Wednesday, January 28, 2009

When Someone Offers You A Flyer

Some people go to work and push paper, others go to work and hand out paper, aka, flyers. We see these people doing their jobs every day especially in urban centers. We see them but we don't acknowledge them. They become invisible men and women. We're not recommending that you strike up a conversation. But you don't have to go out of your way to get out of their way. When one is in front of you, a little eye contact can't hurt. Or what about, "No, thank you."?  Yvette actually received a thank you back from a man handing out a sale flyer "You could tell he appreciated that I noticed him instead of acting as though he wasn't there."

"I don't take flyers from people on the street because it's a waste of paper. I'm just going to throw it out," one friend argued. There's validity in that argument and we like trees too but someone has a lousy job to do and there's still room to be gracious.

Times are tough, people are doing jobs they never thought they'd be doing. It could be us. In fact, it was. During the campaign we both volunteered to hand out flyers for Obama. Most people took the them, some even smiled. Others walked by without so much as a glance. One man tried so hard to avoid us, he bumped into another passerby.  You'd think we were handing out the plague. We knew it wasn't anything personal, but being treated as invisible women was weird. Of course, when we gave out buttons, we received plenty of eye contact and outreached hands.

Don't let a piece of paper send your manners flying out the window.







1 comment:

Anonymous said...

LOVE your blog!!!