking in a Wal-Mart, and at Sam's it seems like there's always a fund raising car wash going on for some transient fly-by-night church slash tax shelter. Sometimes I think the fickle finger of Sam Walton is reaching beyond the grave and inviting these greed demons into his stores. As if getting the government to usurp our private property rights wasn't enough!

I think what bothers me most about the pyramid peddlers though is that they fail to see their own ignorance and greed and instead assume (or at least hope) that the rest of us are as gullible as they were. They think that because they were dumb enough to plunk down cash for an initial investment in garbage shilling, so will we. Fat chance.

Think about it. The guy I met recently touted himself an investment manager who had recently moved down from New Jersey. OK, his accent led credence to the Jersey part, but aside from that I wasn't buying. If he was successful in New jersey, why was he here in a Georgia Wal Mart trying to drum up customers or fellow pyramid peddlers? Secondly, while I have a large number of people I consider family and friends, and their respective intelligence levels spans the smarts spectrum, I can't think of one who would actually be dumb enough to trust their child's inheritance with some schlub I claimed to have met at the local megalomart. And they sure as hell aren't going to trust me with it!

I'm sorry. I just keep better company than that.

Whether it's Pampered Shit or White Trash Living or Crymerica or Scamway or Unimaginative Memories or any of that garbage, I am just no interested.

On the flip side, we're out of Thin Mints and I wouldn't mind trying those Samoas this year.