door to door recruitment..

[Tonus]

You can really separate the newbs from the seasoned pros that way. The new ones get so bubbly that if you just keep saying yes and shaking your head yes while asking questions we have a natural human urge to agree with whatever request others make (and obviously this helps to relive the tension we might feel in such a situation). You can even get a few earnest laughs that way if they realize they're being had after a sizeable number of pamphlets have changed hands.

I think that many door-to-door evangelists accepted their particular religion without even considering that they'd be the ones knocking on doors at some point. Not everyone is cut out for it, but they're all pressured to do it. Some turn out to be natural at it. Others never really get comfortable with it, and if there is any deviation from their expected script, things can get pretty hairy. I was pretty good at it, but I'd been doing it since I was five or six and I understood that if the shit hit the fan, the best thing to do was beat a hasty retreat.

Two or three weeks ago I was waiting on someone to pick me up, and so I sat down on a bench in front of the building. A JW offered up the customary sales pitch, and for the first time I didn't identify myself as a JW (usually the easiest way to dissuade them politely) so I just followed along. It struck me just how empty the whole pitch really is. You mention a recent tragedy (in this case, the flight shot down over Ukraine), ask if the person thinks things will ever get better (with the proper setup, the best you usually get is "I don't know") and then BAM! Offer up Jehovah as the answer! It's really no more complicated than that. Make the person express some level of despair, then offer up Yahweh as the magic cure. Funny how shallow it seemed from the other side.