How to Be a Good Customer: Lessons from a Syrup Slinger, Vol. 3

"How to Be a Good Customer: Lessons Learned from a Syrup Slinger" is a blog series that emerged from my years of experience selling maple syrup at the Union Square Greenmarket. The mission of this sporadic, multi-part series is to teach the citizens of New York how to be polite, intelligent, interested consumers, without acting like imbeciles.

Lesson #3: What, Do You Think We're Dragging our Minks through Monaco?

A woman came to the stand yesterday and opened with "I don't want to pay that much." Seriously, that was her answer to my initial "Hello." She seemed to think that she was the one who decided the price, with this carefree whoop-dee-do about it. She wanted a gallon of syrup. "I'll take one of these for forty-five," she said, just like that, case closed. "I'm sorry, I can't do that," I said. Then she said the thing that people say when they want to be assholes: "Well then, I'm going to talk to the manager."

People who say this are often disappointed to discover that 1) We are not like the grocery store, where one dude is in charge of all the aisles. Hello, each stand is its own entity. 2) I am the manager, and you're not getting your gallon of syrup for $13 less. 3) The Greenmarket managers could give a shit.

Let me just say this. If you think that prices at the farmer's market are inflated then you're an idiot. And if you think that the farmers and their workers are living it up, renting penthouses in Vegas, downing bags of blow and laughing their asses off because you were foolish enough to pay--$8 !!--for that eight ounces of syrup, then you need to get over your sad-sack miserable-me of a self.