Sales Pressure

When I go and see if blue eye shadow girl is working (she was today, she looked lovely and happy) I always make sure to avoid the book section. This is, as I said before, because there's an old woman there with glasses who seems to spend twenty four hours a day, seven days a week working with her book mobile to restock the bookshelves. This means that if I was to pick up a book, she would probably ensure that I couldn't read it, glance at it or even pick it up without picking up on it and saying something like "wow, must be a good book!" - I really hate sales pressure in a store, you know when someone in a store makes sure you are buying not browsing, and it means that I will never go into that store again. Which is weird because my glorious job in the bank I'm constantly pressured to sell, sell, sell, so maybe I just don't like it in real life. I hate anyone trying to sell me anything, and I don't care how rude it appears. Yesterday was the pits. I was walking through the shopping mall and this woman went "Hi! I was just waiting for you! Like you were for me! What's your name!" - I just kept on walking. She was from the WWF (not the organisation my beloved and beautiful Leilani Kai wrestled for, the panda one) and it just so awful and cheesy, it really annoyed me. Unless she really was chatting me up, in which case...never mind. What kind of future would we have - throwing red paint on animal haters? No thankyou.

The worst store for sales pressure here in Tasmania, apart from JBHIFI chasing people trying to watch the football out, has always been Angus and Robertson in Hobart. I suppose the one thing you can say about them is at least they are subtle about it, and I suppose it is very annoying that people are looking at magazines with Ana Ivanovic on the front and then leaving without buying so much as a piece of crepe paper or a highlighter. However, how they do it, whether you are in the bookstore or the newsagent part, is to suddenly appear, almost but not quite push you out of the way, and then start stocking the shelves right next to you and almost pressing against your elbow until you leave. It's really awkward and uncomfortable, more than you would know unless you've gone through it. And they never send the attractive staff, it's always the the oldest staff or the mingers or fat blokes they send. I remember (and I apologize for this) when I was about 16, I bought a Playboy (I'd like to think it was irony) and the woman audibly grunted in disgust. Way to make feel me less self conscious. That's probably real sales pressure, when you take a magazine up to the counter and they don't want to sell you it, they'd rather you bought something else. It must be a newsagency thing - my local newsagent where I work actually will come and put magazines around you in plastic as a demonstration that magazines are for buying, not reading. I hope Blue Eye Shadow Girl doesn't do this...

At Melbourne Airport, the worst job in the entire world has to be being the guy who has to shout at people to try and get them to buy credit cards. This is sales pressure where I feel sorry for the person who has that job, and not just annoying sales pressure like the girl at Guess What puts on you just because she's annoying and wants you to leave so she can get back to New Idea and her Kit Kat. It must be a terrible job to yell at people as they go down a concourse, with harassed kids and luggage that hasn't arrived, to try and get them to sign up for an AMEX card. At least the girl who yells at people to offer them free wine has a gimmick - free wine. This guy doesn't even have a free pen to offer people. I can imagine him psyching himself up in the changing area, taking deep breaths, trying to convince himself that today, if he's really on song, he can sell one, just one credit card. I actually spent some of my unemployed time (when I wasn't sleeping with a netballer and watching daytime TV) pissing around on a course that was going to teach me how to sell knives and the people at this course got really, really fired up by the motivational host, and were actually chanting "sell, sell, sell!" - I did too, in fairness, because it meant I got a paycheck that I got to spend on gifts for her, but I wondered how these people were so conned. You were going to sell knifes door to door? Safely? And make millions? Yeah, and I'm dating Jodie Low...

I've mentioned before about the park in Penguin and how after dark before they cleaned it up you could pretty much get anything you wanted from drugs to hardware from the local "youths" - however, in Burnie, it was the opposite, the sales pressure in the park came from people trying to take things off you, the local muggers. That's a pretty extreme form of sales pressure, people trying to take your wallet off you. Burnie wasn't rough by any means, but it had a large, winding track that had no lights at all, perfect for your workaday mugger, pressuring you into selling your wallet or wedding ring, with none of the charm of the local Penguin kids. I remember seeing someone mugged at Carols by Candelight, the last place you would expect anyone to get mugged. Friendly carollers, school kids with candels, probably a performance by Julie Anthony, and knife crime. Don't they all go together? I saw this guy try and mug a woman for her purse but thankfully for everyone, he didn't get it, and I swear the reason he didn't get it was because people who were walking past stopped and went "Awww...don't" and he was all "Shut up" and trying to look menacing and they were all "Come on, it's Xmas!" and he just sort of wandered off bored and a bit bewildered. In the end, he just wasn't good at putting sales pressure on - he'd have lasted one day selling credit cards at the airport...

You don't think he got the knife though off a knife selling course do you?