Lessons from an Attempted Sale
For this edition of Craccum, your enterprising and far-too-outgoing-for-his-own-good Features editor took to the lengths of Queen Street to see if he possessed the promotional skills required to sell products. Armed with nothing more than the two-dollar-fiftiest pen I could find at Warehouse Stationery, I made my way into town to put my skills to the test. If you have an idea of a challenge, email the features editor your idea, and I’ll do my very best to complete it for you.
It failed. People did not take to my antics. Perhaps it was the rain, my clothing, or just the fact I was some random guy wandering up and down the road asking to trade a pen for whatever people might have on them. I changed tact a few times; there was more receptiveness to asking how much they would pay for the pen, but no one wanted to pay. For my fine liner, the highest price I got was six dollars, not half bad. I also tried to appeal to the student body’s desire to become Craccum famous, but apparently, that’s not a good enough motivator. So, in the end, I had a pen and a story and not much more
And to be fair to the general public, I have a general wariness of people approaching me in the street. I avoid the hallowed ground under biblists like a devil. I have perfected the half-smile, half-shake of the head to turn down United Nations representatives. In their eyes, I have undoubtedly killed children.
Nonetheless, it struck me that I had a problem. And then, a man struck me because he was marching too fast down the road. But from that came the solution. Because in my almost bowled-over state, I made eye contact with someone sitting in a bus shelter. A fade cloche on his head, a heavy parker adorned with tattoolike stains and baggy track pants folding over the scallop of his boots. His cardboard sign read ‘twenty for food?’
And it occurred to me that while this hustle was a game for me, it was survival for him. Even the word trivialises his experience. The experience of all the city folk I met on that stormy afternoon. The people who know the streets as their home, cold as warmth, and discarded cups as treasure. I met a man grabbing a New World disposable left to the road. He poured out the coffee. Drank the rainwater
On the old ASB building, someone eats an ice cream cone, collapsing under the force of the rain. In a dark coat, I’m approached from behind; a smoker stumbles along, thanks me for no reason, and trudges up the street. The fumes blow back in my face. The security guards ignore him at the jewellery stores. They know that they’re not the ones to watch.
Another man wants for nought, he tells me. He’s got his share and is going to buy yoghurt for joy. Another hobbles and slips. He takes refuge in a bus shelter and is given glances by passers-by. “Always the eyes,” he says to me. And yet we never make it as far as hearing them, only cruel fascination. People love to avoid their glances. Hardly acknowledge their pleas. But he tells me that they understand when you can’t. ‘Life’s bad … for everybody.’
Outside sketchers, I spoke to a man staring at the white slip-ins, and he told me that if he could, he’d have him one of those, and they’d be as clean as clean. Those windows are as good as the walls. The doors too.
A woman barges through a platoon of photographing high-school girls and is scared off by the tallest, but not without some cursing. She cries of demons and politicians, apathy and too much care for little problems. She feels alone, abandoned to the heart of the city.
Four people are listening to Stan Walker outside the MacDonald. Not alone, so long as they have each other. Still small between skyscrapers. And one’s taking notes as we talk. He doesn’t want to share them. Private dreams or secret lyrics. He bobs his head away as I walk off.
I entered the Sky Entertainment Centre on a whim. It was falling apart at the seams. Taking the rocket lift, I found a group sheltering from the rain and cold. Sitting just close enough to smell the buttery popcorn without any actual ability to get it. As with everyone else, I ask if they need anything. Turn the weather off, ‘if you’re Jesus,’ a woman tells me.
Outside the countdown, a man wants gum. He counts it when I hand it to him and says thanks. He tells me that he plans it. When he wants to smoke, he has one of those instead. And he often wants to smoke.
I passed a man whose whole life was strapped to a trolley. He leaves it and walks in to look at the things in PBTech. His whole life, sitting to be wheeled away. But no one wants his life. And no one wants to give it back to him either.
When the heavens stopped and the rays came out again, I can not say that I knew more about what it is to hustle, sell, or even survive. But I saw stories we all see and never speak of, and I knew they had to be somewhere. The pen was passed to a man to write his next sign. Its value has increased, and its story is ongoing.