If you’ve been in Center City lately, you’ve seen them. Those booths on the sidewalk with big signs that offer a Free Stress Test. If you’re a decent human being, or a skeptical, what’s-the-catch Philadelphian, you hurried by without a second thought. But if you’re a reg Philebrity reader and notice that the majority of these tests are being administered outside of 13th and Chestnut St. directly across the street from Macy’s, you may have thought to yourself “Wha-ho! The Scientologists make their next move!”.

It’s not that we’re some special test-market city for this, it’s been done here and here with less subtlety. It’s that we actually caught a few unsuspecting idiots or undercover reporters taking the tests. So I managed to snap a few pictures before a couple of couch-jumpers could doctrinate to me. This blurry one even looks like I was being chased. Or feeling particularly stressed. After all, “the study of truth” will do that to you.

As you can see, L. Ron’s boys look pretty busy. No doubt it was passersby on the hunt for free shit. There’s something about complimentary services that Philly peeps just can’t pass up. And everyone wants to talk about how stressed out they are. So this is how they’re getting you into bed, Philadelphia. You’re not even playing hard to get, and they clearly don’t respect you or they’d think of something a tad more deceiving, a level of trickery that could dupe the most discerning of bloggers and message board hate-staff.

If life gets that unbearable, you haven’t bought the right stress ball.

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 15th, 2007 at 11:23 am.