My wife and I now work the afternoon/evening shift, meaning we get to enjoy our mornings before work. As children leave their elementary and middle schools, we go to work as they visit our schools to brush up on their English. This means that while we are busy later in the day, we are as bored as all the housewives in the neighborhood that send their children off to work until the afternoon.
Yesterday, as we were sitting around, we heard one of the trucks that sometimes bother the neighborhood with bullhorns. They mount the speakers attached to trucks with looped tapes selling anything and everything. As they drove through the neighborhood, this particular truck promised a free food garbage bin.
Recycling is mandatory in Korea, food included. Everyone must toss their unused or rotten food in covered bins located near the garbage containers. These food garbage containers were said to dry out food and prevent smells. Anyone cleaning out a food recycling bin will tell you it’s a stinky task. Removing the stench of food recycling would make anyone interested.
We listened to the advertisement roll by, then got ready for work. My wife had to leave before me, so she couldn’t get the free gift and still make it to work on time. We went down together to investigate. We witnessed a feeding frenzy!
This salesman wasn’t handing out the miracle garbage bins just yet. He had an audience full of bored house wives and the elderly to sell his wears. He went through the Ron Popeil-like shtick. He wasn’t going to show them a new cooking pot as well. Whatever he had in his trucks, he had the rapt attention of a few dozen women.
Why did these women stick around? He gave them some cheap sponges and cleaning tools before we arrived. Then he proceeded to talk about the qualities of his miracle ramyeon cooking pots. He had demonstrations to prove that it was the best pot on Earth. The women were enraptured with this man. He would ask those rhetorical questions that you hear on infomercials that people never say in life, but these women would answer, howl, and cheer at the right intervals. I don’t think all of them were planted by the people selling the merchandise either.
Then he handed out the price for the set of pots. Promising the free stuff was the only way he could get a crowd to listen when he tried to sell a 400,000 (~$400 USD) won set of pots. My wife and I both rolled our eyes and gave up any hope of seeing our "free" item promised to anyone that showed up.
This was just a scam preying on bored women that don’t have any other reason to leave the house at this time of day, and it was working. Since the sale wasn’t happening in the actual apartment complex, they didn’t need to pay the fee to the apartment for the space. Clever. As I went to work, I saw the same vans and set up outside the next apartment complex. They were simply driving from apartment complexes and selling them out of the back of trucks, and getting huge crowds every time. Bored, lonely people with disposable income sitting at home can lead to trouble.
