THERE is a new thing in town: marketing in places like fast food restaurants and café. The approach is old; in fact, it is known already by that term “network marketing”.
What is new is how these business encounters are surreptitiously done. Again, the sense that fast-food and café owners are not aware of what is going on under their noses is questionable. At best, perhaps, they tolerate the actions.
The technique is to go to a fast food or café. Any place where one can nurse a drink will do. Thus, a fast food will do so long as you order coffee or any drink. You cannot order sandwiches and pasta; they wilt under the talk of money, which can be long. A coffee shop is perfect; it offers things that can remain untouched for a long time. In cafés, remember, we touch each other through words and gazes, lengthy words and extended gazes.
The noisy fast food is not a bad place for business proposition one realizes. The noise may distract the potential agent but it also covers the nature of the conversation. The manager of the place can be led to think there is just a heated dialogue about martial law in some places in the country.
The quiet in the café can be ideal for business partnerships to coagulate and form into something thicker than blood and chocolate. But in cafés, one can encounter cranky legit customers who are there for the coffee. When this type enters a café, the manager should make sure there is a seat, a fine place near the window, or else this person will turn around and point to tables where there is only one cup of coffee and three persons staring down at it. That is a sign that something less than poetic and more commercial is going on. The one cup is the only contract holding the table. The network marketing man has ordered it an hour ago and it has enabled three people in succession to listen to a business pitch.
Perhaps, it is not my business to mind other people’s business. Or maybe, I am a traditional person.
For me, be it fast food or cafés, these places are meant for food to be taken and coffee or tea to be drunk. There can be conversations but they should either be about the weather— social, atmospheric or political.
Proposals or promises can be made, but they should not be about commerce and profit. They should be about how to live with each other forever, even if the proposal has a bit of bitterness in the cup of coffee witnessing the pact. Promises should be about love, even if one knows half of it has already been given to another partner.
Lies are lovelier in cafés and fastfood. Sweet words are made more sentimental over cups and cups of coffee or glasses of Coke zero.
Last Sunday, at the table beside me in a café, a man promised P15,000 in less than a month. At a table right in front of mine, a young, lovely girl was looking at her latte. Were those tears streaming down her cheeks? The old man with her looks sad and serious. He must be the father of the girl. He is a sweet father, holding the tiny hand of the girl who would not look up.
I have actually witnessed (or eavesdropped on) breakups in fastfood restaurants. One was messy, with the woman throwing the hamburger at the face of the man who, I believe, broke her heart.
Every time I order my cheeseburger in that fast food, my day is quickly turned into a one-act play of love lost and buns and mayonnaise wasted. It makes my day. The memories make me smile. The happiness is not about percentage and profit, and that is good.
E-mail: titovaliente@yahoo.com.
Image credits: Jimbo Albano