Advantage, Men

`` You still have a gentlemanly breed, at your neighborhood pharmacies, which unfailingly wrap the sanitary napkin of your choice in a newspaper, tie it up with a thread and put it in a shopper, which again is black, never the transparent white.``

Why are you ashamed of buying sanitary napkins, madam? Is there any woman in the world who does not need them?

I`m afraid the problems are all in YOUR mind. Please don`t transfer them to an innocent shop assistant.

``Not all men, ok, make that all salesmen, are such perverts though.``
I shouldn`t think ANY of them are, not for any significant period of time anyway. One would think if a shopowner wanted to stay in business, he`d choose his salesmen in such a way as to avoid his customers feeling uncomfortable!

Sameena

All five fingers are not equal, and to be frank, you have not done justice with the topic. Their is a large no. of men that do not come under this category and you have missed them!

#16
I`m switching to pre-med

Very funny. Really enjoyed it.

Sameena

Enjoyed it.

I was in Abu Dhabi for a few years in 70s. I had a Doctor friend who worked in a nearby hospital.

May be it was frustration of the local Beduin women. He told me that when he asked them to uncover a part, they invariably dropped all their clothes quickly even if it was something only to do only with breasts.

nhk

Very well done - taking simple observations and presenting them with gentle humour.

Once a girl walked in at my store and she asked me for condems which fits best for her boy friend i inquired which one she replied very quickly he has big crotch which one will be best for him, and i was like take a pack of ``Magnum`` she smiled and replied okay i will tell u how it worked.

Hilarious.Lightens up the heavy air around chowk!!( and did the same to my mood after a long hard day - thanks sameena)

This has to be one of the funniest article I read on Chowk in a while. To say that I fell in love with the author while reading it would be an understatement, and to say that I did not fantasize (at least momentarily) to be her shoe salesman, would be a lie.

But I beg to differ on ``Advantage, Men``. If anything, I think its a deuce.

While author has very articulately put forward the dilemmas of the fair gender, I think the unfair gender is getting the short end of the stick. Consider this:

God knows how many times my friends have lamented about their rising costs of living and decreasing life expectancies due to the stress of their frequent condom purchases. You see, every pack of condom purchase has to be accompanied by a lot of other useless items - such as chips, coke, candies etc, just to surround the condoms on the store`s counter from the prying eyes of other customers and any unwanted attention.

Condom is one item that you want to buy with minimum fuss, and no pleasantries exchanged with the store clerk or anyone else in line. The last thing you want is a spooky ``mashallah`` uttered by someone standing behind you, or worse, a price check on it on public address system. Also, you want to make sure that you buy one pack at a time, and not in bulk - you dont want to be seen coming across as a show-off.

As a male I found the article extremely offensive. How dare you even suggest that by touching your leg the salesman had an erection. The poor guy is out there trying to make a living for himself and God knows how many other mouths for his family. Just because mem-sahiba (you) have the ora of Cleopetra around your head does not mean that you think that men are running around with bonners in their pants. I found the article to be extremely sexist. I guess if women were selling tampons, bras, bangels and shoes that would make you happy.

I was visiting Karachi a couple of years ago after a very lengthy hiatus (14 yrs +…so had forgotten the little freebies one is likely to collect while shopping)….went into a shoe store naïvely expecting i was going to purchase shoes and not get more than i was willing to pay for. Khair…as the salesman suggestively slid his hand over my foot and ankle my initial thought was, “hain”? what can I say….words fail me when confronted with perverts.

But when the “$#@%$#” did it again, i used the same foot and ankle he had grown so fond of to kick him in the chest with. As he fell back, i got up from my seat and yelled...something about his audacity and degeneracy….manager came over…i yelled at him too…for hiring such degenerates...yeah…i have no powers of subtlety when it comes to retrograde and ungentlemanly behavior.

Sameena, your article brought back fond and heart warming memories :).

Beej:
#5

“I personally think that men are the greatest things since apple pie!”

