Leafleting is Like Retail

So yesterday I went leafleting at WVU. A few weeks ago Vegan Outreach emailed me and told me that Jon Camp, their director of outreach, would be coming to Morgantown and asked if I would like to help out. I agreed because I know how important leafleting is, but I must admit it was not something I was looking forward to.

I have only tried leafleting a couple of times before and it's been over a year since the last time I did it, mostly because that last time didn't go very well at all. I have always felt guilty for not enjoying leafleting, and even more guilty for not doing it anyway. I know how much of an impact it can have. The truth is, the few times I did it, it made me feel terrible. First of all, I felt like I wasn't doing a good job because I'm just not charismatic enough to engage people. The biggest problem I have with it though is that it kind of makes me lose faith in people. Not that I had much faith in people to begin with.

Leafleting is really all about the possibility of what might happen later. It's about believing that the people you give the pamphlets to will read them and make changes in their lives. The problem is, I'm not one of those "look on the bright side" people. I'm not very good at having faith that good things will happen later. I tend to only be able to focus on what's actually happening now. Well with leafleting that doesn't work very well. In my previous experience I found that most people just take the pamphlet and move on. Most of the time the only people who would bother to stop and say anything were the ones who just wanted to be assholes.

That being said, yesterday went much smoother than I had expected. I think that is due, at least in part, to my experience working in retail. Anyone who knows me knows how socially awkward I am, but after many years working with the public I have learned how to deal with customers pretty effectively. I find that I develop this entirely different personality when I'm at work. I smile all the time and say "hi" to everyone. I thank people for things that there's really no need to thank them for. I even have a different voice that I use when I talk to the customers. It's a bit softer and more high-pitched than my real voice. I've also gotten very good at taking shit from people without showing how angry I am. Apparently my work personality is pretty effective because I've actually heard customers telling the managers how "nice" and "polite" I am on several occasions.

Well yesterday I found myself using my work personality on the people at WVU. I stood there with this huge smile on my face and said "hi" to everyone in a cheery, high-pitched voice. Then whenever anyone made eye-contact with me, I used the same voice to say "can I give you one of these?" (yes I'm aware that's not proper grammar, but I live in West Virginia and no one here says "may I"). If they actually took the pamphlet I thanked them in an even more cheery voice.

I was rather surprised at how well it actually worked. I gave out a lot of pamphlets, most of the people I tried to hand them to actually took them and I only had one asshole all day. There were also two guys who were probably being assholes, but they were more subtle about it. So I just used my shit-taking skills to pretend that I didn't notice and continued telling them what the pamphlets were all about.

So I guess the lesson here is that.......sometimes it pays to be a doormat? I don't know.