Flower Power

The other night I was driving into the city and came upon one of those bottlenecks that Boston is oh-so-famous for. Allegedly, most of this city's streets were originally just cow paths which were at some point filled in with stones and eventually asphalt. The more I drive into Boston, the more convinced I become that those cows were drunk. At the very least they had to be more willing to merge than your average Masshole, because how else can you explain the logic behind taking six lanes of traffic and compressing it down into two in under a quarter of a mile? Oh, and this particular intersection had the extra added bonus of two sets of traffic lights within about 300 feet of one another. You may be asking, were these lights synced up so as to provide the maximum traffic-flowing capabilities? I think you know the answer to that already, but of course they weren't. People who needed the green had the red and the people who had the green had nowhere to go because of the cars who had the red. The result of this exercise in (un)civil engineering is that I had a few minutes to kill on my hands. This was when I was reintroduced to the greatest salesmen in the world: the red-light peddlers.

For those of you who might not drive into the city too often the red-light peddlers are the people who stand on the side of a busy intersection and wait until traffic has stopped moving in one direction. They then walk up and down between the first few cars trying to sell something to their captive audience and are back in their spot by the time the light changes. Usually they will have one guy for one direction and another for the opposite one, but the really talented sellers can handle both directions by themselves. Now, as a man who is a big fan of drive-thrus you probably are expecting me to also be a big fan of this service. After all, I was the one who said my dream is to do all my Christmas shopping via in-store pickup with curb-side delivery so I would never have to get out of my car. But instead these people make me very nervous. I'm always convinced they are about to get clipped by some road-raging driver, but they never do. They seem almost oblivious to the dangers that come with the fact that they are literally dancing through traffic trying to make money. They just go about their selling without a care in the world. This is why I have especially cringed the few times I have been at a red light and seen a child out there trying to raise money for some Little League team or something. I don't want to give those kids money, I want to give them smarter parents. (Did no one think to suggest a car wash like normal people?)

But for now we will focus on the adults who do this by choice. In the mornings you will often see them selling newspapers to commuters who don't get the paper delivered or go to train stations. When it switches to night time they change their product and sell flowers out of a bucket to couples out on date nights. Usually it is something like half a dozen roses or perhaps a collection of some daisies, but no matter what kind of flower it is, I have to say it is a brilliant strategy. For starters, every guy going on a date who hasn't picked up their lady yet and who didn't think to pick up flowers before he left the house will be blown away by how convenient this is for him. (Sure, they end up getting credit they don't really deserve, but isn't that the case with most products marketing towards being romantic?) But, even for those guys who may already be with a woman this strategy combines two key things to make a sale: pressure and a limited amount of time. I would love to know how many of these red-light peddlers can make a sale just by showing the flowers to the girls in the passengers seat. An offhanded, "When was the last time you bought the lady flowers?" comment can do wonders. Guys will be pissed at being thrown under the buss, but they'll be pissed as they hand over some cash.

However, it is really the time-sensitive nature of the sale that makes it work so well. Because the offer is only good until the light changes you better act now or deal with her being annoyed at you for being so cheap for the rest of the night. That is why the prices are usually so low. They don't want to make it an amount you might have to think about or so expensive you wouldn't have enough cash on you. Plus, due to the limited-time-offer feeling that comes with this type of sale you can't really inspect the merchandise. In a normal setting you may look them over and decide that they simply aren't worth any money at all. But, here you'll be miles down the road before you notice that half the flowers are already dead. And it is not like you are going to turn around and go back for a refund, because you have someplace to be. If you had that kind of time you'd have bought the flowers from a store like a normal man who thinks about this kind of stuff before he is four minutes from his date's house. It's damn-near the perfect sales scenario. Honestly, these people should start selling insurance and make themselves some real money.