Mall Carnies

 

Twas two weeks before Christmas
and all through the mall
the carnies were lurking
and accosting us all.
Like many people, I don’t like Christmas shopping. I especially don’t like going to a shopping mall. I get very claustrophobic around large herds of unpredictable slow moving humans with little to no spacial awareness. So suffice it to say, I have not been in a long time; Many months for certain. And while I have noticed the phenomenon I am about to mention before, it hasn’t seemed quite so rampant till late. The subject I mean is the “Mall-Carnies”.

Apparently waiting for customers in the concourse of mall to choose the store they wanted to go into was not convenient enough. Some retail marketting genius decided it would be better to bring the store out to the customer instead.

Where once there were places for people to walk or sit, now the center of the mall corridors have been turned into retail sales space. The former pedestrian areas have been whored out with booths for all manner of specialty items. I call them “Mall-Carnies” because the people who man these sudden kiosks have the same manner of interaction as the carnies at the state fairs of my childhood. You run the gauntlet of salespeople stopping you to try a sample of this or that while they try to engage you into a conversation as they lead you to their wares. Putting you in the awkward position of having to be rude in order to get away. God help you if you carry a cell phone on some kind holster that can be seen. There will be at least 3 competing Cell phone company booths in every mall.They will all try to snag you as you go by. Usually with some pretty 20 something asking you “Oh, hey what kind of phone to have?” And so it begins…

I think that I am particularly vulnerable to this kind of attack because I believe that my appearance is rather innocuous and non-threatening. This has been a curse throughout my misanthropic life. I don’t generally like unwanted human interaction, yet I somehow am the target of it. I am a virtual magnet for homeless people looking to score change, customers looking for help when I worked retail, people in all situations looking for directions or the location of the nearest bathroom and most of all Mall-Carnies. Apparently I have a very forgetable face as well. Because I am severely navigationally challenged, I will pass the same vendors over and over again. Each time, it’s like the first time they have laid eyes on me. They ask me what kind of cell phone I am carrying over and over again. Instead of buying lunch, I could have easily overeaten by accepting the sample food I was offered by the same Mall-Carnie each time I passed it to get to the mall directory sign.

I’m a guy with an obvious lack of style or fashion-sense. How could I possibly be interested in a portable steam-iron, curling iron or sun-glasses?? It is December in Seattle. Who would decide it would be a good idea to put a “Sunglass Hut” in the middle of a mall in SEATTLE, WASHINGTON??


But this inspires me to begin my own retail venture. I could open a stand at one of the main mall entrances and sell big, red, one-size-fits-all tee shirts. Each one imprinted front and back in capital letters “STAND BACK I AM NOT INTERESTED IN YOUR CRAP”.

Can I interest you in a free sample??

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