Published on 12, July, 2020
In a response to a fairly recent thread on how to deal with chuggers I suggested saying nothing and showing an autism alert card as possible tactic. I tried it out a few days ago. I was stopped twice by different chuggers, for the first I entered into a discussion about how I was unwilling to extend my charity donations any further. The second time I said absolutely nothing but showed the person my autism alert card, it worked like a dream, no discussion, all over in a couple of seconds. Result!
When approached reasonably and politely; I smile and nod in recognition of what I heard the person saying, wave "good bye" to signal I don't want to talk ...and then walk on by without getting sucked into their vortex.
If they are unreasonable in their approach; more likely, I will firmly say "no thank you" in whichever language I can think of which I also think they are least likely to know ...and just keep walking, if they are of the persistent multiple-pester along the pavement variety ...I keep rotating through different languages until they catch on to - no - we will not be discussing this in English or any other language!