Oddly, I've never had any animosity returned. Just a shrug of "Oh well, I tried".
In one area I used to live in the general "proper" behavior when you are approached by street vendors or beggars was essentially 3 phase.
1) Ignore unless you intend to buy or give. This means you do not reply to anything they say or even make eye contact.
2) Engage verbally or even just visually. This means you intend to buy or give. Now you will be pressured and given an aggressive sell/ask.
3) If it was a mistaken engagement or you don't reach an agreement you MUST aggressively exit. This often means yelling, possibly swearing, and in some cases even putting your hands on someone and even verbally threatening in bad situations.
I spent a significant enough amount of my childhood growing up in this type of culture. My wife was always from a small city. When we later moved I explained to her that this was a big cultural difference than she was used to and the expected way to behave in these situations.
Being from a small city she thought this was disrespectful and continually made things, putting it lightly, more difficult for us.
Eventually it actually put us in a situation that escalated to being dangerous. A seller that she responded to with small talk became very angry that she had wasted his time. He then got in her face, put a hand on her shoulder and started screaming at her.
At that point I ran over, pushed the man off of her and said, "She doesn't fucking want anything. Now get the fuck out of our faces before I have to kick your ass."
After that happened she finally took my advice.
Only if you operate under the assumption that they share your values. They may be accosting you because they see you as weak, and you may be representing your country or ethnicity poorly in their eyes.
There's been times where I've had hawkers and hasslers continually pester me, where I would ignore them or politely decline while walking away, yet they would begin touching me or continually follow me, leading to attempted pickpocketing, robbery, and sexual assault.
Some will touch you on the shoulder, others will maintain some distance and continually get closer to you only to make a swipe at your pocket then try to run away with your cell phone or wallet (happened to me twice).
One trinket-selling "monk" followed me into a building and grabbed me, but I managed to get back outside.
Another person followed me into three different public bathrooms, which I kept having to exit after he continually followed me and went to the urinal next to me so he could look over at my penis. Eventually he stopped only after I walked by a security guard and yelled about what he was doing.
It is 100% OK to yell at any hustler whom you are walking away from but is still following you. Not doing so was always how the aforementioned scenarios began.
They know your vulnerability is your politeness, your "ambassador" mentality. Don't remain vulnerable when they cross the line and keep following you.
> I wonder what these people think about you
If they're acting at all as GP described, then it's obvious they see you as another mark to aggressively try to extract money from.
Caring about what some bothersome strangers think about you and where you're from takes a distant backseat to standing up to aggression.
I am.
I'm the guy who wrote the story, maybe I did a bad job. It's not like they're getting violent or "trying to extract money from me" - jeez, when you do buy something you can just hold out a handful of money and they'll take the right amount - extremely, extremely honest.
In reality, they're just trying to sell their stuff, I don't understand why someone would react by yelling and getting angry.
You're describing routine purchases in (perhaps) a market in West Africa, probably with few tourists around. The hawkers aren't making any money from dishonest sales to tourists, and sales are probably reasonably consistent. Repeat customers are common.
The others are describing very popular tourist areas in poorer parts of Europe. All their money comes from tourists, sales rise and fall frequently, there are no repeat customers, and there is strong competition between hawkers for the best places, and possibly efforts to keep newcomers out of the trade.
So does spam. That's why spammers keep sending it.
Does that mean it's OK? Clearly not.
Out of curiosity, if they weren't trying to sell you anything, but were behaving like that (hissing/kissing/blocking your path), do you think getting angry would then be an appropriate response?
In that case what you're doing seems to be significantly worse than saying "fuck off".
Maliciously wasting their time vs making it clear you aren't interested?
FWIW, I don't think there's anything wrong with what you're doing. I just think it's objectively worse than "yelling and getting angry".
At first we suffered in silence, thinking "well that's just the way they behave in their country", but towards the end we were very direct and to their face when being rude to finally get them to stop.
In Mexico, it's Hoy no (Not today) and it works pretty well.
Yes first couple of hours, maybe days, you will be polite and expect these values returned. But they wont be. Anything less than aggressive behavior is taken as sales potential. Quickly you will realise should you want to be able to walk down the street you must get rude fast to anyone that crosses the line. Some previous advice in this thread is good, avoid eye contact. If they respect that they can call out etc. As soon as they physically get in your space you need to let them know this is not acceptable. Polite simply doesn't work. Its not being self entitled. Its the cultural necessity of some countries.
