We had a magazine route for the gas station owners. We placed new magazines... one at a time. So we could alternate weeks -- WT one Wednesday, Awake the next... 4 weeks... about 20-25 stations in our territory. I had a folder with a sheet so the pioneers could keep track when the stations were hit so as not to bug the people at the station. We also did laundromats and apartment laundry rooms and hospital reception rooms on other mornings because we could hit them early and often.
Then April would come and every JW and their mother wanted to do "early morning witnessing." Do you think these new comers would work with the pioneers and not risk our easy time? NO. They would hit the gas stations multiple days, using old magazines -- sometimes 3-4 years old magazines. So what started happening was that the station owners got sick of all these people bothering not only them but their employees. So we got booted out. Then April was over, the CO-inspired JW auxiliary pioneers crawled back in their beds, and the pioneers struggled for months to rebuild the gas station route.
Years later, after I left, I got to talk to many of those laundromat attendants and gas station owners/managers. The attendants admitted to me that they often waited until we left and then tossed the mags in the trash and the station managers -- who only took the magazines to be polite and keep JW customers -- got fed up when the visits became more than the predictable once a week. And why did we leave JW magazines in a Catholic hospital waiting room. The sisters (Catholic - not JW) would wait until the JWs left and then clear out the waiting room of magazines. Of course, the JWs thought the magazines were being read and taken by "interested" people... when in reality some nun or maintenance guy was tossing the rags.
I also remember doing star method of early morning work. We started at 7 am at the apartment complex closest to the KH, left mags in the laundry room, and then went out to some remote apartment complex 15 miles in some tiny town at the edge of our territory. Then by the time we got back in, it was 8 --- by the time we hit 4 more stops -- it was time to meet the group back at the KH. WOW-- 2 hours driving around "Counting Time."
What did we really accomplish? Nothing really. Glad I am no longer doing it. Especially when gas hit $4/gallon (I know -- you overseas people would love to see four buck gas -- but it was sticker shock for us in the US). Even at $3/gal now, I cannot imagine how pioneers keep gas in their cars.
Snakes (Rich )
PS.. Ironically, I asked my (never a JW) fiancee out on a date at one of those same laundromats. Hopefully this long engagement becomes a marriage this spring.