Crazy Shopping Woman

Edit: I just changed the title of this blog and thought "Mention women and shopping in the same sentence and you know you are in for trouble".


After the long day searching for the police I was off to meet Elif who I had met on the forest walk.


She said that she had some work to do but that we should meet up first and then we could go for dinner. So I'm thinking no worries. A short bit of work and then some food. I hadn't eaten since breakfast in the morning.


So with some good directions I took a bus about an hour north of Istanbul to an affluent area just north of Bebek. It's quite tricky at times knowing where to go and more so where to get off public transport. 


I was asking Elif where I should hop off the bus when she asked me to give the phone to a local. So the poor unsuspecting guy sitting next to me got a tap on the shoulder and a phone shoved in his face. Luckily he was very accomodating. 


A short while later he returned the phone and Elif told me to look out for her waiting at a bus stop.


Later on down the track the guy motioned for me to follow him off the bus. I hadn't seen Elif but figured he knew what he was doing and I knew we were in the right general area from watching signs and shop names along the way. Plus it looked like a good place to eat and had a wealthy feel about it.


He tried to indicate something about taksis (taxis) and pointed into the distance past a roundabout. Realising that I wasn't quite following him he motioned for me to follow and took me to a taxi rank where he motioned me to stop and take a seat.


We called Elif and I guess he told her where I was. A short while later she found me.


As we headed off to where she needed to work the same man spotted us, came across the road and shook our hands. Passed a few words and said farewell. I'd say he was about 48 years old.


Earlier Elif had tried to explain what the work entailed. I got the gist that she needed to supervise some staff doing something and then we would head off for food.


Turns out I was a tad wrong.


As we walked to Carrefour which is one of the major supermarket chains she further explained her role. It was then that I realised she was about to do some covert market research. This was her new part-time job that helps her save to attend university.


She said she was very nervous as this was the first time and she wasn't sure how to sneakily take notes in her book to answer the massive number of questions that the market research required. 


Her idea was to pose as a guide for me who was helping me shop. It was quite funny as due to her nerves she made an elaborate cover story and seemed very concerned about being found out.


I spent my time trying to convince her that no-one cared what she was doing and besides we drew a fair amount of attention to ourselves. We found a collection of swimming pool tubes, grabbed one each and proceeded to pretend we were in Star Wars. A few bashes later and she got me a real good hard knock to my nose which prompted many apologies and brought and end to the fun.


And so we proceeded around the supermarket writing down information on the products and then we had to buy some items, get some help, and return some items. It was all a bit mad really. And totally not what I had expected.


I mean - who invites someone to dinner and then drags them around a supermarket pretending to shop!? And when you hardly know each other? Very weird.


Another thing we did was cause havoc at check out. One of the items we bought was two pears. Although I hadn't noticed Elif had removed the pricing sticker that a staff member had given us after weighing the fruit.


So when we arrived to pay there was a small commotion as the assistant told us we needed to weight the fruit to get a price. Turns out that it's their job to call someone and get them to run and get a price for us. Turns out that this particular fella wasn't interested in this at all. He only did it when Elif asked him to.


Once another staff member had got the price we caused another commotion by not wanting to queue again as he suggested. In fact he just placed our pears at the end of a line of people and was about to walk off which I thought was a bit poor.


Once again she had to intervene and we got "special treatment" and he opened an isle to process our purchase.


At the end I was quite tired of it all but it was a fun exercise and certainly something I would be very surprised to find myself doing again.


Just as well we made our own entertainment along the way...