Road coffee – Chapter 1 – Nothing’s free.

The short story, the coffee was sour and old tasting- almost lemony. I caught a whiff of my own breath after one sip (this is kinda hard to do generally speaking) and it smelled like farts. 1/10 @rchids #decodedcoffeevlog

Here’s the rest of the story.

Part of our travel plan included a ‘sit and git’ presentation from Holiday Inn Vacations.

A couple years back we purchased a travel voucher that deeply discounted our stay at a Holiday Inn property and gave us back the initial package price.

The deal was that we had to participate in a two hour sales pitch for a vacation time-share.

The pitch went pretty much according to the playbook.

On the front end, cordial offers of more coffee or bottled water or another Little Debbie snack cake were non-stop. Questions about our values and back story were asked. Comfort was measured and secured. Our behaviours were now trackable. Pavlov smiled I am sure.

At about the one hour mid-mark, after considerable investment in getting to know us, the soft numbers were presented and our questions were answered, not with new information, with confirmation of snippets from our on-ramp.

We did not notice that our story had been co-opted, and would soon be weaponized.

It was stupefying to hear every sales statement lead as, ‘Okay, you said that…’ or ‘What you told me before…’ or ‘So, what you want is…’

By the end of the second hour, my ass was asleep, the volume of the chatter in the pristine sales center was disorienting, and the psyops was starting to take effect.

A manager joined the conversation. Introductions were reiterated, our documented comments were fed back to us. Cajole. Comment. Condense. Correct. Cajole. Comment. We were in a loop and it was shrinking.

The numbers were starting to make sense, the offer suddenly became compelling. We were spellbound.

…to be continued.