Standing smack dab downtown in the middle of a busy side street corner, handing out flyers for Hulk's, you'd be surprised how just a little bit of English in Korea goes a long way. It goes a very, very long way actually. So long in fact that it meant that not only did I beat Snickers in handing out my share of the flyers first but then I also beat him in handing out more than 2/3rds his own stack of flyers. The plan was for him to hand out to the females in the street and I to had out to the males. Seemed like a pretty good tactic, that is until I switched to only using English. I stopped traffic with English!
I was throwing out "Hello ladies" and "Hey guys" faster than the people could walk past me. And throwing in "pretty", "handsome" and the random "sweetie" into the mix, well that caused a crowd. I had a few lines and crowds form around me, all eager to get whatever I was handing out. And what I was handing out was the New Year, New Year promo event flyer for Hulk's. We've got 8,000 of these glossy A4-sized flyers to get out, hand out and posted up. The other day I posted many but the key is to personally hand them out and, based on how I did today, looks like I'll be the one taking on this task.
While standing out there today, handing out our flyers, a few of our past and present Hulkies spotted us. They came running up to me and like long-lost friends we all screamed and jumped up and down like elementary girls in the playground. It was so nice to see familiar faces and take a break from interrupting total strangers passing by in the street. The best interruption to our work today however was when the Cheonan Bulldog showed up out of the blue. I heard some man's voice behind me, asking me what my flyer was about, when I turned around and low and behold it was him -- the Cheonan Bulldog, my former teammate and former sparring partner from UP Boxing Club. He was all smiles and looking handsome. The three of us -- Snickers, the Cheonan Bulldog and I -- stood there talking for a bit while randomly handing out a flyer every so often. I haven't seen him for months and we failed to go to his wedding on account of wanting to avoid any distracting wedding day drama with Junior Mint, my former coach. Junior Mint has the Cheonan Bulldog on a very short leash so pictures together are kept secret on my phone and aren't shared. Apparently his leash isn't so short that he couldn't hand out a couple of flyers for us though, very cool.
We still have about 7,000 flyers to go but personally handing them out to the people in the street seems to be key. While one street seller complained about our flyers littering the street another seller boasted about us to others and picked up the flyers the other seller complained about. More people seemed curious about the flyers I handed out because of the shock value of a foreign girl having had handed it to them. There were many who upon noticing our fight promo pics on the flyer stopped walking and turned around to take a double look. Had a few triple looks too and even a couple of people take our picture. Many tried to respond to me with a sentence or two of English and I got a lot of random "you are pretty" compliments.
For the most part, people were really sweet about me randomly approaching them and giving them a flyer but then of course there were those who just ignored me and looked past me like I was a ghost. I did get a couple of rude looks and even some pushes too. It was to be expected, I suppose. I tried to joke it off by responding with silly comments like "that's ok, I don't want you to join my kicka$$ club anyways" and "bring that attitude to the ring" but the truth is having now experienced what it's like handing out flyers, I probably will always accept a seller's flyer and say thank you to them. And to the foreigner female who so obviously laughed in Snickers' face when he tried to ask her politely to look at his flyer, my husband's English may not be great but your manners just flat out sucked. He's only been speaking English for about four years now but you've had 20+ some years to work on your manners so what's your excuse?! I was tempted to tell her that my husband may not hit women but I do because I felt terrible for him. I really wanted to say something to her but I don't fight my husband's fights and I had to keep it professional so I only shook my head and winked at Snickers. Snickers' has thicker skin than me so no sooner had it happened he was over it. I, on the other hand, am a lot more sensitive and defensive when it comes to stupid stuff like this. "Karma's going to get her!" I told Snickers. "It already did -- she fugly!" he noted. Leave it to Snickers to totally cheer me up and get me laughing by using a new word he's recently picked up.
Pretending to not see or hear a person, waving them off with your hand, or ignoring them to continue speaking on your phone isn't cool. Don't laugh at them rudely either. No one likes rudeness even if it's coming from a total stranger. Rude is rude and it's very discouraging regardless of who is sending it out. Such businesses handing out flyers are just trying to make an honest living. They've invested their hard earned money into a piece of paper many are going to just throw away so the least you can do it take the paper and then throw it away further down the street. The person handing them out now has one less flyer to give out and now there is some free pavement advertising for their business as that flyer lays on the ground for other passer byers to see. Later on the city workers, who are kept employed by people trashing such flyers and whatnot in the streets, will then pick them up so don't worry so much about it. If you want, add in a little thank you or even a simple smile to these flyer-giving business workers and, trust me, the person on the receiving end can't help but be encouraged. No one is going to reject a smile of encouragement but not everyone can shrug of the rudeness and discouragement of a stranger, especially when it's in plural form.
It's not easy to approach random strangers in the street and try to sell them your business let alone get them to extend their hand to take your flyer. Please be nice to us flyer-giving businesses. We wouldn't be handing out flyers if we honestly didn't have too because it's hard, it's cold and we'd like a day off too. Today was my day off but then it wasn't.
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