Mall kiosk hell

I went to the mall yesterday for the first time in a couple months, and I quicky remembered why I don't enjoy mall shopping anymore.

Kiosks (or, in business lingo: "retail merchandising units") selling everything under the sun are everywhere. Sales people stick bottles of lotion in your face, come at you with weird head massagers, want you to take their battery-operated trucks, airplanes, etc. for a spin, and I actually had a guy selling jewelry take my arm and tell me he had something nice for me. ... Er, no thanks, dude.

I hate having a product forced upon me. I remember a time when the only place you'd be subjected to that was the perfume counter of department stores - where clerks asked to spray a sample on your wrist. But now it's progressed into the open areas of the mall. Suddenly I'm transported back to Mexico or the Philippines or any other tourist destination where people follow you around trying to sell you crap.

And it doesn't help to look the other way because they'll walk right in front of you. I would just like to be able to go to the mall and choose what I want to look at -- i.e. go into a store, not have the store walk right out in front of me. Grrrr.