Invasion by the Valvoline Man
Wednesday, July 29th, 2009
This is the view from my home-office desk in Denver. Last Friday, while I was working away, a man I did not know entered the unlocked gate to this courtyard, wearing a Valvoline shirt. I watched him approach the closed front door, ready to get up when he knocked. But there was no knock. He walked right in.
“Hi,” he said. And to my dumbfounded look, he responded, “Oh, do you live here?”
“Uh, yeah. You just walked into my house.”
“Oh, I thought it was a business,” he pointed out. But instead of apologizing embarrassingly for whatever bizarre mental lapse precipitated his act, then exiting with haste, he closed the door behind him and launched into a pitch for $10 oil changes.
I sat in shock for a few seconds. Then, with a tendency toward hotheadedness during home invasions, I delivered a solid “Get the #@*% out of my house!”
He turned and left, pitching preventive maintenance service the entire way. The apology I awaited never came.