The NYT needs to talk to more Perzhians
This New York Times article on haggling at big-box stores (“At Megastores, Hagglers Find Prices Are Flexible”) made me laugh out loud, and not just because it uses the word dicker, but because my people have been haggling the crap out of everything everywhere for, like, 2500 years. And lots of other people do this, too. So where’s the news, NYT?
Not to be ethnocentric or anything, but rich, poor, old, young… Iranians like to talk down a price. Some of us take it a little too far but for the most part it is something sorta ingrained - only an idiot or a desperate person or someone with something to prove pays full price. It’s funny to me that this article is also now a top story on Techmeme, as when I saw the headline I thought it was maybe a joke, or perhaps I was actually browsing The Onion by accident and that was one of their less-funny titles. I mean, even in NYC, where everything is overpriced to the extreme, people haggle. Duh. They sorta have to.
I am really into the idea that prices are pretty much random anyway, so there is nothing wrong with making the randomness mutually agreeable for both parties. I still remember my first big haggling victory, at age 16, talking down a skirt with a broken zipper to the bargain price of $5, in a boutique where the average price of shiz was $200+. That was a bargain for me, because it was a nice skirt and my mom was then a tailor, and it was a bargain for the proprietress because no one who shops in an expensive boutique will buy something defective. So rather than getting $0 for an item, she at least scored a fiver. My mom took out the zipper and sewed up the back, and it was totally wearable.
Next up from the Times? Probably an article about how a lot of people buy stuff on sale. That is so something that is not news at all and would show up in their slightly clueless style section, which I love/hate and read obsessively anyway. FYI NYT, I once scored a $900 skirt for $15 - at Searle, no less. Put that in your paper and esmoke it (Przhn accent).