"You can't have it for free",aibu?

[imacccu]

So I'm at Manchester for the Christmas markets.
Spent £20 on a Greek sharing box to eat for lunch.
I ask for two forks and she tells me they've ran out and to get them from the Brazilian stand opposite.
So off I go and say "can I have two of the plastic forks please as the Greek stand have ran out"

She says "no I'm not allowed as you didn't buy food here,you can't expect them for free"
I said okay il buy a drink
She said no only food
The cheapest thing was £10
So I sad no
Aibu to think she could of gave me a plastic fork
Is this what the worlds came too?
She had a huge and I mean huge tub of cutlery

So we had to eat with our hands which was near impossible as it was coated in sauces etc

I’m surprised you don’t bring a few extra carriers, DPotter, even if you’re not prepared to give them out. Just thinking for your own purposes, like if one splits, or somebody buying a £100 item asks for one extra or something. You wouldn’t say no to a 45p carrier and risk losing a £100 sale, presumably?

Actually what's really surprising is that the Brazillians and Greeks didn't have an agreement if someone ran out of forks to help each other out, given the apparent risk involved in the limited amount of forks they can bring with them. Why would they not make this agreement?

This makes no sense whatsoever

If they Greeks were sending people over for forks for several years they could have made quite a decent profit out of forks. Would have been their highest margin by a long way.

But regardless, the primary fault is with the Greek stall who
a) Did not bring the equipment their customers needed and
b) Deceived the OP by giving her the false impression a cooperative relationship with the other stall existed and that she could expect to get what she needed there. And so they got her to stop hassling them for something they ought to provide and transferred her ire onto the other stall.

Except you've now argued that there is a lot can be hypothesised about. So maybe the Greeks had an agreement with the Brazillians to cover each other when they ran out of forks and the Brazillians didn't honour it.

Maybe this is all on the Brazillians.

Actually this is the theory that now makes most sense on this thread.

The Greeks and the Brazillians had an agreement to cover each other when they ran out of forks. The Brazillian serving was new that day and didn't know this.

This can be deduced by
a) Space for forks is limited and margins are so tight in this business to the extent that it would make business sense to cover each other when either ran out of forks
b) You can sell the forks on at a significant markup when this happens
c) The OP said she had a huge and I mean huge tub of cutlery

So the Greeks were NBU as they had the agreement in place, but the Braziilians were BU for not informing their new employee about the agreement.

This would annoy me too OP. It's a fork 🤦‍♀️

I think that theory is very unlikely.

OP is asking if it’s reasonable of her to expect a stall she has had nothing to do with to provide her with cutlery when the stall she bought from ran out. And in the absence of clear contractual obligation by the Brazilian stall to her, yes, it’s unreasonable. She should direct her ire to the stall she actually had a contract with who failed her.

The Greek stall can feel aggrieved if the Brazilian stall reneged on a proper agreement to provide cutlery for the Greek stall’s customers, though that seems vanishingly unlikely given the details OP has provided. But even if that were the case, it’s still the Greek stall who have chosen a “fork supplier” who didn’t deliver, and it’s the Greek stall OP had a contract with.

We have been told by market traders here that there is limited space for forks so it makes sense that there are going to be times when forks run out for the Greeks.

It also makes sense that the Brazillian stall opposite also runs the risk of running out of forks.

So it would be reasonable to assume that they would have a 2 way agreement for this scenario.

If they don't have a 2 way agreement both the Greeks and Brazillians are BU for not having one

If they do have an agreement Brazillians are BU for not honouring it given that they had a large tub of forks remaining.

The latter is the most likely as the Greeks sent them over to get forks. I don't see why they would do this if they didn't have an agreement.

Either way the Brazillians are BU.

It was lunch time -the greek food stand owner was a dick for being understocked with cutlery but I get the opposite stall owners reason for saying no - she cannot be expected to supply free cutlery to all the greek food stands customers for the rest of the Day especially when they are not buying anything off her.

This would annoy me too OP. It's a fork

Do you not think it a wee bit cheeky and rather awkward to be effectively saying "I see that you are selling food, which is what I now need, but I shall instead give my business to your competitor, whom I believe to offer a superior product and/or better price, and none to you; but as they are unable to provide a fork, I shall nevertheless expect you to cheerfully hand one over to me, a competitor's customer" ?

I know OP offered to buy a drink after the stall said No, but only as a reaction to their declension - there was no automatic assumption that she should clearly be a customer in order to receive items provided to customers.

Aside from that, as we've said, it was quite possibly dozens and dozens of forks that the Brazilian stall was expected to hand over free of charge when they could have been serving their own actual customers. If 2p will never amount to anything significant, regardless of volume, will you pay one into my bank account every hour for the next 30 years?

