Skip to main content

Solar Panels

The solar panel sales guy was back again. He lives in Akita and his company has him commute every week to Sendai. Apparently they have two thousand leads, and we're one of them.

This poor dude is just the next in a line of salesmen who have visited us for solar panels and goodness knows whatever else. Apparently when you buy a house you get added to some golden list of sales leads.

I asked my questions. Like, "How satisfied would you say solar panel customers in Sendai are?" And I stated my doubts. Like, "This whole thing looks like a gamble to me since these projections of our electric bill are based on the weather and what the government might do. But no one really knows, right?"

He was very polite and even said that there's a chance in five or ten years time we might be glad we didn't get solar panels. That's a seriously strong sales move.

I took a longer than planned afternoon break from work to come down to the dining table and listen to this last explanation about this particular company's solar panels. Kenzo and Osamu were on relatively good behavior, but as time went on they got louder and louder, and I sorta loved it. This salesman was gonna need to pass the "keep it together" test. I love doing stuff like this when I interview people for jobs; manufacture a scenario that is inherently annoying and see how they react. To me there is no better way to get a glimpse into who a person really is than witnessing them deal with adversity.

This solar panel guy passed the test. Barely.

I told him that I need a little more time to discuss it with my wife. Privately.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Not About Baseball

I stayed up past my bedtime again last night. I almost made it. I watched a couple of episodes of Ted Lasso and came to a good stopping point where I was satisfied with myself for enjoying some quiet TV time with my favorite show and even though it was after midnight, I was confident I could still get a pretty good night's sleep.  But no. For some reason I decided it would be a good idea to just lay on the living room carpet and put on a movie. I saw the first seven or eight minutes of Goodfellas and then I woke up when the end credits were rolling with Sid Vicious' is cover of My Way . I brush my teeth and I can see the light of day already shining in through the bathroom window. "It’s almost the longest day of the year," I told myself, to at least rationalize why I'm brushing my teeth and crawling into bed at this hour. I was trying to minimize the mental anguish I regularly put on myself for not just going to bed like I should. I told Eri that I was thinking a...

Overpriced Highball for the Big Guy

I keep falling asleep at my desk and waking up all groggy and surly in the middle of night, stumbling downstairs to brush my teeth without waking anyone, and slinking back up the steps and into bed. So I was the last one up again this morning, but I made up for it by quickly getting ready and taking the boys out on a Sunday morning walk to look for bugs. Kenzo has been particularly keen on capturing another lizard. He doesn't understand that lizard season is ending and those guys are becoming more and more rare. He got his hopes up when we came across a little one walking up some woodsy steps. After that we took a break. Eri's sister and her husband stopped by to grab the car seats that the boys just graduated from. Their little girl Emika is just now big enough to start using one and next spring she's gonna have a brand new baby brother or sister who will also need a car seat, so the timing worked out nice for all of us. Emika apparently loves Thomas the Tank Engine (who d...

Mr. Blue Sky

Man, I conked out so hard on the living room floor tonight. Right after bath time, before story time. I barely remember. Completely exhausted. Big adventure day. Another in a long series I hope the boys will remember when they’re older... our first IMAX movie, a downtown city outing, and some life lessons in the game center. We left the house at 9:15 a.m. and didn’t get back until nearly 6 p.m., totally spent but full of pizza and memories. The Wild Robot in IMAX was totally stunning. The scale, the colors, the sound. We could feel every gust of wind and rustle of leaves. I made sure we had prime seats, row G, right in the center. Two big buckets of popcorn too, which, according to Kenzo and Osamu, I  absolutely should not  be sharing. “You should get your own!” they kept saying. I think a little bit of popcorn thievery is well within my rights as the papa. After the movie, we headed through the cold and wind across to the game center on the other side of Sendai Station. Being...