Medway Today column, 2nd March 2001: Running The Gauntlet Of Anorak-Clipboard Man

Act One: I’m walking along Chatham High Street one weekday lunchtime. It’s busy – as usual – if not with the crush of a Saturday. Suddenly the crowds part, but not like the Red Sea in the Bible. However now there are sardined shoppers on either side of the street, leaving the middle almost vacant.

Except two or three people wearing long anoraks decorated with corporate logos, and carrying clipboards. They are the reason for the parting of the crowds. No experienced Chatham shopper wants to be asked another set of prepared questions, carefully crafted to gain their signature before they know what has happened. Me, I’ve changed gas supplier twice and I’ve no intention of changing again in the foreseeable future.

Pity the poor young parent whose toddler runs off adventurously into the space left by the knowing shoppers: as the parent gives chase and catches the little one, the price of recovering the youngster is an unavoidable encounter with Anorak-Clipboard Man. 

The faces of these salespeople seem endlessly interchangeable, like moving the same head onto different bodies in a computer graphics package. I recognise one man who has represented a number of different gas companies. Another man, most recently seen selling gas contracts, was previously seen signing up people for a motor recovery service that was soon to go belly-up. 

Act Two, Scene One: I’m at home, it’s about 5 pm, and the phone rings. A caller wants me to answer a consumer survey. It’s all bland questioning about whether any family members suffer from allergies. Easy one, that: I have such a collection of personal allergies, I could start a museum. As a ‘thank you’ for my participation, my name will be entered into a draw for some free holiday vouchers. 

Act Two, Scene Two: Same location, same time two weeks later, the same woman is on the phone. And by golly, my name has been drawn out to receive the free holiday vouchers. (A miracle? Nope.) Could their representative call to deliver them personally, please? For some reason they can’t be posted. By now, I know the drill: if I allow the rep to call, I shall first be subjected to a ninety-minute demonstration of a vacuum cleaner or air filter costing a mere £1500. If I don’t have that cash in my pocket, I can sign a loan agreement at a mere forty per cent APR. 

If you’re like me, you develop ways of avoiding these high-pressure ways of selling you things you don’t need and can’t afford. I join the shoppers on the margins, avoiding Anorak-Clipboard Man. I refuse to answer the phoney consumer surveys. 

It’s easy to despise these salespeople. But – what kind of society are we creating where the openings for people who desperately need money are in such dehumanising jobs? From the clipboard-equipped people desperate for commission to the call centres, those twenty-first century sweatshops, while the numbness of the production line may be in decline, we have replaced old working patterns of indignity with new ones. 

All this raises big questions for me as a Christian. The God I believe in is one who wants to offer dignity to human beings, especially the poor, the desperate, and the broken. At the heart of the Christian faith is belief in a God who made us for friendship with him, who is broken-hearted at our breach of the friendship by our evil and selfishness, and who will stop at nothing to be reconciled with us. 

But where does that leave us with Anorak-Clipboard Man? Or the call centre worker ringing from her cubicle, going through her script, knowing that if she deviates with a touch of individual human flair, she will be disciplined? 

Clearly we need more companies who will create fulfilling and dignified jobs. But most of us don’t run companies. For us, U2 sang the truth in 1981: “I can’t change the world, but I can change the world in me.” We can show humanity by not avoiding or verbally abusing them, even if we don’t want their wares, because God offers dignity to us.

When we know that dignity, we can be different. And so can society.

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Copyright © David D Faulkner, 2006 except where other sources are attributed or noted as inspiration.