Greed, thanks capitalism.
I was down in Colorado Springs this past weekend, a quaint little town, south of Denver. My father and I were driving back from his office when we ran across a lemonade stand. Five kids total ranging from five to nine years old all leaning over the sidewalk at angles unimaginable, not one toe hit the street. They were waving signs - obviously self authored - proclaiming “25 cents, LEMONADE!!!”, etc. My dad promptly drove right through their innocent onslaught - maybe intutitively recognizing what was about to happen.
I got my dad to stop and the oldest kid ran up to my window. “We’d like two please”, I said. “That’ll be $1.00″. Are you noticing something here? The math doesn’t add up. “Well your sign said twenty-five cents”. “Oh, you saw that? Ok, the total is fifty cents.” I gave him the two quarters a little reluctantly. I could smell where this kid was going. This cute little girl runs up with the first cup about 1/4 full. “Here you go!”, cute little smile and plenty of charm. I let that smile make up for the one sip she just handed me and mustered up a genuine, “Thanks”. She ran back to the stand. She came back. “We’re all out of lemonade, can you wait a minute while we make more?”. “Uh, sure”, I said fully expecting that second cup to come any second. She runs back a minute later. “Mom says we can’t make any more, sorry!”, cute smile, charm is weakening. “Ok, no problem”, we drove off.
You’re kidding right? We just got scammed. They couldn’t scam us up front so they just did it from the back. Why the hell didn’t they just put fifty cents on the sign? Or maybe that wasn’t their goal. Maybe they were having fun scamming older people. If I remember correctly I used to be devious to just be devious. Were they old enough to draw up an elaborate scam to clown around everyone who drove by? Or were they just too stupid to realize that passersby would pay more than twenty-five cents for some lemonade made by five children in their front yard?
I hope it was the former.
Filed by ryanroth at May 11th, 2005 under Endurants