Today on Lenin Avenue I fell victim to... what? you don’t know where that is? Then let’s put it this way: today on Nauky Avenue I fell victim to an interesting kind of marketing. Clearer now? Good. A young man was walking toward me and asked:
— Do you know how to get to “Rost” on Klochkivska?
Of course I know how to get there, so I immediately started pointing:
— You need to cross the street, then go down...
But the young man interrupted me:
— Great, since you know where it is, come to our store, we’re having a perfume sale right now!
That’s when I realized this was yet another pusher of shit.
— Here, take some samples! Here, take two more for your male and female friends!
— Yes, thanks...
But that wasn’t all:
— The samples are 10 hryvnias each...
That is, this wasn’t even an ad campaign, but a straight-up sales pitch on the street, and the product was already in my hands. The only thing missing was the final step of this protocol: for me to hand the seller 30 hryvnias. Naturally, I’d seen his stink-in-bottles in my coffin, so I hurried to return the product. But then he used a third trick: he didn’t take the product back. The awkward situation dragged on for about ten seconds; only when I made it clear with a motion of my hand that I would drop the product on the ground did he take it back, turn around, and go look for a new victim.
How did it happen that some pimply dick from the street got me all the way to the last step of the sale — handing over the money? The answer is that usually we don’t notice and ignore the pushers of shit who shove it at us right away. We simply have a filter for scenarios like that. And this young man acted smarter: he asked me a question to knock me out of autopilot mode and make me think, make me pay attention to him.
Obviously, he himself is an idiot and a loser, since he’s pushing shit on the street, but whoever trained him knew what they were doing.