Slushies

Nope, not the sugar-filled icy beverage. It's a description of my shoes after today.

We were very motivated today. Got to work early, and ready to go. Well prepared, we were expecting great success.

There are many things in this job that I cannot control. Today I will touch on two such things.

1) The Whether; This morning we woke up with attitudes set for success, and a plan. However, we also woke up with a billion little snowflakes making the roads a mess. We couldn't drive nearly as far as we had planned and had to choose an inferior area to work. We were ahead of schedule, though, so we thought we'd be fine, and have just as good of a day.

2) The Past; A customer will often make his or her decision based on a past experience. For instance, today I encountered a block of houses that had also been spoken to before by a young man. He went to each door, describing the tragedies he had seen as a firefighter, and how sick his poor son was. "Please support this charity, for families like mine," he would say. A couple of weeks later, each generous supporter would be visited again; this time by a kind police officer, returning each penny they had donated, and explaining that the 'firefighter' had in fact been arrested on drug charges. Oops.

And so, each one of these donaters swore it would never happen again, and told all their friends this story to be learned from.

I may not be creative enough to think of such an elaborate scheme, but I paid for this man's mistake all day long. No one wanted to talk to me, and it really is unfortunate for them. All well.

So in the end, I worked for almost 8 hours today and accomplished what would usually take me 2. And my shoes have icky slushies in them.