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| Help Me! |
There were no childhood dreams of blogging. When I undertook this venture a couple of weeks ago, I certainly had no aspirations of becoming a tire blogger. But here I am, posting my third post about tires in less than a week's time. Mother is so proud!
As I was stuck in a tire store for three hours today, it struck me. I was captive. I could wander around the shopping plaza, but without a functioning car, I was not going far. I grabbed a bite to eat, walked up and down the aisles of the neighboring RadioShack, but eventually came back and sat in one of the hard plastic chairs next to the entrance of the tire store. I endured it. The invasive stench of vulcanized rubber, the elderly woman sitting two chairs down from me that was just audibly mumbling to herself for forty-five minutes, the running commentary from a ten-year-old watching an NCAA tournament game on the 17" TV in the corner as if his entire family's savings were riding on the fourth grade pool at the local grammar school, the waiting ... the waiting, I just sat there in that stiff, little chair. I had my smartphone, and intermittent 3G service, but one can only check your Twitter feed and Google Reader so often before the mumbling old lady thinks you're crazy.
Customer after customer came in. Some came in carrying flat tires. Others inquired about the cost of replacement tires. Others brought their cars in for balancing and/or alignment. Each was given the same line, "The (service) normally takes about an hour, but today it would be more like ninety minutes." For the most part, those predictions came true. After two and a half hours, however, I asked about my car. Apparently the car that was undergoing alignment before mine took much longer than expected, but I was next in line.
At some point while permanently pressing my backside into that chair, I came upon the idea. What a great location for selling something. People might temporarily wander away from you, but they will always come back. Now others have clearly though about this, because "No Soliciting" signs were taped up in several locations. What if we took this a step further? What if we started a cult and used a tire store as a front?
The science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard is often quoted as saying, "The way to make a million dollars is to start a religion." So let's do it. The easy part is coming up with the rules, ceremonies, and sacred text. The tough part is converting people to your faith. So I say, let's use tire stores! If we're lazy about it, we could just sit in the waiting areas of various tire stores and quietly preach "The Gospel According to Akron." Heck, Old Lady Mumbles might have been trying to do that to me today. But if we are to be really ambitious, I suggest that we actually invest in a store of our own. At the very least, people are in the store for an hour, and every now and then, some poor schmuck like me is stuck there all morning. We would have complete control over the environment. Suggestive music will be played over the store's speaker system. Tires will be stacked in awe-inspiring geometries. What better location to bring people to our way of thinking? If conversions are going slowly, hallucinogenic gases can be piped in to make our "customers" more pliable; the stench of the tires will certainly cover up any other unnatural odors. As a hook, we can offer "buy three tires and get the fourth tire free" deals to new members of our church or "free tire rotations" for the faithful. As our numbers grow, we can franchise to new locations around the world.
Who's with me?!? Let's get ... Oh, my car's ready. Gotta go.
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