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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Funny story, waited in line at the grocery store while the lady in front of me was being handled by the cashier. Once all the groceries had been scanned, the cashier told the customer the total. The lady offered her about half of that. It completely confused the cashier who was not expecting someone to haggle. It went back and forth a few times and then the manager was called and I was helped in the next line over. I waited a while to see what would happen, and in the end the lady stomped out angrily and the manager had an employee restock all the stuff she had brought to the register. That was not a place where there was any price flexibility.

However, at the Farmer's market, there is a lot of price flexibility on products.

It is an excellent life skill to be able to distinguish between markets where prices are fixed and markets where they are flexible.

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At our local farmer's market, I trust the farmers to negotiate for me.

They have seen me before, and they will often give me a little discount or throw some new thing into my bag to try.

Maybe I could get an extra buck or two off, but I have it pretty easy as a software developer working from home.

Farming and selling at farmer's markets is hard work. If I don't get the very best price, I figure that's a little tip for them.

Of course if I were buying in quantity I might see it differently. But for the bit of produce I buy, I'm happy to pay for quality.

And I bet that if I needed a larger quantity, they would offer me a good deal.

Part of negotiating is building relationships.

I'm not disagreeing with you, and I really enjoyed that strange grocery story. Just offering a related perspective.

The margins on a grocery store are very low, it would be crazy to try to haggle there.

In a farmer's market, they probably throw away half the produce, the margin is more in the quantity of goods than in the price, so it would always be better to try to get more goods for free than to put price down!

> In a farmer's market, they probably throw away half the produce,

I don't think that any modern farm can sustain itself on farmers markets alone except when it's a hobby farm.

Everything not sold there will be sold to supermarkets in bulk. Farmer's markets are just a nice cherry on top where the margins are higher.

I think you’re assuming industrial agriculture? Smaller farms can and do survive on markets. Just because they might only be an acre doesn’t mean they’re a hobby farm; some of these are grossing well into 6 digit income.

I think arguing the definition of "hobby" farm is drifting from the point. Whether or not unsold food gets wasted is the more pertinent question, and I know the small farms I live near, as well as our own hobby farming, has very little waste. Between eating our own food, canning it, or recycling it to the chickens or livestock... not much gets thrown away.

Put into that context, there is absolutely a bottom to the price it is worth selling at. If you are offering less than its value as chicken food, we won't sell. Admittedly, that is still pretty cheap.

I worked on an organic vegetable farm for 5 years. 90% of their income came from direct farmer's market sales. We had the benefit of being able to remember what we sold last week, last year, etc. at farmer's market. We just planned based on that, and rarely ended up throwing away a substantial amount of produce. Lots of vegetables can be returned to cold storage and brought to a market the next day, too. Carrot & beet bunches with greens on them get topped and sold in 5lb bags. Onions, garlic, squash, potatoes, etc don't suffer from going to and from different markets. Salad greens can be more sensitive, but it depends on the weather and how they're displayed.

Also, a box of veg that was made well and truly unsaleable by a day at market would be thrown in the compost to be turned into next year's fertilizer.

The place I worked had ~10 acres in cultivation and grossed $200 - 300k. Their kids have college funds.

They don’t. That would be a wildly stupid thing to do. They sell at multiple markets.

The key to getting good deals at a farmers market is to show up near closing time.

The produce has already been picked; it's not like they can take it back and re-plant it. They will most probably just sell it in bulk to some mom-n-pop grocery store and head back to their farms. So you can score some really nice deals.

I did this when I was tight on cash for a month or two and needed to survive on the more bare minimum budget.

> The produce has already been picked; it's not like they can take it back and re-plant it.

That is such an insightful comment; thank you!

And it's the best kind of negotiating. Not only do you get a good deal, it's a win for the farmer too.

It’s not. Most of them make very little money. They sell their goods at multiple farmers markets.

I know many and they all complain about that rich assholes that do this thinking the food is just going to get thrown away.

> They sell their goods at multiple farmers markets.

Unless they invented some time-travel machine, it's impossible. Most farmers markets around these parts have similar hours: 9AM to 2PM or so.

So, if the farmer leaves the market at 2PM, where will they go? No farmers market is open after 2PM.

There goes your little theory.

Pro-tip: stop treating farmers like children who don't know what they're doing. You city people think you know it all, when in reality, you don't.

