Mall Monsters

Every mall seems to attract its own particular type of style and its own crowd. But one thing stays consistent, no matter what mall you go to. And that one thing is the leeches that work at those little kiosks. I like to call them "Mall Monsters".

Now, some of you are nice and simply brush these people off as they try to talk to you; you may not even notice they are there. But if you're like me, all you can see is their pathetic attempt to get you to buy something. They feed off of people passing by like salespeople in Americanized cities of Mexico.

Yesterday, I was in a mall and approached a T-Mobile kiosk (I didn't even know T-Mobile was still a thing). I had my phone in my hand - that was my first mistake. And there he stood, a mobile phone kiosk salesman; the worst of the Mall Monsters.

The guy, no older than 20 years old, spotted me a mile away. And I knew what was coming as I walked by. "How's it going," he asked me. I simply nodded back, thinking my obvious lack of interest would eliminate any further attempt to talk to me. How wrong I was. The salesman looked at me dead in the eye and asked me a question a starving child in Africa with no communication to the outside world could answer: "What kind of phone is that?" I quickly looked into my right hand to see if someone was playing a satanic trick on me and had changed the device I was holding to some unknown product never see by human eyes. Sure enough though, the device I was holding was still an iPhone. You've heard of those, right? They're made by Apple, kind of popular.

What kind of phone is that? Really? That's the best you got? That's your sales pitch? You have one chance to make a first impression and your go to opening line was to ask what that rectangular object with an apple on the back in my hand is. Is it wrong to hope something bad happens to this guy simply based on this one question?

The sheer stupidity of this question launched me into a state of shock, and the only way I could react was with pure silence. This guy's stupid question literally stunned me into silence. That has never happened before.

So, for future reference, put your phone away, put some headphones in and next time you see one of these people, try your best to avoid them. Because, should they start talking to you, rumor has it that a 2 minute conversation could have catastrophic results.