Upsellers

What kind of crap can I sell you?

You know what pisses me off?

Upsellers.

You know who they are; they’re the assmunchers who always want to sell you more than what you are buying. They’ve always got something positioned at the counter, ready to capitalize on your impulses.

“Would you like a slice of our four day-old dry as a bone overpriced lemon cake to go with your latte?”

“Would you like to extrabigasssize your type II diabetes meal?”

“ Why not take home a five gallon drum of Coke to go with your 125 piece wing-ding deal”  

Upsellers are everywhere, and they annoy the hell out of me and they REALLY annoy the Missus. They’ve always got some cheap geegaw sitting on the counter, ready to be pimped out as an impulse buy. I’d like to tell them that if I wanted to buy that hunk of overpriced plastic Sino-crap, I would have picked it up and brought it to them. Am I that fucking stupid that I don’t know what I want? Deep down I guess I really didn’t know that I wanted an LED-encrusted, frog-shaped beer cooler with built-in umbrella and solar Ipad charger. Stupid me!

Best Buy is a great example. They’re always trying to sell those Monster cables with anything you buy. Part of my business is making cables and let me tell you, there isn’t much difference amongst them. It’s a piece of wire with some stuff on each end.  I think BB’s tactic is to try to emasculate you if you’re a man with sentences like:

“Well sir, you’ll really get an optimized sound quality from these, I‘d hate to see you spend this much on a television only to compromise performance with cheaper cables.”

As if embarrassing me in front of the Missus will do it. (This is a woman who once jumped out my car and screamed obscenities at some Persian douchenozzle that I was about to pummel.)

I usually politely decline the gold-plated stereo snakes, but what I really want to say is:

Suck it electromonkey!

“Hey fucker, I’d hate to see your sexual performance compromised by me putting my steel-toed boot in your balls! Now scurry away electromonkey before I end your family bloodline.”

My favorite upsell attempt was when I bought a $3.99 flashlight and the chick behind the counter asked me if I wanted an extended warranty for an additional $0.99. I looked at her and she grimaced as if to say: “I’m sorry but the corporate fucksticks make me say this because they don’t have to stand here and look like an ass.” She’s right.

Retail is notorious for this. The suits are always trying to push something or suggest something that goes with your purchase. Most of what they are pushing is what we call SMI - Slow Moving Inventory. It’s the crap they ordered too much of and now they need to get rid of it. Rather than demanding that the wage slaves hock this unmitigated junk on customers, why not fire the duMBAss that ordered too many platinum-plated nose trimmers. 

More on this later

I once worked at Williams-Sonoma and we were constantly told to upsell some crap or another and we had a specific thing we were to push each week. I wouldn’t do it so I picked something totally unrelated.

“I see you’ve purchased a set of cedar planks and grill sauce, an electric coffee grinder would go great with that.”

Or

“This vegetarian cookbook is fabulous, how about a meat cleaver to accompany it? I’ve used that big one in the case and I can tell you it cuts through bone like butter.”

Needless to say, no one took me up on any of my combos, they mainly stared blankly at me. But I was upselling in my own demented way. Sometimes though, I wonder  if we haven’t become a nation of salesmen, upselling each other on the most mundane issues.

Husbands say: “Honey for another $4000 we can put 22 inch rims on our Yukon”

Kids say: “Mom it’s only $50 more for the Hellofucking KittyIpad case.”

And the ladies say: “Look, as long as he’s in there, the doctor may as well give me a tummy tuck.”

But the question is will the doctor offer an extended warranty?