It was just a quick trip to the mall.
I was rushing by one of those kiosks to grab a quick lunch when I was stopped – make that, tackled, wrestled to the ground and forced to wear face cream – by a kidnapper masquerading as a cosmetics saleswoman.
“Excuse me, ma’am, ma’am … MA’AM?” she called in a voice, as if I’d dropped a million dollars. Polite, small-town girl that I am, I accidentally made eye contact.
“Would you like a sample of our miraculous collagen-activating serum?” she asked in a question that was not really a question.
I was prepared to grab my free packet of whatever it was and scurry away. But I was no match for her dark and otherworldly vortex of bewitchery.
“Please, you must try a little bit of this eye serum. It is truly miraculous,” she cooed in an exotic but hard-to-place accent. Before I knew it, she had whisked into a chair “so you don’t fall down.” (Apparently, the thrill of having one’s crow’s feet massaged by a fast-talking redhead was more than the average customer could handle.)
I had barely set down my purse when she began rubbing gel into my cheekbones while spouting a sales pitch. I’m not really sure what she said. I think it was something like: “And this cream is amazing because it’s made out of gerbil placenta and butterfly kisses and Kim Kardashian’s upper-lip sweat.”
She peppered her chatter with an unnerving mixture of flattery (“You have such beautiful skin!”) and truth (“Ooh, you’re a little puffy around the eyes. It’s hard to get enough sleep when you have kids, no?”)
I mumbled that I didn’t have kids while she nodded absently. She continued to buff my cheekbones like an old Oldsmobile, all the while peppering me with a melodic and incomprehensible fountain of words. Only a few phrases stuck out. “Regeneration. Exfoliation. Seventy percent of wrinkles. Stimulates collagen production. Frown lines.”
The next thing I knew she had pulled out my wrist and started dabbing some clear gel on it. She massaged it in circular motions, which immediately sloughed off dry skin. She said something like, “This product will not only prolong your life and help you lose 12 pounds of dry skin, it will help you fly.”
And then she turned to a man on the other side of the kiosk and invited him over. He came barreling over, chanting, “You MUST try one of our free facials!” The male was even more insistent and effusive. In fact, he made Redhead look like a shy waif.
“I LOVE that you are in your 40s!” he gushed. “At that point, there is still some hope for the skin!”
At that point, I was scared. I was trapped in the Cult of Dermatological Salvation with no visible means of escape. He began insisting that I accompany him to his store to get a voucher for a free facial. “Fifteen minutes!” he chanted. “Just give me 15 minutes! You will not believe the results!”
And here lies my true moment of shame. I actually caved and wound up buying some of their overpriced face cream. It was only until I brought it home that I discovered the impressively packaged jar had misspelled “condition” as “codnition” on the label.
I realize this does not reflect well on me. But when, amid the hubbub, they held up a mirror to show the cream-covered side of the face, it looked noticeably better. Like, a LOT better.
So it just goes to show you: The ideal customer for the guerrilla facial is the easily intimidated 49-year-old woman with zero sales resistance.
It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
Slow, wrinkled, gullible fish.
Readers can reach columnist Tammy Swift at tswiftsletten@gmail.com
