Urgent!
cc: Sri Lankan Trishaw Drivers
bcc: Sidewalk Salesguys
from: Irate Whitey Girl
Look, folks, I just want to help you in your business methodology. I am certainly a consumer of many goods and services provided by you and your class of individuals. I enjoy shopping and riding in tuk-tuks very much! However, this business of solicitation has got to stop.
No, really: if I want something, I will ask for it.
It is not helpful when every trishaw driver in a whole line of you asks me, "taxi, ma'am?"! You see, if I said no to the first guy, chances are that I am not tired enough to want a ride once I have walked five yards further! I am not comparison shopping!
It is especially unhelpful (and in fact off-putting) when every single one of you says "hello! hello!" in an effort, I presume, to gain my attention. I will not be wakened from some bizarre reverie and suddenly realize I am in dire need of a ride. I am somewhat aware of my surroundings and cognizant of the distance I have left to walk. If that distance is dismaying, I will seek assistance, do not worry.
And you there on the sidewalk, with the fabric/toys/knives/safety pins/scrub brushes/bric-a-brac, I am in fact capable of seeing what you are holding. You don't have to yell what you have. You don't have to waggle it at me--do I look sorely in need of an orange plastic toy baby that winds up and swims?
All y'all--seriously, "I don't want it" means "go the hell away," not "please convince me because I am only saying no over the price".
Many thanks!
ps--if you are holding five or six different things, mostly of decent value, like two necklaces, a knife, a teapot, and a walkman, I know you stole them. Shame on you.
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1 comment:
so you're probably really irritated by all that, but your post was prety amusing from my perspective. i've got to deal with some of that nonesense over here, but if i walk at a decent pace the vendors get the idea that i'm not a tourist and leave me alone. here, those folks seem to congregate around the louvre/eiffel tower and i promptly learned that if i don't want to get clogged up in the traffic of solicitators and people who stop to gawk i've got to avoid those areas completely. so what did i do to ease my pain? i started photographing the tourists...
and i guess this makes it evident that i'm out here reading, too...
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