I took a bunch of money to Algodones and left it there today. Dental, new sunglasses, the Purple Store, and lunch. Seasoned pro that I am now, I took a paperback while I waited for the dentist, waited for lenses to be made, and waited to cross the border.<\/p>\n
I sat and read in the square and watched the people. You know those guys that “encourage” (some say “accost”) you to go to the “best” or “cheapest” pharmacy\/dentist\/optician in town? Forcing coupons for discounts into your hands? Well, the technique works, very well. The guys are not slacker ne’er-do-wells but skilled salesmen that succeed to direct customers into the shop they work for, where the interior people have to pick up the sales job.<\/p>\n
Everyone of them has a shtick, a repertoire of gab they vary depending on the target. I remember when I first encountered them, and was extremely annoyed at their “in-your-face” attitude which can be taken as threatening. I learned that you can ignore them completely, they are totally harmless, and are quite funny and fun to talk to. But, first-timers, especially women, can be freaked out.<\/p>\n
What’s happening here? These are good salesmen, and a good salesman knows how to “read” people quickly and do whatever it takes to get their attention. If they get this far, and it happens a lot, a little quick chatter and some light touching can get the customer through the door. Job done, it might only take 20 seconds.<\/p>\n
I’m sure a lot of people carry bags of stuff across the border and wonder later how they came to acquire this crap. Irritating, threatening, and annoying, it works. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I took a bunch of money to Algodones and left it there today. Dental, new sunglasses, the Purple Store, and lunch. Seasoned pro that I am now, I took a paperback while I waited for the dentist, waited for lenses to be made, and waited to cross the border. I sat and read in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martincassidy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martincassidy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martincassidy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martincassidy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martincassidy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.martincassidy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":325,"href":"http:\/\/www.martincassidy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions\/325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martincassidy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martincassidy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martincassidy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}