I was back at my parents' house for about a week recently, and two similar things happened. I wanted to get them down in writing, so here they are as a blog post.
First: I needed a portable battery charger, so I went to a big electronics store.
I didn't buy anything in the end, but on the way out I walked past a corner with hair dryers or toothbrushes or something like that.
There was a little seating area where you could sit and ask staff about products.
An elderly woman and a young female store staffer were sitting there.
Probably the woman had been asking the staffer about some product.
I only glanced for a second as I walked by, so I have no idea what they were talking about.
But the look on the elderly woman's face stuck with me.
It seemed like a mix of feelings:
This woman, unfamiliar with the latest gadgets, was leaning in toward the young staffer as if clinging to her while she talked.
I hate how ugly this sounds, but it looked almost like an anxious older woman, lacking knowledge, currying favor with a younger staffer who had it.
Of course this is all my projection, prejudice included — maybe she wasn't anxious at all and was just having a pleasant chat.
Still, when I saw that face I felt sorry for her, and something close to sadness or a quiet ache that I can't quite name.
Second: I went from my room to the living room for some errand, and my mother was on a call with the speaker on, so I could hear it.
It seemed to be a sales call for some service.
Basically: won't you come to the store for a trial?
With sales calls you can hang up immediately, block the number, and it's no problem — that's what I usually do.
My mother isn't great at shutting people down right away, so she was trying to decline with something like, "My schedule this month is unclear..."
The caller wouldn't give up: "Then how about XX next month?" Pushy, a bit aggressive, and ugly to overhear.
I asked her later — it was a call from a well-known fitness gym aimed at older women.
I'd happened to hear about that gym's business reputation about a week earlier, so it clicked.
I don't know if it was store staff or a call center, but they seem to push sales hard.
I've heard there are quotas around upselling and cross-selling supplements and referral intros too.
And the business is growing a lot — supplement revenue alone is huge.
I can admire how driven the salesperson was, and still feel conflicted imagining how many people like my mother aren't good at saying no.
(If it were my own company's salesperson, I'd find that persistence reliable. That's exactly why the feeling is so mixed.)
For now I told her to block the number and, if they call again, decline clearly.
Those are the episodes. Older people gradually fall behind on how the world works.
Their communities shrink, and there are fewer people they can rely on.
Businesslike relationships thin out too, so maybe they tend to trust the people around them more.
Toward someone who has information they don't, they become even easier to believe — or rather, they have little choice but to lean on them.
With buying decisions too, they don't comparison-shop online the way younger people do, so purchases come more easily.
I've also heard there are plenty of schemes in regional areas that gather lots of older people offline, feed them shady investment talk, and commit fraud.
I end without a proposal or a conclusion — just that it's a deep, stubborn problem, and I was left uneasy. Hard to title, too.
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