Yes, the little dears….i often think about that when i’m enjoying dessert. Tiramisu or a man? it’s an age-old question, which perplexes most women. Honestly, i don’t know how we make it through the day with such a quandary hanging over our heads ;).

Woman! Thy name is hilarity.

Sameena Khan comes across as a reasonable woman.How did she get her article published on this site?.There are good men and bad men and ditto with women.One has to be fair and i don`t think men are getting a ` fair shake` nowadays.Universal condemnation of all men is not good. In the recent `Imrana` case in India, the sharia council has said that the father-in-law`s accusation that Imrana led him on to have sex does have merit and would be considered.State law has just taken him into judicial custody.Guilty till proven innocent.Nice article.

Sameena:

Fine to know about tackling the sizzling anger you felt in the shoe salesperson episode. Your way of personal retaliation might looks astounding to you. But the thing is that you didn’t let the salesman object in the right direction at right time at right place. Salesmen are used to more than job to do tiresome chores of taking [bigger smaller, and colored] numbered brands from the store entertaining couple of people at the same time day whole upon closure midnight in big cities. Ordering him 4 in a row doesn’t make him feel even discomfortable rather you should have make your point louder and clear to him so that he may not exercise this thing to next customer or even think twice before his move. And make that clear that to his Boss as well and issued a complaint to the company Director of the behavior of its worker.
And you are right that there are good and bad people in every profession every time at every place. But it would be bit healthy to mention the bad feeling irrespective of age [even>99] to the criminal then suppressing the thing with another angle.

And these are the small medium workshops in Pakistan like Tailor shops, shoe shops and people don’t pay due respect for the customers. This is state of mind of people who in patient condition look down upon nurses and airhostesses. I remember the time when I used to hear from many mothers that only “ Teaching and Being Lady Doctor “ is a respectable profession in Pakistan for women and these false allegations are not exposing when ladies are in every profession now.

The point is diverging again…Just wanted to say that like Tailors if Doctors start taking advantage by cheap means then none will believe of this human profession.

VERY funny! I really liked it. I wish I had written it myself – except it would be difficult for a man to visit all those places you did and be in situations you were in without getting kicked out unceremoniously (or at least getting seriously stared at)! In the west, of course, many of these events can not occur (you see, we outsourced all the salesperson jobs (still working on the politicos, though)) – however, instead of providing “personal” service they may just use video cameras (strictly to ensure your “personal” security, of course)! And then there are those “all-seeing” scanning detectors, and those ubiquitous individuals with digital cameras on beaches, just flashing away like there is no tomorrow. Strange animals, those men! (On second thoughts, please disregard that one. I personally think that men are the greatest things since apple pie! You see, without us men, life itself would be impossible. (Disclaimer: any resemblance of the preceding statement with a DuPont commercial praising toxic chemicals is strictly incidental!))

Seriously, though, I think the characters you describe in this article are very much exceptions rather than the rule, because most of these sales folks just want to earn a living and make ends meet. In certain ways, what you describe is also an extension of what happens in, for example, crowded buses – predators on prowl! The ability to confront such individuals is all-important! I believe the problem is worse in smaller cities/towns because of more reticence on the part of the victim (the woman).

People! People! This is about the games girls/women play.

Once I was reading ``confessions of a shoe slaesman`` in US and that was a great write up. I forgot the URL and stuff but it was on one of those sites where people write stories.

I asked my wife about the shoesales man`s stories/adventures and she said, yep they do it and sometimes it is fun and at others, it is boring. Her contention was it depends on how ``cute`` the shoe salesman is. They don`t push Shalwar up here(nobody wears it) but are really daring!

Then she told me about girls who forget to wear a few things and like to visit malls and shoe stores.
Wouild somebody care to write about the annoying ``passes`` guys make on streets in Pak and here too but mostly in bars.

Good read and quality sense of humor. You are kool Sameen!
Thanks.