Design and the Art of Bothering People

Today is my fourth day passing out flyers on the busy pedestrian street of Istiklal.

The rules are a bit relaxed and I'm sure they won't miss me if I'm not not handing out flyers on Istiklal as of 1 pm.

I'm sure it will be just fine if I show up at 2 and tell Ana that I just didn't feel like showing up at 1.

I'm paid by the hour after all, and I keep an accurate log of my comings and goings.

The difference however between this job and others is that I don't feel a need of urgency to get started.  I just don't find myself highly motivated and energized by the art of giving disinterested and hurried people things they don't want when they don't want them.

Its the Art of Bothering, and I'm not very good at it. 

Only when I'm trying to entertain does it occur to me that bothering might be a good thing: As in the instance of getting people to smile on a particularly dismal day, or asking someone for directions instead of inquiring from my non-existent electronic GPS.



'Design & Attention'

It occured to me that I wasn't a very successful marketer.  Thus far, in the past thirty minutes - this could be any block of time that I'm likely to experience throughout the day - it occured to me that I hadn't been able to successfully get one person to take a flyer.

"Am I really this unprofessional?" I asked myself, "Or is it the weather?"   another thought suggested.

It turns out that its probably a combination of things.

Then, of course, I put myself into the shoes of a potential client:  Would I take a flyer from this bundled up guy who's standing there handing them out?

The answer was no.  Why? 

I looked at the delivery:  Here most people are on a busy street and how many of them actually want English lessons?  How many of them need them?  How many of them have the time for a three month course?  The funds necessary?

Second:  The Flyers themselves.

Picture a conservative looking flyer in Red, White and Blue, with a Brithish Union Jack flag in the corner.

Its by all standards well designed to its client's expectations:  It delivers information about the services, it gives the address... everything we'd expect.

However, does it possess something that inspires in someone the desire to stop, look it over and actually take in the information?

The answer of course is no.  The flyer gives almost too much information.

Further, it negates my presence by making all of the information - minus the costs of course - present in print.


So, there we have it:  Delivery and design.


Clearly though, if this were not an effective delivery method, they wouldn't have us doing it right?

Well, it is effective, only insofar as going to the point of chasing people down who are bored or unsuspecting enough to take one of the flyers from us.


'Jem'

He's 28 and he's been doing this job for five years.

He likes grunge music and he especially likes me because I lived in Seattle, the starting place for the grunge rock legend Kurt Kobain.

He makes four liras an hour.  That's approximately two dollars and fifty cents an hour... and I cringe at the thought that he insisted on paying for chai the other night.

He works seven hours a day, when its not raining.

He's tall and handsome and has a very friendly demeanor.

He speaks a fair amount of English and he loves 90's grunge rock.

He must be a Jedi Master, for he brings people in the door one after another.

Me, I didn't even manage to bring in one yesterday.

So, today I will surrender.  I will quit.  I will go to work and say goodbye to the temporary friends and aquaintances I made there, and I will look for something, anything new.

Its not that I don't like work.  Ask anybody down in Yazikoy how I handle a 25 kilo bag of olives...

The truth is that I just find value in certain types of work.

I'd honestly rather shovel sand for half the pay for twice as long, than do what I'm doing now.

Its just what it is.   I've always been a better mule than anything else. 

In this world though, there's plenty of mules, many of them automated now and run by gas and electricity.

So, perhaps my usefulness has its limitations.

Luckily for me though, they still haven't found a cost effective way to deploy anatomically similar droids or cyborgs to do agricultural or building work. 

So, it looks like there exists labor after all... in one form or another.


'Values'


I've always been incapable of turning off that part of my brain that looks at something and says, "Whoa, we could do this more efficiently and waste less time and resources."

Such is the case with handing out flyers, or moving boxes, or putting out a fire.

One of my many downfalls is my inability to do things inefficiently, even at the behest of my co-workers or superiors.

And that, may be my downfall...