A kid walks into the barbershop. It’s an old-fashioned, family-run place at the northern edge of Atlanta. Early evening on a weekday, it’s busy. Full of professional guys – consultants, techies, marketing men. I’m waiting while Tom gets his hair cut.<\/p>\n
The boy’s pudgy, a little bit country. He has thick hair and a square head.\u00a0He asks how much for a cut. He’s got a North Georgia accent.<\/p>\n
$20, barber tells him.<\/p>\n
Kid looks distressed, fusses a little. “It\u00a0ain’t that long, I don’t need much cut.”<\/p>\n
It’s the same, the barber says. A junior haircut is $20.<\/p>\n
Kid turns and leaves, head down. I see him pull a phone from his pocket.<\/p>\n
A minute later, he’s back.<\/p>\n
“You do it for $16?” he asks.<\/p>\n
The barber at the counter announces this in an incredulous tone. “Would I do a $20 haircut for $16! No, son, sorry. A haircut is $20.”<\/p>\n
General guffaws and laughter as the kid leaves.<\/p>\n
The kid was clean, he didn’t look poor. But I could imagine his mom or dad coaching him on how to get a better price.<\/p>\n
I reckon his family’s used to a little give and take, a little understanding about what you can pay and what the merchant’s willing to do to make a living.<\/p>\n
But this barbershop is in\u00a0the big city, not out in the country. The price is the price.<\/p>\n
I’ve lived and traveled in a lot of countries\u00a0where negotiation and haggling are required for almost every purchase. It’s a pain.<\/p>\n
I like having set prices, knowing what the price is. I can choose on the spot whether to buy it or look further.<\/p>\n
Thinking about the kid, I recalled\u00a0a story that a friend told me recently about her mother.<\/p>\n
She was in an upscale department store in Manhattan, and asked about the price of a necklace.<\/p>\n
The clerk named the price. The woman sniffed. She said, “I’ll pay $60 for it.”<\/p>\n
The clerk was taken aback and said, I’m sorry, no.<\/p>\n
My friend’s mother\u00a0called for the manager.<\/p>\n
The manager, knowing the profit margin and calculating the overall worth of the customer, agreed to sell her the necklace for $60.<\/p>\n
Nobody laughed at her.<\/p>\n
Today’s penny is a 2014. I was in Italy and I haggled with a few\u00a0vendors near St. Peter’s. They didn’t laugh, either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A kid walks into the barbershop. It’s an old-fashioned, family-run place at the northern edge of Atlanta. Early evening on a weekday, it’s busy. Full of professional guys – consultants, techies, marketing men. I’m waiting while Tom gets his hair cut. The boy’s pudgy, a little bit country. He has thick hair and a square … read more Price fixing<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9999,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[320],"tags":[36,415,249,1359,1358],"class_list":["post-9995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-shelter","tag-36","tag-business","tag-italy","tag-negotiation","tag-prices"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9995"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10000,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9995\/revisions\/10000"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}