Airport security would be proud of their selectivity
Walking up Yonge Street, and as usual, there are people passing out flyers. I’ve gotten pretty good at avoiding these people with a variety of strategies (don’t make eye contact, pretend like you’re on the phone, make it seem like you’re zoned out, pretend you can’t hear anything with your iPod on). Anyway, as I’m walking, I see someone passing out flyers on my right about thirty feet in front of me. Fortunately, there are two people in front of me who are walking on the right side of the sidewalk. The obvious play is to move to their left and use them as a buffer so that they get propositioned by the flyer guy while I walk past, which is what I wind up doing.
Right as we’re about to pass by the flyer guy, the flyer guy suddenly bolts across the sidewalk so that he’s on the left side, positioning himself so that he can give me a flyer instead of the two people I was using as a buffer. And naturally, he hands me a flyer when I walk past.
Now I’m curious - why did he blatantly go out of his way to hand me a flyer instead of the two folks I was walking beside? I look down at the flyer to see what it’s all about.
Ugh. It’s for an Asian restaurant.
Despite my best efforts, I cannot escape the bias that all Asians look the same, and thus must think the same, even though I don’t really belong in that group.
