Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Future sales man in training

So Master J spent the night at my parent's house last night and during his stay, he convinced my dad to build him yet another wooden vehicle, this one a flatbed pickup truck. While he was "helping" Papa build, he found the scrap pile and discovered the "holes" from where my dad is cutting out the aluminum for the various wiring on his airplane. Side note, my dad is building a small, two seat airplane, and has been for almost eight years. I did not get my patience from him. I got my patience from some New York cabbie that I must have run across at one point in my life. Moving on. So when Papa punches a hole in the aluminum, the scrap is a perfectly round disk, about two inches across. They are of varying thicknesses depending on where in the plane it is. Master J saw these and decided to salvage them. Not only salvage them, but package them up, write an advertising campaign and sell them. When I picked him up, I was greeted with much excitement and a several signs. The first sign was two pieces on wood, hinged with duct tape, that said "closed" when hinged and "open" when un-hinged. The second sign said "SUPER ROLL WHEELS - One dollar each - Limited supply available so get your SUPER ROLL WHEEL today". He even had two different levels of these things. The thicker ones were the beginner levels and the thinner ones were the expert level. The "expert" ones, he informed us, would be priced at $3 dollars tomorrow. Apparently he thought that would prompt us into buying them today at the aforementioned bargain basement price. Seriously. He had about a dozen of these disks, each one taped to a small block of scrap wood, and he wanted a dollar a piece. He wanted to sit on the sidewalk and sell them to the neighbors, but I put the kibosh on that. I told him he could sell them to family and friends. But NOT (as he started for the shop door) to his Papa, who had already been conned into helping him put this whole scheme together. I can't let him sell his overpriced, crappy product to the slave labor that created it. I do have some standards. So I bought one of the beginner level ones and Mister C bought one of each. I guess he didn't want to spend the extra $2 tomorrow. Now what, you may ask, do these SUPER ROLL WHEELS do? Nothing. You are supposed to roll them on the ground. Under the best of circumstances, they roll about two feet before falling over. That's it. Not the best toy of the century by a long shot. But giving credit where credit is due, Master J just made $3 pulling junk out of the garbage and calling it something fantastic. I'd say that's a pretty good result.

1 comments:

Kelly said...

Looks like you can kick back and relax...Master J is going to be very successful one day and take care of you in your old age!