Take A Flyer

DAY 3

of the 30-Day Blog Challenge, 2011

I'll take them all!

If you randomly look into my handbag or second totebag (as is customary among New York commuters) it's not unusual for you to find a flyer or two, or even three inside. That's because I've made it a personal policy to accept all flyers that come my way—anybody standing on the street handing out any printed material, no exceptions.

This stems from my early days in the city. My first ever job was in a Japanese restaurant in midtown. For some of you who've read my old blog, Chocolate Soundboard, you may still remember the anecdotes and musings from that time, many of which were deeply personal and humbling. I worked as a hostess and was later on "promoted" to night Maître D'—which simply meant that my boss could leave me alone to seat people and update the table chart without any guidance because by then I already knew what I was doing. Prior to that job, I had never worked in a restaurant in my life. I didn't know how table numbers worked, what the logic behind seating groups of two, four, or more was, and let alone, how to deal with very hungry New Yorkers during lunch break.

Anyway, going back to my "flyering" story, the place I worked at also had a bar, as many NYC restos do. In the evening, there was Happy Hour, and it accommodated many of the workers in the banks nearby. (This was pre-recession/market crash, mind you.) During slow nights, my boss would ask the hostesses to hand out flyers. There were usually two of us in the evening shift so my coworker and I would take turns. Again, I've never had to hand out flyers in my life and this job came right after many years of working in the very glamorous magazine industry as a very glamorous editor. I've actually written about this in an On My Mind piece, "The Comfort Clause" for Cosmopolitan Magazine a while back and blogged about it here.

I did make peace with the flyering somehow and handed out our Happy Hour cards to Park Avenue passersby with a smile.

The big challenge came in the autumn: The weather changed and it became too cold to be standing out on the street. The thing with my then-boss was, the other hostess and I couldn't go back inside the restaurant until we'd finished our stack. Sometimes, relieved that we've finally gone through a stack, he would hand us a fresh pile. It was kinda funny, quaint, and amusing in the beginning (like I've said, I made peace). But, there was no humor in the task once we had to stand outside, shivering in the cold, for even just a couple of minutes.

You can just imagine my relief when I finally got my first publishing-related job here in New York around that time. I couldn't wait to leave the restaurant any sooner. But, the "flyering lesson," I did take and keep with me.

Another thing to consider about the flyer business, is that in some places, the people who do it for a living get paid by the number of pieces they get to hand out. I am guessing, in other instances, they get paid by the hour. Either way, it's not the easiest thing to be standing there, in the middle of a busy street, hoping enough people would take a sheet or two, or three...

So the next time you see someone handing out flyers, I do hope you take one. It doesn't take five seconds to do it, it's not an extra nuisance in your already-busy schedule. Think of it as a way of helping someone do her job.