*feces*ty Monday Scam-A-Thon

All day meeting.  Running on four hours sleep.  Bored senseless.  Plan to run after work, calibrate new Nike Plus/iPod gizmo.  Wife calls, asks if I can be home by 6:30 for water testing home visit (she'd sent a sample in, they called and said it was not good, would like to come out to do more complete analysis).  Rush the workout, iPod locks up, workout data lost.  Rush home.  Wait for tech, who arrives at 7:25 in her 6:30-7:30 window.

Analysis tech asks what we "do"; wife says she's a mom (pause).  Woman looks at me.  Wife says  I'm a patent attorney, work at a chemical company.  Woman hesitates, pulls out a twin-towers-of-filtration arrangement, hooks it up to our faucet, and starts her testing.  Wants us to watch.  (No, not like that).

I get a scam vibe, ask if she's associated with the municipal water utility.  She is NOT -- she's with a private company.  Starts her hokey "analysis".  I pick up bottle of "indicator reagent" after she adds it to our from-the-tap water and to tap water coursed through her twin-towers-of-filtration dohickey; it's a mixture of salts.  Do same for the "coating agent"; it's weak sodium thiosulfate.  Magically, hazy precipitate forms in our untreated tap water.

Remainder of "tests", she starts putting reagent bottles back into her case after adding drops, so I can't pick 'em up and read 'em.  I do get a peek at one that's supposed to be common dishwashing liquid; it isn't.

I take child upstairs to bed.  Pause at hallway where wife can see me, woman can't, shake head quickly side to side.

So she was looking to sell us *feces*.  As in, a $4900 whole-house water softener system.  Wife tells her to jam it up her ass sideways, although not in so many words.  The water sample package we'd received and that my wife had sent in?  Came looking every bit official ... deliberately.

Hate!

1. Put iPod in your wife's never-used-after-21-months iPod nano sport arm-band holder type thingie.


2. Run 1 mile in very light drizzle.  Go back inside.

3. Press pause button to suspend workout.  Press Menu twice to reach Nike+ iPod menu.

4, and this appears to be the important step.  Press Menu, but fat-finger it so that the device starts to play first song on only playlist it knows (a whopping 16 songs total).  Notice mistake, immediately press Menu.

5. Begin Aske-in-grocery-store-express-lane impersonation.

That's rather a personal question, don't you think?

Two words for you:

Polar 


On topic: Had some dude try to pull this trick when we built our house. Came in and did his "magic" trick to sell a water softener. I actually laughed.