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¡@Looking at the leaflet disturbing machines in the street, how would you feel?
Appreciate their work, or just ignore them? In case, you would probably find that nearly
everyone has done this as their part-time or summer job when they were young! These
kinds of distributing machines are not automatic, but human ones!!
There is a bridge linking the MTR and KCR stations in MongKok. It is narrow
and serves a large flow of people every day. Now, with the sun shining brightly, the
tough bridge is also serving one person--a male leaflet distributing machine. He is
tall and a little bit fat. He wears a white T-shirt and brown shorts. His
white-coloured sport shoes look dull and dirty. They probably have touched many
grounds already. The man, without wearing any socks, looks comfortable with this
dressing. He places a large bag on the floor near him. Taking out a pack of leaflets,
he starts his work with those spare ones in the bag for backup!
Holding the leaflets in his left hand, the sweating man uses his powerful right
hand to carry out the distributing job. He focuses on the flow from the KCR station
and tries hard to capture everyone who walks pass. He turns a leaflet towards a
person and takes it back when the guy refuses to receive it. Hoping to get rid of
those green-coloured leaflets one by one, he makes this motion again and again. Just
like a leaflet distributing machine! But the leaflet is so poor that no one is willing to
take care of it for the rest of its life. Only some kids use their little hands to take it
out of curiosity. What it can do is just seeing how the people ignore itself, say no
politely, take a look at it first and ignore it or even don't take a look at the man's
direction. And the disappointed man just always looks at his plastic watch, hoping
that he can finish the discouraging work earlier. Based on my observation, there
is only one out of ten people who will accept the leaflet. What a pity!
The strong man looks tired and bored after series of hand motions. Looking
backwards to the large bag of leaflets, he seems to become hopeless and depressed,
and so do those leaflets! It is likely that the sad leaflets should go home and wait
until another day for which they are able to find their new hosts through the human
machine's hand.
Besides, due to the obvious purpose of the man, the people walk pass are all
trying to change their route far away from him so that they can escape from his
distributing hand. It creates an extremely crowded area just besides the man while
few people are willing to walk near him. What an interesting sight it is. And it
seems that the rubbish bins nearby can now serves its purpose. For each of them,
it looks green in colour inside and is full of unwanted leaflets actually!
Over 90% of the teenagers have done this kind of street promotion. And only
10% of the pedestrians are willing to take a leaflet when they are walking in the
street. It's really a great contrast! Next time, imagine how it would be like if the
role of yours and that of the man have been changed, you will perhaps take the pretty
good-looking leaflet with a smile!
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