'Desperate Times' and all that

On my way to and from my place in Rondebosch, I must pass by a huge office complex that has been newly built. There are always a couple of black guys who are wearing foam arrows on their hands and wearing signs about the Open House that's happening to try to rent out office space. It reminds me of the high school dropouts in Canada who get jobs where they stand by the side of the road wearing signs advertising the $5 'Hot n' Ready' pepperoni pizza outside of Little Caesar's joints.

But what really got me was another pub experience at my usual watering hole. I swear that if there were more places like that around the world, everyone would feel so much better, because it seems no matter what youre looking for, everything happens there.

Anyway, I was doing my usual intermittent observing of the local fanfare and my eyes kept falling back on two quite attractive ladies who were decked out in flashy green habits (hooded cloaks) and apparently just standing at one end of the bar, sometimes talking to people, but mostly minding their own business.

My first impression was that maybe they were part of some religious cult and had just come from some service or were doing some sort of recruitment drive (believe me, its no so far-fetched given the amount of times I've got onto a train in Cape Town and some individual is going on in an apparently psychopathic fever about how Jesus saves). I didn't really want to get into a religious argument, especially with two beautiful women, but finally my curiosity got the better of me and I walked over to inquire. And I walked away absolutely astonished.

You see, these two individuals were actually there promoting Marlboro's new brand of cigarettes. They told me that advertising regulations made it so that they could not do 'forced advertising' of tobacco products, so they basically had to stand there and wait for people to come to them after they became curious enough (like me). The one of them asked if I smoked, and I said 'well, not tobacco', and after that point she said that she was bounded by the guidelines of her job that she could no longer talk to me because I wasn't interested in her product. When I protested and said that I wanted to know about it so that I could tell my friends, she calmly replied 'then tell your friends to come over here, i am not allowed to talk to you while im working'. And I walked away absolutely astonished that corporations could so badly objectify people, exploiting the fact that there is so much unemployment in South Africa that people will pretty much do anything. And the rest of the evening, I watched as her and her comrades (there were also two smartly dressed guys who I hadnt noticed before) moved about the crowd, sometimes posing for photos with people who wanted a pic of the girls, but ended up getting a pic of the girls with a giant green packet of Marlboros in the middle of the shot.

Wow.