Maybe there are worse environments that I have never experienced and where outright rudeness is the only answer, but as described I have experienced it and never had to resort to anything more than:
- keep moving at a firm pace
- avoid eye contact
- hold a hand up, palm outward, preemptively, as you move (I'm not a tourist, I work here)
- as a last resort, speak loudly and sternly in a local language without addressing anyone directly, "No, thank you," or "No!"
It's still rude, but I feel a far cry from defaulting to yelling obscenities and getting agitated.
As I said, maybe there are environments where that doesn't work, or maybe it just works for me. But defaulting to rudeness without even attempting to figure out the appropriate measure of sternness in a place where you are, for most intents and purposes, a guest, is poor form.
Yes, it is annoying, but nevertheless, you are in their country, and they are trying to make an honest (not counting the overpricing of their goods) living. If someone can't handle that, maybe they shouldn't have gone there.
>- hold a hand up, palm outward, preemptively, as you move (I'm not a tourist, I work here)
What, push people out of the way?
And now that you've touched someone, they'll touch back...
You're making a cultural assumption that the locals aren't rude to the hawkers. This is incorrect. The hawkers in fact are taking advantage of your unusual, culturally incorrect assumption that street hawkers shouldn't be treated aggressively, which is why tourists are their prefered market. How do you know the locals aren't quite rude or abrupt with the hawkers as well?
The upside of this is that people don't shy away from Westerners the way they do in Tokyo, which makes for a smootger experience if you enjoy talking to natives.
It's like giving in to a nagging child - they now know that you're an easy mark and will be even more determined to break you because they now know they can. You bought carrots from someone else, probably to stop them hassling you, so now if I want to sell t you I know if I'm annoying enough the chances are high you'll buy from me too.
Well, it turned out to be a bad idea. A few hundred meters from the tower, I was greeted by someone who self-identified as a "friend from Jamaica". He tried to advertise something, but walked away after I asked him politely. As I continued my journey, I met more and more of these "friends". When I eventually reached the tower, I discovered that about 10 of these guys were circling around it. They were all very polite, but they advertised their stuff every time they stumbled upon me, which happened about once per minute. After some time, I decided to find a different place to rest.
After a particularly stressful day, one guy decides to take it upon himself to follow me like that for the better part of a city block. Ignoring him wasn't working, so I (honestly quite gently) brushed his hand out of my face, and the guy goes off, threatening to call the police and pulling in bystanders, asking if they just witnessed the terrible assault I've committed.
I guess the moral of the story is, don't work near Times Square.
Instead I'll tell you what we locals do. You'll never be bothered by any vendor again. You do this : walk quickly, purposefully, scarcely making eye contact with your surroundings. Zig zag through crowds like it's destiny.
Perhaps I've made a terrible impression on the tourists I push past, but the signal I give off to vendors is, "I'm not in scope." I even act as a sort of sociopathic enforcer, particularly against those bus tour guys who stand in busy sidewalk areas with their signs.
I have intense familiarity with NYC Paris and London,having lived in all of these places. Being polite or nice or understanding to a random stranger on the sidewalk that wants something from me aggressively is to me a test to see whether I'm a sucker. Whether I'm vulnerable.
Save your politeness for people who aren't hustlers.
I laughed out loud at this, because it's exactly what I'm experiencing now in West Africa.
Street vendors are aggressive about selling whatever they have, and they seem to assume I want it - almost like I owe it to them to buy it - I'm not sure if it's because I'm White, or it's just their standard procedure for everyone that walks by.
On my 3 minute walk to the local store, I get a minimum of 10 people in my face, trying to sell me cell phone recharge cards, peanuts and limes. Every single day I say no thanks, every single day they try again, sometimes even on the walk back.
I've tried ignoring them or not responding at all, and that usually makes it worse - they'll yell louder and louder (assuming I have not heard), hiss, make a kissing noise, and eventually put themselves in my way so I'm forced to acknowledge them.
Amazingly, even when I do buy something, and I clearly have it in my hand (a bunch of carrots for example), every single street vendor selling carrots will still try with 100% effort to sell me carrots.