the modern day-to-day salesman

[http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert (Robert)]

Someone representing Success Express Sales (http://www.pccsonline.com)
visited my front door.  His name was Thomas Bailey and his pitch was to
sell me some magazines.  His aim was to win some vacation or another (under
the pretense of raising money for people exploring "careers", whatever that
means).  So, I was determined not to give any money, despite his slick
presentation.  I agreed to buy something (Spin magazine) and, instead of
giving him one of my credit card numbers to pay for it, I used a temporary
credit card number from https://www.mbnashopsafe.com/slimclient.html with
a maximum value of $2.  So, the worse is that I could be ripped by 2 dollars.
This person could be ripping off people's credit card numbers for all I knew
and I wasn't about to take that chance.

All this teaches me is that, along with responding to e-mail and answering
the phone, I can no longer open my own front door for fear of being
assaulted with a sales pitch attempting to separate me from my money.

We live in bad times.