They’re Both Going To Milk This For All It’s Worth

This is a story my mom told me about my grandfather that happened in the late 1950s. Keep in mind that it was a different time back then.

My grandfather worked as a milkman his whole life. His company’s brand of milk was considered one of the better brands available, and for a very long time, it was only available via milkman. It was not in any grocery store — much to the grocery store’s dismay. The local grocery store kept asking — and then begging — the dairy company to please let them sell the milk in their store.

Finally, an agreement was made. The milk would be sold in the store, but with a small markup compared to the cost of delivery, so people would have an incentive to keep using the milkmen.

Where the dairy company went wrong was that the agreement on price was not in writing. So, while the price of milk started with a markup, that markup soon went away. The dairy company complained, but nothing changed. The grocery store kept the price at a lower amount.

The milkmen in particular were not happy with this; this was threatening their livelihoods. So, they all talked amongst themselves and made a plan. Throughout the next day, they gathered up their wives and kids and all headed over to the grocery store. Every adult grabbed a cart and started filling it with anything and everything nonperishable they could think of, from as many different aisles and shelves as possible. As each one finished piling their cart as high as humanly possible, they’d wheel it to the front, leave it there, and simply walk out. Soon, half of the store’s items were now go-backs, piled in a ton of carts, with the shelves looking bare and ragged. 

The next day, the milkmen checked the price of their milk in the store. No change. Their little demonstration hadn’t worked. So, they felt they had no choice. They stepped it up a notch. 

They now started taking all the perishables and anything that was supposed to be kept cool, cold, or hot and started “redistributing” these items for the grocery store. The ice cream belongs behind all the cereal boxes, right? And this fish should be put behind the cans of peas. The leaking steak goes on the top shelf behind the chips. And so on.

By the end of the day, the grocery store was looking at a ton of wastage while praying that they’d found all the starting-to-rot meat and fermenting dairy before things started to smell too much. 

The next day, the milkmen went back to check the price of milk again. The markup had, for some reason, been added back to the price. Nothing more was ever said about it from workers of either company. But that markup stayed on the milk from then on.