I work on a farm that has a little farm store on site. We do little tours (petting zoo, farm tour, etc.), so we get a lot of families with kids coming through.

The mother of a visiting family is looking around. She’s eyeing the cartons of fresh eggs stacked by the register.

Customer: “Why are these so expensive?”

Me: *Gesturing out the window.* “They’re organic, free-range, and come from our hens right over there. They’re fed premium feed.”

We can clearly see a few dozen chickens, scratching happily around the open coop thirty feet away. The woman follows my finger, stares at the birds, and her face twists like she’s just smelled something awful.

Customer: “Wait… those eggs came out of them?”

Me: “…Yes.”

Customer: “No. I can’t. That’s disgusting. I heard some eggs come out of the chickens’ butts! I’ll stick to getting my eggs from the grocery store, thank you!”

Me: “Ma’am… where the h*** do you think the grocery store eggs come from?!”

Customer: “They grow them in factories!”

I’m left having to explain to her what factory farming is (and why it’s so bad). Also, if she is saying they come from a chicken’s butt, I probably need to teach her about the cloaca, but one thing at a time…

I have a very large dog. He’s never really been around kids, but he likes them when he sees them, mostly because their faces are lower than his mouth, so it’s very easy to lick faces. We are wandering around an open-air market with him when we see an approaching family, including a young boy (probably about four years old).

Boy: “DOG!”

He starts running towards us, carrying a huge cookie.

Me: “You can pet him, but your dad needs to hold your cookie.”

The boy stops, looks at the cookie, looks at dad, and turns back to me.

Boy: “Why?”

Me: “Because he’s not used to little people holding food. It’s very close to his mouth, and he might steal it.”

Boy: “It’s mine!”

Me: “That’s why I said give it to your dad to hold.”

The boy goes back to his looking between me, the cookie, the dog, and dad. Then he turns away and runs over to mom and the baby. He hangs onto the side of the stroller and glares at me and the dog.

Dad: “He doesn’t trust me not to eat his cookie. I guess I’m no more trustworthy than the dog.”

Mom: “Do you blame him?”

Dad: “That’s fair.”

And they wander off. Leaving me to think my dog is not as bad as I thought.

There’s a food market that opens outside our office at lunchtime. I am ordering at a new stall that looks good. It sells crispy fried food with rice and spices. The fried options are pork, chicken, or mushroom.

Me: “I’ll take the fried mushroom, please.”

I see the guy place the battered mushrooms into the same oil as the meat.

Me: “Oh, sorry, I should have said. I’m a vegetarian.”

Stall Guy: “Uh, yeah. The mushrooms are vegetarian.”

Me: “But you’re frying them in the same oil as the meat.”

Stall Guy: “…yeah?”

Me: “That stops it from being vegetarian. It’s contaminated by the meat.”

Stall Guy: “Look, lady, the animal still died. You’re not saving another animal by using a different oil.”

Me: “But I will be making a point by having lunch at a different stall. Good day.”

I reported what happened to the market master. The next week, that stall had been replaced by a Filipino grill place that knew how to separate the meat from the veggies!

Related:
There Is Mushroom For Improvement, Part 8
There Is Mushroom For Improvement, Part 7
There Is Mushroom For Improvement, Part 6
There Is Mushroom For Improvement, Part 5
There Is Mushroom For Improvement, Part 4

My job at a garden market was to handle orders from landscape companies, who typically bought thousands to tens of thousands of plants for projects. For these orders, I had to use those rolling containers that many supermarkets use to transport goods from suppliers. Our plants were sold in pots, of which twenty-five fit into a crate. Two stacks of ten of our standard crates fit on these rolling containers. That meant 500 plants fit on these containers — but only if the plants were low enough to allow the crates to be stacked. 

That doesn’t sound like much work or time. But these rolling containers had the same wheels as shopping carts, and as everyone knows, it doesn’t take much for one of those wheels to lock up. Driving one of these containers outdoors over uneven, dirty pavement was a pain in the behind, even when it was empty.

In practice, this was how it worked. Load the container with crates on both sides, and secure both sides with tension straps to prevent the crates from falling on the bumpy road. Drag the container several hundred meters to the correct bed. Loose the tension straps on both sides, unload a stack of crates, fill the crates, stack the empty crates on top, and secure the cart with tension straps. Drive a few meters further to the next bed and repeat the whole process until the cart is finally full. Drag the rolling container back to the delivery point. Leave all the crates with plants that couldn’t be stacked and later retrieve them with a wheelbarrow, which has boards placed on top so that four crates can fit on top of them. Move slowly and carefully; otherwise, the boxes will slide off the boards.

In other words, it was primitive, cumbersome, and incredibly time-consuming. Because of this method, it took me several days to complete an order that could have been completed in hours elsewhere. Almost all other market gardens had been using electric vehicles for years: essentially, oversized golf carts with big loading areas that could hold eighty to 100 boxes instead of twenty.

One fine day, our nursery also bought one of these electric carts!

But neither I nor the other colleagues responsible for the bulk orders were allowed to drive it. Instead, the boss’s wife used it because, in her eyes, such a comfortable cart was a privilege reserved only for her and her family members.

She and her daughters were in charge of the weekly market, and her job looked like this: she loaded one or two crates on the cart, drove around with this almost empty cart to swap out five or so plants that weren’t looking their best, and drove back to a central place to fetch one or two other crates. Meanwhile, my colleagues and I had to continue dragging around the rolling containers as before.

I don’t know how many thousands of unnecessary hours of work they paid us because of their ridiculous sense of privilege.

This happened years ago when banking was not as strict as it is now. I dealt in antiques and was set up at a local antique market. I had a gentleman from California buy a Spratling silver bangle and an American Indian blanket.

He gave me a check for $800, but it was returned for insufficient funds. I was livid and called his bank.

Bank: “There are not enough funds to cover the check.”

Me: “What can I do?”

Bank: “You can call and check periodically.”

I called every week for about two months and they finally told me that there were enough funds to cover the check. I went to my bank and told them to make sure this check went through right away, as the funds were finally in the account.

Well, it went through, and I laughed that he probably thought he would never have to honor that check. I don’t think you could get a bank to give you that information today, but back then you could!