Empathy For the Devil

I'm a nice guy. I try to be friendly to all that I pass on the street. I even go so far as to (usually) be nice to people trying to 'sell' me something. Now, I used quotation marks because I mean sell in the general sense of trying to convince someone to do something (which doesn't always include buying something!). We've all been approached by countless 'sellers' in the streets, from the guy wearing headphones and a big cardboard sign on his front and his back advertising a blowout sale at Filene's Basement, to the bleeding-hearted, well-intentioned-but-really-annoying young people wearing a colored t-shirt with the logo of some environmental/public interest/animal welfare/obscure interest group. I have never been rude to these people; I'll always at least be respectful and give some half-assed blatant lie about why I can't possibly spare three minutes of my time.

Even though I'd always been respectful to these people, I had developed a disliking for them. Who were they to barge into my 'me time' while I'm strolling down the street and push some product or cause that has nothing to do with me? Man, I'd think, these people must be miserable getting rejected all day and having to set aside their shame to talk to anyone who dares pass. Then I had to hand out fliers on the street and try to talk to people for my job. And I discovered that it was indeed as miserable and shameless as I had expected, at least at first.

The first shot at being in a street team had me posted in the financial district of Boston. I figured that the business people there couldn't be as miserable and rushed and rude as they are in New York. I also had once figured that driving in Boston couldn't be worse than the stop-and-go nightmare that driving in New York can be. Apparently I'm wrong from time to time. Despite my shit-eating grin, professional attire, and riveting good looks, suit after miserable suit shot me down rudely. Whether it was being ignored, a cold glare, or a snide remark, the businesspeople of Boston were just not having it. As my colleagues came to me with empty hands, my two-inch thick stack of fliers seemed impossibly large.

It was during that confidence-shattering ordeal that I suddenly developed sympathy, or rather, empathy for all those annoying sellers I had kindly brushed off in the past. It’s fucking hard to do that stuff! I was just doing this as a small part of my job, but I knew there were people out there who did this full-time! How could they fall asleep at night with any amount of self-confidence? How could they wake up every morning to go face the brutal firing squad that is the general public? I couldn’t even begin to think of the answers to those questions.

That is, until I gave it another shot the next day. With the advice of a slightly older, wiser, and much-better-at-talking-to-girls-at-a-bar colleague, I switched to a quicker, less informative tactic. Instead of trying to tell people what I was giving them, I simply said, “Hey, check us out.” Much to my amazement, it actually worked! Gradually more and more people began to take the fliers. And even when people declined, the approach was so much quicker that I would be asking the next person two seconds later, making the whole operation more efficient and minimizing the pain of rejection. Now I actually enjoy handing out fliers, making the instantaneous judgment call in my head about which passers by would be receptive and which are too old, too young, too homeless, too rich, or too foreign to give a shit about what I was offering. Being a critical asshole is fun when no one else knows you’re being one.

So the lesson I learned is this: don’t hate on people trying to sell stuff on the street. If you’re not interested or are busy, it doesn’t take much effort to say no thanks with a smile. I can tell you from experience that those kind souls make the job much easier, and I actually feel good after someone rejects me with a smile, because I know it’s not personal. So street teams of the world, I am your friend.

Just don’t try to get me to donate $50 to save the fucking endangered pigtoe clams* or some other stupid crap. Cure cancer and AIDS, and eradicate poverty and violence, then come talk to me about helping some stupid animal that probably deserves to die anyways. Stupid clams.


* an actual endangered clam species Pleurobema georgianum