Those sales people in the station concourses are annoying. They’re all about 15, and stand by their little cardboard booths advertising Amex, shouting out “How are you?” and gesticulating wildly as you rush past.
Ditto the charity people, most of whom seem to be British backpackers, standing on street corners with clipboards, wearing today’s charity t-shirt over their clothes, shouting out greetings.
It doesn’t seem to have occurred to these people that you’re in a hurry to get somewhere. To work, going home, or trying to get that train that’s not going to wait for you. While I don’t have much sympathy for the Amex people, occasionally there’ll be a charity which is actually a worthy cause, and I might consider actually talking to.
If I wasn’t in a hurry.
It occurs to me that these people might get a little more “business” if they were willing to walk with you as they talked.
Not that I’m inviting any 15-year-old reps from Amex or obscure charities to follow me down to my train. I’ve got enough credit cards, thank you.
6 replies on “Popup sales people”
That’s exactly what iPods were invented for. The hassle free walk to the platform.
It’s better than shoving your fingers in your ears and screaming “I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you”.
I nearly always feel guilty when I refuse to stop and listen to their spiels and most times I refuse to accept any paper which is shoved in my face. About the only thing which I regularly accept off spruikers are those perfume sprayed cards as you walk into Myer. I think they make my handbag smell nice so gratefully accept as many of them as they wish to hand out.
Nothing infuriates me more than being accosted on my way to the platform. I have all of three minutes to get to my train most days so I’m already buggered from shuffling my fat butt up the street to the station. Whoever manages these people seriously needs to realise that a train station at rush hour both in the morning and the afternoon is NOT a good place to be pulling people over. Arrr.
I admire charities for their work in helping raise money for the needy, but when you go through the same train station (in my case, Sydney’s Town Hall) every day and every 2nd day their is a different charity group, it becomes incredibly hard to justify a contribution. How many badges, bears, wrist bands, ribbons can they sell! Surely they must soon run out of colours…
Now I am more discerning in my donations… generally the Salvo’s and Paraquad… all the Starlight Foundation things and the various cancers now seem to be all one big blur.
What cheeses me off more than being hassled on my way to or from the office is being hassled at lunch. I rarely take a lunch break, lucky to take one a month maybe one every two months… and even then only 30 minutes.
So when I’m walking fast as hell to the mall during that 30 minutes to madly deposit some cheques, grab some lunch, and enjoy some fresh air I do not have a spare second for these charitie, survey, or subscription people. When I ignore them or simply say hi in response to their sweet little greeting, and madly walk straight past them in the process, I can’t say I appreciate in the slightly the murmered comments I hear in the background such as “how rude”, “fine then”, “don’t stop then”, blah blah blah… THEY are the ones that are being rude and need to understand that many of us really do sincerely not have the time to spare. Hell when I (finally) leave at the end of a day I barely give myself enough time to get to whatever train I’m heading for – a mere 2 minute holdup is enough for me to miss it and that can mean waiting anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour for the next one…
if your feeling even slightly slack about not stopping for the charity muggers…just have a quick read here:
http://radar.smh.com.au/archives/2004/06/on_the_take.html
It is much better for the charity if you want to contribute, for you to do it directly to them…that way they get all the money….going through the street muggers robs the charity of a fair bit of your hard earnt.
The one thing that does bug me is when you make once off donations, in my case to the tsunami appeal, and you get snail mail from them every month asking for more….i am now unsure of how much of my donation has hit the ground in asia and how much s being used to ask me for more money.