[An oldie from my old Web site, TheZeroBoss.com. Originally published to the Internet on November 29th, 2004.]
(Note: All personal names and corporate identities have been changed – grudgingly – to protect the guilty.)
The offer they mailed us was damn near irresistible. A night in a hotel. By ourselves. Without the children. We hadn’t sipped from that Holy Grail of parenting in years. The cost? Just walk in to JetSetter Resorts, listen to a timeshare sales pitch, and prance out the door with coupon in hand.
Unfortunately, they never told us to expect the Spanish Inquisition.
We made the 30-minute drive one Saturday afternoon from our home in Bellevue, Washington down to Issaquah, a sprawling Seattle-area suburb with tentacles of office parks and strip malls dangling off the body of its historic downtown. Unlike most office park businesses, which prefer to remain cloaked in anonymity, JetSetter advertised its presence with a sporty banner tacked to the top of its one-story rental space. We had seen the company logo before on sponsorship banners for local arts and holiday festivals. It spoke of fun and adventure, but with a dollop of civic awareness. We felt like we were in responsible hands.
Mary Kate met us at the door. She had about 20 years on my 30, and a down-home demeanor that implied she had been knitting her grandson a sweater before we arrived. After coffeeing us up (a ritual demanded by Seattle social mores), she escorted us to a 30-seat presentation room, where five other couples sat waiting for the Big Show. Our fellow cheapskates seemed, like us, equal parts intrigued and tense, like they were mentally fumbling for the best way to say “no” to the nice lady who had served them bad coffee.
The room went dark. The portable TV unit at the front sprang to life. For the next 30 minutes we were regaled with a whirlwind tour of JetSetter’s worldwide properties. The company, we learned, operates a network of timeshares stretching from Oahu to Canberra. As JetSetter timeshare owners, we would accrue a certain number of vacation “credits” per year that we could use at any one of their luxurious properties. Unlike with traditional timeshares, we wouldn’t be locked in to a single location year after year. (”But daaaad, we always go to Honolulu! Can’t we at least fly this year, instead of smuggling ourselves over on the sugar cane boat?”) Great vacations, with great flexibility, at the right price – that was the JetSetter motto.
Apparently, each couple had their own minders. Before any of us had a chance to mingle or so much as share our names, Mary Kate swept us up and escorted us back to her office. Over the next 20 minutes we learned more about Mary Kate’s life than we ever wished to know – from her former job as an office assistant with a petulant boss, to a detailed enumeration of her kids and grandkids. I was surprised she didn’t yank down her pants and show us her “body art”. Instead, she wove bright tales into her dialogue about all the fascinating vacations she and her husband had taken with their JetSetter timeshare.
“So…are you interested?” she asked sweetly.
Kim and I looked at each other. We hadn’t come with the intention of parking major capital on a vacation subscription, but now we were both tempted. The way Mary Kate spun it, the annual cost of the timeshare would come out to less than the cost of a single vacation, even when you factored in air fare, meals and incidentals – and we could use the timeshare multiple times in a single year, depending on how many credits we purchased.
“Sure,” I said. “Let’s talk about the cost breakdown.”
And that’s when Mary Kate turned on us, leading us into the lair of her “partner”, Damien. Damien’s gaze was still and soulless, his movements calibrated to inhuman precision. His hair contained enough product to despoil the Alaskan coast line for decades. His sole raison d’etre? To squeeze our bank account number out of our brains. We ogled him as he dispensed with formalities and whipped out a clean sheet of paper on which he calculated the “standard” fees for a JetSetter timeshare on the left-hand side.
“But that,” he said, “is not what I’m offering you right now.” And down the right-hand column, he jotted a lower set of numbers.
I studied both columns. Even the “discounted” price spelled a significant dent in our monthly budget. Kim and I pow-wowed for a few minutes. I turned back to Damien to tell him thanks, we’ll think about it, and I reached for the paper.
Damien slammed his hand down, keeping the figures close by his side. “Actually, this is a one-time only offer. You leave here, and I can’t guarantee these great prices if you come back.”
I looked at him in shock. “So, let me get this straight. You want me to make a commitment to shell out thousands of dollars a year based on a one-hour shakedown?”
“It’s a hell of an investment.”
“I’m sure, but I want some time to think it over, learn more about it.”
“I can tell you everything you need to know,” he scoffed.
I did my level best not to roll my eyes. “Again, I’m sure. But I’d like to do some…independent research. Look some things up online. I don’t make a double-digit purchase on the spot, let alone a four-figure purchase. It’s a principle.”
Damien had no compunction about letting his own eyes roll at that one and droned, “Well, if you have your principles…” He slurred “principles” the way other people might say “ax murderer” or “timeshare salesman”.
My fingers curled up. I was ready to find the nearest mackerel and slap this schmuck into next week. Suddenly, I found my throat stifling a laugh. I had never been ensnared in a Good Cop/Bad Cop routine before, but I had seen them enough times on Law & Order that I could spot one from several leagues off. These weren’t salespeople – they were reincarnated B-movie actors.
After a few more minutes of high-pressure haggling, we found ourselves back in Mary Kate’s lap. She hadn’t changed, but my perception of her had done a 180. I knew from the get-go that she had been sucking up to us the whole time. But at least it had seemed like honest sucking-up, and not part of a carefully scripted tango between the partners of the real estate firm Dewey, Cheatum & Howe. I had little sympathy when she tried to sweet-talk us about her “overenthusiastic” partner.
Overenthusiastic, I thought. What an interesting euphemism for “dickhead”.
Kim took over. My wife had once made her living through sales; she had clearly had her fill of Amateur Hour. “You’re telling me that if we walk out this door, we never get the same deal again? That’s a horrible way to establish a relationship with your customer.”
Mary Kaye smiled wanly. Her voice took on a conspiratorial tone. She was going to give us an even deeper discount and extend the offer until the end of the month, even though she knew that her “partner” might not approve. It was all I could do not to chortle. This woman wasn’t playing just the Good Cop – she was fashioning herself as Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. We listened to the abridged version of her life story (peppered with hard sells) for another 15 minutes before she gave up and gave us our certificate for our hotel stay. We were free to leave.
Kim chuckled and shook her head all the way back to Bellevue. “Do you think they switch-hit? Like every other customer she gets to be the dominatrix and he gets to be the submissive?”
“Honey,” I replied, “that’s not really the image I want in my head.”
Later at home, I looked over the provisions and exceptions for our free offer: we had our choice of four JetSetter properties on four specific Saturdays prior to Veterans Day, after which the offer was null and void. A funny feeling told me that we’d spend half of our “vacation” strapped to chairs with toothpicks propping up our eyelids, watching resort videos until we ralphed.
We ripped up the voucher and instead invested several hundred dollars in camping gear. We broke it in with a three-day trip to Blaine, a sleepy northern Washington town near the ocean. On our way to a family amusement park a few miles from the shore, we took a long road around Birch Bay. Its shores were clogged with seaweed and rotting fish. Across the street from the bay’s main beachfront was a JetSetter “resort”: a ramshackle two-story motel that was one low-rent prostitute away from a police raid.
I reminded myself that this was northern Washington, not Oahu or Cabo San Luca. Still, I couldn’t resist a feeling of smug self-satisfaction for being such a principled son of a bitch.
