Cutco cutlery. Those seductively shiny, ultra-sharp knives sold directly to you in your home by a clean-cut young man who’s earning college money and has great people skills. If you’ve had such a demo in your home, then you’ve probably succumbed, as have I. But no more. No fault of the product, but I can no longer host a demonstration in my home. The Let me tell you a little story. I was traumatized a couple of years ago by a Cutco representative. Let’s call him Tom.
This young man was a friend of a friend and we thought highly of him, from what we knew. I am risk-averse and not a very free spender so I agreed to listen to the shpeel without the expectation that I would purchase anything. It all started out innocently enough, the young man, Tom, seeming not only normal, but upstanding and genteel in every way. Perhaps the intense focus on his script made him vulnerable to the various ticks and twitches that began to appear before too long. Somewhere around the hour mark, his demeanor grew less civilized and more… rambunctious. Well, I thought, at least he’s loosening up and enjoying himself. (I’m thinking that’s really the essence of a successful presentation. Enjoy yourself with it, and your audience will too!)
About 105 minutes into his demonstration, he had gotten through the chef’s knife, the carver, and the petit carver, when he moved on to the pairing knife, which he kept referring to as the toothpick. This confused me, obviously as I didn’t see any kind of toothpick – Swiss Army style or otherwise – among the myriad Cutco blades and accessories spread out before us.
I asked Tom why he called it that – the toothpick. Confusion was replaced with surprise and not a little horror when he peered into my eyes and wordlessly answered by preening the interstitial space between his right center tooth and the pure silver crown next to it. Satisfied with the bit of orange pulp (he had earlier tied his dominant hand behind his back, then used his non-dominant hand alone to slice up an orange, Benihana-style in 9.4 seconds, then insisted we all sample how “properly sliced citrus” tastes) that now perched at the very tip of the blade, he shrugged his brow at me as if to say, “See?” Also unspoken, the word “dummy” was implied.
Well, boys will be boys, I thought but tried to wrap up this whole affair by saying, “OK then! You’ve done a great job with the demo, Tom – you really know your stuff. Ahem, as I had mentioned over the phone, I’m really not prepared to buy anything but I’ll be happy to sign your sheet and give you high marks for everything!” I smiled brightly but also looked at my watch to show him I meant business about packing up his little circus and hitting the road.
“Milady!” he cried, startling me into nicking myself with the petit carver — I hadn‘t even been aware I was fiddling nervously with it. “The best is yet to come!” He was moving quickly now, his hands a blur like those shell game artists in Central Park, as he whipped out more props. He used the carver to cut a thick length of hemp rope and employed the shears to cut a U.S. penny in half. as if it were a lima bean. (I couldn’t help wondering what the Treasury would think about that.) The arthritis in my thumbs throbbed when he gleefully described how efficiently the shears can “snap right through the joints of any kind of poultry or small mammal!” Finally, he balanced the chef’s knife on the tip of his nose while juggling all 8 steak knives and standing on one foot. By now my teenagers had joined us and were impressed with the product and Tom’s skill, but a bit put off by his manic energy and so many sharp blades on the move. The dog was intermittently sniffing around the bits of fallen orange and leaping in the air to catch the flying knives.
Tom had by now worked himself into a lather. There was a fever in his eyes that was starting to give me real concern and I backed off to allow a safer distance between him and us. Looking back on it, I guess what followed was the result of his mistaking everyone’s silence for cynicism. Now… I’m no psychologist, but it seemed to me that Tom was bent on proving himself. Call it pressure to succeed. Or maybe the local psych patient who thinks he’s Idi Amin was posing as the Cutco sales training manager. Regardless, I knew one thing: none of these techniques were in Og Mandingo’s classic, “The Greatest Salesman in the World.” Whatever this was, Tom was now entering a zone from which few people return unscathed.
As jugglers do, Tom began to rhythmically pluck the steak knives out of the air one at a time and collect them all in one hand. He set them down, still staring at the tip of his nose where the chef’s knife danced like one of the animated objects in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. He grabbed that, too, with a flourish, set it down gracefully, and now with hands as sure as a surgeon’s, picked up the pairing knife.
Throwing his head back, his face full of daring, he drew the pairing knife, in his right hand, up towards his face. At first slowly and dramatically. Then with a cock of his head and a sharp twist of the wrist, in an instant he popped his left eyeball out of its socket just as cleanly as if he were undoing a button. As it vaulted through the air in a neat little arc, he was about to catch it in his left hand, when my son’s fainting interrupted the orbit of the eye and it fell to the hardwood floor, rolling around with an accusing look, the dog scrambling after it. My daughter and I screamed the scream of horror movies. I even heard the baby cry. I don’t know which baby, as there hasn’t been one in our house in 15 years, but believe me, the baby cried.
But Tom, or Captain Jack Sparrow, as he now resembled nothing more than a pirate mad with scurvy, was agile in quickly retrieving his peeper from the floor. (Gone was his oxford shirt and khakis and in their place was a 17th century chemise, vest, tri-cornered hat, and oh yes, his hair had grown about 20 inches.) Popping his eye back in to its socket as though he’d done this a million times to amuse the kiddies, he beamed his sparkly silver smile at me as I walked backwards to the kitchen to retrieve my checkbook without letting Captain Crazy out of my sight. My daughter was whimpering and tending to my faint-of-heart 13-year-old. The dog was at Tom’s feet, looking up at him expectantly, in his best “good boy” sitting position, confident the next treat was on its way.
“I’ll… I’ll take the… the whole set,” I stammered. “Here’s a blank check. You have to leave now. We’re uh, we’re late for something.”
“Late for what, ducky?” he asked, now in full pirate-ese. Blyme, why dincha say so?! I’ll just pack up me things, then, won’t I? Quick as a cat or Bob’s your uncle.”
I’m thinking this is a composite Disney nightmare. “Uh, we have an appointment… at the… eye doctor,” I murmured from my trance. I know, but honestly, it’s the best I could do.
Tom did leave without much of a fuss, having taken, or earned — I’m not sure which — the treasure he came for. I did something like sleepwalking to the liquor cabinet, just to calm my nerves you understand, where there appeared a bottle of Captain Morgan’s Rum, the origin of which I’m still puzzled about. Drinking it provided no clues as to the crying baby heard earlier, but did produce the vision of a black cat on the neighbor’s roof.
And so Cutco wunderkind, wherever you are, I hope you’ll understand my reluctance to host another Cutco representative in my home. What with the loose organ, transmogrification, possible time/dimension travel and all. As I said, I’m really not much of a risk-taker. Good luck to you all, and Godspeed!