You've raised some good points in your comments in this thread.

Can you please leave out the insults and adversarial style?

We try for respectful and polite conversation here, even when we disagree on something. That way we can learn from each other.

From the site guidelines:

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Thanks, and I look forward to reading more of your insights!

No comment on the dude calling me an "asshole"? I hate to say "he started it", but he clearly did. It irritates me when people show up with holier-than-thou attitudes, assuming others don't know what they're talking about (I'm referring to @david38, of course)

This is how I get all my cakes. At the end of the day at a donut or cake stand, most of the goods go in the trash.

Even if there is no price flexibility, the employee will often agree to sell you a cake for full price then give you a cake of similar value he was about to put in the trash for free. If they know you always tip and can convince themselves that their employer is also winning, they are highly incentivised to agree.

Sometimes people in a job like this will take the un-eaten cakes home, but in the end they can only find a home for so much free cake.

The trick there, of course, is that you have to not want some of the stuff that sells out

This is a good way to piss off hard working people who don’t make much.

You clearly don’t know anything about how they operate.

You do know the vendors go to multiple farmers markets, right? You’re not saving anything from waste. Unless your particular farmers market is the last stop for that vendor, you’ll piss them off.

You know what happens when you ASSUME things?

You are ASSUMING that I offered them less money.

You are ASSUMING that I somehow forced them to do something they wouldn't do otherwise.

Reality is, they themselves offer great deals on whatever is left. No coercion required.

And last time I checked, it was a free world: I'm free to take their deal or not, and they're free to offer me one, or not.

And by the way: I learnt of this trick from farmers themselves.

A local computer store here has a well known policy: If you ask for a better price, they'll come back with an offering 20% above list price. If you question it, it'll go up again.

Honestly I don't mind this. If a video card costs $100 and you're selling at $110 and someone says "I'll give you $50" and makes you devote an hour to the sale, they aren't worth it.

This reminds me of an imaginary situation I made up one time. Naturally I never leave my backpack with my laptops (yes, plural) in the car. So when I've shopped at a tech store like Fry's (remember them?!) I kept my pack on my back.

I wondered what I would do if they asked to search my backpack on the way out. My imaginary response was, "No problem. I charge a ten dollar search fee, which of course if fully refundable if you find I've stolen something. If you question my fee, it goes up to twenty bucks, non-refundable."

Alas, I never got a chance to follow through on this, but it was a fun thought experiment!

You could do that at places that check receipts such as Walmart, but not Costco as they can just terminate your membership.

I just walk by and usually they don't say anything, or if they do, I just reply "No thank you," as I am walking. Only one time a receipt checker actually (literally) yelled out, "That's not fair!" Everyone else just turns their attention to the next customer.

Yep, at Fry's I used to let the exit checker wipe the pink pen on my receipt if no one else was in line, or maybe one person in front of me. It let them feel like they were doing their job, and it didn't cost me much time.

But if a few people were in line, I would just nod and smile and walk on by.

I never had an exit checker question this (they were trained not to!) but I did get a few dirty looks from other customers.

Sorry friends, it's not my fault if you don't know the rules. ;-)

Even Costco couldn't detain me if I didn't let them inspect my cart. But as you noted, they could refuse to let me shop there again.

Of course it would be my loss. Even if nothing else, the membership is worth it for the olive oil!

Did you happen to score any of the 2020 organic Val di Mazara? I've been a huge fan of their Toscana year after year, but the Val di Mazara is something else. Such a delightful peppery oil. I hope they get it again in the next harvest.

There are a number of cases of people being arrested or assaulted for not showing receipts.

https://kfor.com/news/man-suing-costco-for-670000-after-refu...

The fact that you think they don't have the right, even if you are correct, does not mean it won't happen.

You raise a good point.

If an exit checker ever did say "Wait! Stop!" of course I would be friendly and let them check my receipt.

This would be the simplest solution, as my goal was not to prove a point about my rights, but simply to exit the store in an expeditious way with the merchandise I paid for.

But they never did question me, so it was never a situation I had to worry about.

Every now and then I'll be shopping and the security device by the door will beep as I'm walking out, even though I haven't stolen anything. I always just assume there's been a mistake, e.g. the cashier forgot to deactivate my security tag, and walk straight on out; I'm not going to waste my time being searched when I know I haven't done anything wrong.

