Over-zealous salespeople - part III

Another rant about overzealous salespeople ( a follow-up to this and this ).

As I mentioned previously, I have a real beef about walking into a retail store and being inundated by salespeople pestering me, when all I want to do is walk around and browse. I went into Staples today to have a look around. I love Staples almost as much as I love hardware stores. I generally go in thinking there is one thing I need, but, as I wander around I generally discover something else I need and didn't even realize it till I see it. But, I only discover this if left to my own devices rather than them trying to hurry me along and direct me to the right aisle. I was there no more than 20 minutes, yet I was asked by 4 different salespeople if they could help me. Granted, the Staples I visited has 3 floors, therefore, as I wandered from floor to floor they couldn't have known I had been asked previously. And, on the 3rd floor where I was asked twice if I required assistance - one guy was on a ladder, so that is almost like a 4th floor. In hindsight I should have accepted the offer of assistance from the ladder dude - made him come down from there and show me where the pencils are.

After Staples I headed into Coles Bookstore. I had just placed a book back on the shelf when I heard that dreaded "may I help you find something"? Now, in this particular case there were several other shoppers around yet he asked me. I didn't hear him ask anyone else. So, this got me to thinking, "what do I put out there that they think I need assistance so badly"? I feel I'm walking around confidently, but, they are obviously seeing this:


I don't recall ever putting my hand on my head and looking confused & dejected while shopping, but, perhaps I'm on auto-pilot and don't realize.

So my new mission is to change the attitude and see if anything changes. Next time I'm going to try to project frantic:

I am hoping they'll be too scared to approach. This will be a one week experiment and if that doesn't work I'll try something else. Not sure what the something else will be yet.