A Skin Crawling Experience

Before I moved to Atlanta, 9 years ago (holy shit it's been that long?) I worked in sales for an insurance company. I cold called a lot and, believe me, it sucked. I also visited customers to collect their semi-annual payments from older versions of policies we sold. I ended up in timbuktu every once in a while. Small towns, lots of homes in the country.

Let me tell you about the scariest house I ever visited.

I don't mean scary as in frightening because it had an ominous or ghostly feel to it, but I mean scary as in I didn't want to step foot into the nasty house.

The following is what I saw:

1. about 100 hound dogs of which 60% were puppies of various ages. I'm not kidding.
2. A bunch of chickens used for eggs that the customer obviously sold, along with the sign advertising "puppies for sale."
3. Dog shit and chicken shit EVERYWHERE

That was just outside the house. There were injured and handicapped dogs running around with the healthy ones and the place stunk to high heaven!

As I gingerly stepped into the customer's kitchen from the back door I noticed that the indoors wreaked as bad as the outdoors. Worse, if that is possible, as it was the peak of summer and about 100 degrees farenheit in the shade. The owner, a 70-something woman, was sitting at her kitchen table in a dirty housedress, wiping chicken shit off eggs she was putting into cartons (lovely).

I was there to renew their insurance policy, but didn't dare sit down! As I stood in this woman's kitchen she started to walk toward me while wiping an egg off, but she stopped and stood with me. Unfortunatatley for her she stopped just in the right place for a fly strip, covered in dead flies, to stick to her forehead. She didn't even seem to notice! UGH!

There was crap (varous stacks of magazines, newspapers, junk, dog crap, chicken crap, old, rancid food, etc.) everywhere. Nothing had been cleaned in what appeared to be years.

I never worked faster in my life to get the fuck out of there.

This was out in the boonies in Southern Illinois (I'm from East Central IL) and I didn't know my way around. But I did notice that about 80% of the names on the mailboxes in this particular area were the same as this customer's.

**"Deliverance" banjos begin to play**

I was shakin' in my high heels every time I had to stop at a house with that name on the mailbox!

I can't tell you how many times, as a sales rep, either cold calling or renewing insurance policies, that I came across old people's homes that they never ever cleaned or threw anything away. It was crazy. I once visited a house with stacks of newspapers on the floor that pretty much were almost as tall as me. They were covered in dust! How is it healthy to live in the squallor these people lived in?

I am not the neatest person in the world and, God knows, I hate to clean and put it off as long as I can. But! I do not allow shit to accumulate on my floor from my dog, stack newspapers head high, keep 100's of dogs and chickens, or have multiple fly strips hanging through my kitchen because flies are flocking to the shit covered eggs on my kitchen table or rancid food cluttering the kitchen.

Just remembering this particular home with the chicken shit covered eggs makes me want to hurl.

I felt like I was in an episode of either the X-Files or the Twilight Zone.

If my home looked like that it would be because I was completely paralyzed and couldn't get out of bed. Even then I would be so horrifically embarrassed at the state of my home I would never invite anyone to step inside it!

Truly, the thought is mortifying!