This doesn't happen very often but as far as I can remember I've never been challenged when I do it.

But what I find really interesting is: based on what I've written above, isn't it trivially easy to guess my skin color?

Most stores have explicit policies not to chase people even when they visually observed shoplifting. It creates too many problems — it’s easier and safer to just turn the video over to the police.

Those security devices are generally there to scare potential thieves not actually detain or prevent them from leaving, so your anecdote doesn’t actually show anything interesting.

> But what I find really interesting is: based on what I've written above, isn't it trivially easy to guess my skin color?

Nope. Maybe it would be if I the reader were in a country where people are stopped exiting a store based on race, but thankfully the vast majority of the world isn't like that.

Interesting, I've never heard of exit receipt checking before. Where I live (in Europe) it doesn't seem to be a thing.

A local computer store doesn't likely have a lot of flexibility on price. They're working on low margins and are competing in a tight market already with online sellers. They're going to argue that they're offering something other than price- whether that's support, return policies, supporting local, etc.

But many of the comments on here have been anti-haggling, which is another way to say "Anti-negotiation". The problem I see isn't negotiation but instead how the negotiation takes place.

Let's take this computer store as an example. If you're one customer and you're making a single purchase- this is a simple transactional relationship and it behooves the store to optimize against such customers.

But if you are a customer who has been buying from this store for 10 years and using them for all the computer needs of a small business, presumably they've built a relationship up, in which case the computer store should know that they're gaining a loyal high-volume customer- a valuable asset indeed.

This means they can negotiate on many things, price being only one. They could negotiate on a barter of services, or they could negotiate on a personal relationship that's built up, or they could negotiate on service.

A good negotiation rarely happens in a single transaction.

I’ve wanted to try this strategy when buying a used car from a dealership. Offer them a good price, and if they counter, reduce my offer.

It really depends on who relies on whom. It looks like they are doing fine and can remove unwanted business as they wish.

I for one won't even touch this shop unless absolutely necessary. There are tons of alternatives online/offline. Good luck with your business.

We've had local business owners come in before that have tried to haggle with us. Even had one specifically point out repeatedly that he ran a business so he knew how it worked. Wouldn't take no for an answer.

It frustrates me to no end when someone doesn't understand the word "no".

“No soup for you. Come back, one year.”

A friend (small business owner) had this excellent retort when confronted by some particularly aggressive faux-sympathy-mongering:

> Oh, really, you're a small business owner too? Then you should know better.

There are people who ALWAYS want to negotiate. It's a reality that sellers/buyers have to accept. I usually stop after one "No" because I'm very bad at haggling, but I know a lot of examples that people get what they want even after multiple "No"s. Some people are good at this.

Personally I don’t like to negotiate with farmers. They’re usually family run and is rather they make a good living. At car dealerships like autonation? Oh fuck that, I’ll fight for every dollar!

Median farming family in the US are millionaires, and it's not a good thing they're family-owned any more than a used car dealership or small landlord is. They're both in the same class of landed gentry/small business owners, except farmers get more tax breaks.

As you can learn from @SarahTaber_bww, they're also the most likely to use slave labor because small businesses can't afford HR departments.

Are you sure that applies to farmers at farmer's markets? The farmers at the farmer's market that I personally know are not that wealthy and have farms on dozens of acres. Re: slave labor, you might be talking about farmers that have thousands of acres, selling at large scale, who need to hire a lot of hands.

Also, "millionaire" seems a bit misleading here. A family farm that's passed down might have a million in assets, but that gets eaten up quickly when you count land, vehicles, livestock, etc. It doesn't necessarily mean someone is living like a king with dispensable income.

However, I'm definitely ignorant about the data when it comes to this, so I'll take a closer look!

Is this true for farmers in farmers markets? I think this might be the case for large scale farming. Most farmers I see in my farmers market have relatively small land.

My hypothesis is that if they’re big enough they don’t need to deal with the small quantities at farmers markets.

And car dealerships, especially the chains are absolutely not in the same bucket.

> However, at the Farmer's market, there is a lot of price flexibility on products.

And the price flexibility increases as closing time nears!

My favorite comment heard at a garage sale, "In the morning the selection is good, in the afternoon the prices are good." Same energy :-)

Nice sounding aphorism that's probably false: it's not a market if the price is fixed. It's a cartel

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