So I walk into a mall…

So while in San Fran for the DMA a few weeks back, on a walk back from a meeting to my hotel, I decided at the last minute to walk through a mall to see if I could find something to bring home for my kids.  Mall is probably not the right word, its basically a 3 or 4 story mall-type area, super fancy and right in downtown San Fran.

Now, I’m not the type of guy that goes into a mall very often.  I don’t like shopping in person and I really don’t like mall shopping.  So e-commerce is a big win for me (thanks Amazon).

I found a few things for the kids and I was walking out when a guy holding a tray of what looked like coffee samples, in small little paper containers, asked me if I wanted a free sample.  I hesitated for a moment as the exit door was 15 feet away, but against my better judgment I said, “sure”.  What could it hurt?

He asked me to hold out my hand which I thought was weird but whatever, he can put the coffee sample in my hand if he’d rather me not grab it off of his tray.  Then he pours this salt mixture into my hand.  At that point I was mostly just glad I hadn’t grabbed one of his samples and done a shot of it, if I had I might not be alive to write this blog post today.

So after I realized that I’d been duped and now I can’t walk away because I have a pile of sand crap in my hand, he walks me over to his rolling station thing and starts having me rub my hands together to feel how great the sea salt feels on my skin and blah blah blah crap crap crap all this stuff about purifying my skin.  Clearly he didn’t know me because all I was thinking at this point was how do I get out of this situation.

Only he’s holding all the cards because I can’t rinse my hands off because he has the jug of water in his hands.  After he goes through his schpeel, he pours the water into a bowl and has me rinse my hands, then he quickly squirts a bunch of this lotiony stuff onto my hands and forearms and encourages me to rub it in.  As opposed to what I wanted to do with it which was to thrust my hands into his eyeballs to blind him with his own lotion and make a break for the door.  I hold back and start rubbing the stuff in, meanwhile he starts asking me a ton of questions.

“Are you married?”  “Does your wife use this type of product?”  “Wouldn’t your wife like a gift from San Francisco?” “Don’t your hands feel great?” “Why are you making that face at me?”

As soon as I’m done with the lotion, he literally puts his arm around my shoulder and says, and I am not making this up, “I shouldn’t be doing this, but I’m the manager and…well, come over to my office and let me show you something.”  His ‘office’ was the other side of the rolling cart thing, so we walked over there mostly because his arm was around my shoulder, and he pulls up his computer and starts used-car-salesmaning me.  Offering me special deals, special savings, he’s only going to be there today, etc.

I tried to give him the whole, “I’m going to keep shopping but I’ll come back and see, I just need time to think about it” but he’s not buying it.  He then grabs one of those things that you use to file your nails, I don’t even know the name of it which shows how off he was on trying to sell me this stuff, and he tries to take my hand and start filing my nails!

At this point I start backing away, telling him I have to go, and he starts following me for a few seconds but then finally gives up.  Then I was outside, feeling the fresh air and once again my freedom, cursing myself for making the mistake of walking into a mall but at the same time pleasantly surprised by how nice my hands felt :)

So…no more malls for me, that’s the moral of this story.