By: Dea Yu
On Sunday, September 21, 2014, my sister and I set off to have an amazing opportunity to sell our magazines at the Word on the street ─ a place where thousands of publishers gather together to sell books and magazines. In other words, we were going to a bookworm’s fantasy!
We drove a long time in the car, mixed with a lot of “No, go that ways and “make a U-turns. Not to mention, a ton of finger pointing, car honks, and arguments. At last, we reached a small grass area with a couple tents and food stands. I walked down the narrow, windy path that led to a pedestrian crossing. We kept on walking until we saw the Voice K sign. I ran to the tent, delighted to see somewhere with shade. Soon, I was given a script to follow. I then quickly slipped on my badge, and grabbed a sample magazine, ready to begin my magazine-selling experience.
At first, selling the magazine was pretty hard. I kept getting my tongue tied because I was not used to talking to strangers. Then another journalist, Edward, came. I was relieved, so all the work wouldn’t come to me. After a while, selling the magazines got easier. I realized that if I wasn’t too annoying, they wouldn’t bite. I began talking better and louder and started to use my own words to answer questions for adults and kids instead of my script and I realized that it was actually fun! So I tried attracting more customers and selling more magazines. Here are some tips I used when selling magazines or anything else.
1. Smile and be yourself. Don’t use big words just to attract people’s attention. Use words like “kind of” and “a bit.” Remember it’s just a conversation!
2. Don’t cover your face with the magazine or product you are selling when you are talking. People want to see your beautiful smile!
3. Try not to stay rooted to the spot, but also don’t jump around too much like you have ants in your pants. It’s okay to use your hands to show how things work.
4. Show your qualifications and tell people how you benefited from the organization. I showed my published articles on the magazine to others, and explained my experience working as a journalist for Voice K.
Before I knew it, my shift was over. But that’s not the end of my Word on the Street adventure. After I said goodbye, I went to the TVO Kids tent and got a tattoo and an eraser. We watched a bit of the show. We went back to the Voice K tent to eat our lunch there. Journalists from the next shift, Emma and Eddy were already there. When we were done eating our lunch, we started to help out even though our shift was over. My sister and I took turns being the cashier and taking the money and giving the change. Then when Emma and Eddy’s shift was over, we went to see some other tents. My mom let me and my sister each choose a free book, and my sister made a bookmark.
Finally, we had to leave. But that’s STILL not the end of my adventure. Because to get home, we were going to ride the subway for the first time! When we got to the station, I was overwhelmed by how noisy it was! The sound of subway screeches, talking, and walking feet filled my ears. While we waited for the northbound train to come, I glanced at the advertisements on the station walls. They were just like the regular advertisements you would find in bus stops. Since they were not doing as a good job of killing my boredom, I glanced around the whole station itself. Before I had finished looking around the station, the sound of the of the northbound train screeching to a stop made me almost fall off from the bench I was sitting on! I quickly hopped off the bench and entered the open doors of the underground subway. The first thing I noticed was that it was quite stuffy and hard to find a seat, so I volunteered to stand and hold on a pole. The doors snapped shut and the train started to move before I barely even had time to hold on! It started off slowly, then picked up speed and went fast! I thought it was fun. We rode to one station, and then made a switch to the westbound train. When I got on to the westbound train I started to relax because we had a long way to go.
When we got off, we headed to the parking lot where our dad was waiting for us with the car. We got in and immediately turned on the air conditioning. Since we already rode the subway, we didn’t have a long way to go, but I fell asleep anyway. It had been a fun day. I hope Word on the Street continues next year!
