DEAL OR NO DEAL

My life's course has been placid in these past few weeks, my garden of gripes not requiring much in the way of weeding. Then yesterday I helped out at a yard sale held at my parish church, and one little, noxious weed did begin to sprout.

Due to inclement weather the sale was held indoors, in the church space proper and thus would more accurately have been labelled a rummage sale. The pews were rearranged to display the wares and one despaired of getting everything back to normal. If you've ever been to one of these events - there was a lot of junk.

I was one of the people taking cash first for the books, then for the lamps. Towards the end of the day (the sale only ran from 9 until 1:30) we announced that people could fill a bag for $5, which made things go faster. That, of course, did not apply to the lamps, which would not fit into the bags provided. I had been instructed to haggle to a certain point. But.

One woman was willing to take a floor lamp for $5 rather than the $20 marked. That was fair enough, because as I showed her, the cord was missing and it was only useful if she knew how to fix it. There were also two table lamps marked at $5 each, which I allowed to be argued down to $2; there was nothing wrong with them, except they did not have shades. Well, how about $1 each, she suggested. After all - no shades. At that point I stuck to my guns and insisted on $2 each or nothing. And she walked away with the floor lamp, making an offhand remark that implied I was stupid not to sell her the other two.

Actually it struck me that however socially acceptable haggling is becoming, however fun it might be to a certain degree, it is extremely boorish to do so at a charity fundraiser which is already offering goods at dirt cheap prices. If you don't care a fig about the charity in question, so what? It is still people attempting to to some good in the world and you are diminishing their power to do so with your petty pennypinching. The more I think about this, this is a serious moral issue. The acceptability of haggling encourages viciousness and deceit on both sides - sellers overpricing goods because they know buyers will deliberately undervalue them.

The leftover goods at the end of the day went in three directions - some to Goodwill; some to another church which will distribute directly to needy people in their parish; and the rest to the dump. If Madame is upset that she did not get the steal that she wanted, Madame is welcome to rummage through the last destination.