This weekend during farmer’s market, I needed a mental-health break from the vacationing families elbowing each other aside to crowd the sample trays at our stand.
For a while, I was casually unaffected as people loaded cubes of cheese onto plates containing their half-eaten samosas. I recognized at least one student who does that every week. Lack of breakfast for both of us, I think.
A parent encouraged her three children to eat a piece of each cheese, but also required them to say “Thank you” before leaving. Sweet Nirvana! That’s all I require from no-sale visitors. Don’t tell me you’ll be back later, or that your spouse has your wallet; politeness and manners go a long way.
In the past few weeks, I’ve developed a new sales strategy: no blue cheese tasting. We sell out to regular patrons; sampling has become an unnecessary exercise.
The other cheeses (two tommes and a stinky washed-rind cheese) are selling better with limited sampling. I don’t know why, I heard something somewhere about it being psychological – when people fill up on free samples, they won’t buy a product because the desire for the item is sated. Whatever! Works for me.
Then, there’s the toothpick issue.
Specifically regarding tourists: please don’t make a spectacle of yourself over the revelation that you aren’t re-using the same toothpick for each cheese. It doesn’t matter.
(See the dispensing knob? Few tourists can find it.)
Don’t jab at the tines on the dispenser, tip it over, or shake it upside down instead of asking me how it works. That makes pick-up-sticks of the inner workings. No picks appear after that mess; I have to sort it all out by hand, and you don’t want me fiddling with the toothpicks. I’ve been handling dirty, dirty, money.
If you didn’t buy anything, and told me that all the cheeses tasted the same while searching my face for a response as to why that is: you should stop smoking. Today. And you can hoof it to the city-supplied trashcan ten-feet away with your waste.
The capper was the skateboarder who left his used toothpick in the sample dish. Real classy.
Before I started to respond aloud to the conversation that was going on in my head, I took a short constitutional, and bought a pair of earrings from Marie Davis Designs.
(So pretty, like a quilt pattern block.)
Honestly, it would have taken purchasing one of everything she had to make me forget the feeding frenzy, but a gift for myself made me happy enough to encourage a return to my own stand.
Honestly, it would have taken purchasing one of everything she had to make me forget the feeding frenzy, but a gift for myself made me happy enough to encourage a return to my own stand.
I put my bling on, and fed throngs of lookie-loos in the persistent breezes of the early afternoon. At least it wasn’t raining, and there was no competing festival in the park.
After market, we went to Leunig’s for a bite, and on our way back to the truck, I stepped on the heel of Dan’s sneaker. My braced knee gave out, and quicker than “whatswhat?” I was tits up on the sidewalk.
My first thought: I had beautiful earrings, so at least I looked good lying there on the ground.