It's also quite possible that the Greeks covered the Brazillians dozens and dozens of times when the Brazillians ran out of forks, and the Brazillians decided not to repay the favour.

A commercial enterprise that exists to make money (in an industry with notoriously tight margins) is ‘mean’ for not giving stuff away?

Do you often just give 10p to caterers who haven’t provided you with a service? Just not to be ‘mean’? If not, does that make you an arsehole?

The OP did not want a free fork, just did not want to buy another meal that was expensive and would go to waste.

If the Brazillian stall had an overage of forks then they could have easily sold a fork to the OP for a significant markup. Easily 50p for a 2p fork. If they didn't facilitate a clear win win situation here then the Brazillian stall was BU.

The market traders here have said the Brazilian stall would have not have had that many forks to do that (despite the OP pointing out they did) in which case they should have an agreement with the Greek stall to cover each other when either runs out of forks, particularly since the Greek stall sent the OP to the Braziliian stall. I don't know why they'd do that if they had no agreement. If the Brazilian stall did not honor this agreement the Brazillian stall is BU.

If they do not have an agreement and have a limited amount of forks the Brazillian stall has the same risk of not being able to supply cutlery as the Greek stall. Therefore the Brazilian stall is again BU.

The first person to look up the price miswrote it as 0.019p, instead of £0.019. Posters then added a few more zeros for good measure.

ReedRite
I’m surprised you don’t bring a few extra carriers, DPotter, even if you’re not prepared to give them out. Just thinking for your own purposes, like if one splits, or somebody buying a £100 item asks for one extra or something. You wouldn’t say no to a 45p carrier and risk losing a £100 sale, presumably?

I'm a sole trader, a potter. I'm already carrying 4 plastic storage boxes of pots (each weighing in the region of 15kg), a box of lights, batteries, chargers & table coverings, a box of display stands & clamps, a bag of bags, a bag of bubble wrap, a box for price tags, card payment mc, scissors, pens, tape, business cards, a bag for food for the day, a water bottle, plus a flask, sometimes 2, for coffee (my margins this Christmas season don't run to buying food and drink from other stallholders, be they Brazilian, Greek, or any other nationality). Half the time I am also providing my own table and chair.

Over the last 12 years I have honed the stuff I carry to the bare minimum. This evening I had 8 trips up and down 2 flights of stairs to pack up my stuff from a Christmas craft fair. It's events like this that save me on gym membership! In order to make a £100 sale I need the pot and the means to take a card payment. Touching large quantities of wood, I have never had a bag split on me. It's more important to have my chargers so my phone and card machine work. Do I have the wherewithal to carry additional bags, or anything else non-essential - NO. I know an extra bag or 2 wouldn't take much room, however there are things I would prefer to take as extras so where would the extras stop? I already fill a large hatch back with all my kit.

Like many, if not all aspects of life, my business is a balancing act - it's finely honed, regularly reviewed and (again touching large quantities of wood) rarely lets me down. I'm focused on my customers (potential and actual) - other stallholders will have to look after theirs.

Yes but people remember when someone has been generous or not and that does affect future business.

If she had given me the fork, next time I'd buy my meal from them.

The market traders here have said the Brazilian stall would have not have had that many forks to do that (despite the OP pointing out they did)

We don't know how many customers the Brazilian stall gets, so although they had 'loads', they may just have got the number that they anticipated needing for an expected number of meals sold over a certain time period.

It's a bit like somebody seeing your healthy-looking bank account on pay day and declaring that the drinks are all on you, but not factoring in all of your unavoidable bills that money has to cover throughout the month.

The first person to look up the price miswrote it as 0.019p, instead of £0.019. Posters then added a few more zeros for good measure.

Ah, OK, then - but it looked to me (I may be wrong) that it was the same person consistently having reduced the prices of forks a hundred-fold!

Well yes, that’s generally the way it works. There seems to be a lot of posters on here, though, who run small businesses that don’t need any repeat business to thrive.

If she had any business sense at all she would have sold you some cutlery for less than £10 and if the other place had any business sense at all they would go buy more or not run out in the first place. But no they were not unreasonable to refuse you free cutlery they pay for that they cannot subsidise other businesses its hard enough in the catering trade as it is.

Your logic fails at the start.

An agreement is not the obvious solution to the issue. Such an agreement would only be mutually beneficial if both traders were equally competent at meeting demand for cutlery. If one of them is not as good at this business task (or deliberately stiffs the other) such an agreement would penalise the more talented trader. So it is not reasonable to assume they would have one.

Also, the Greek stall has an obvious incentive to lie to their customer and tell her she can get cutlery elsewhere as they would not want her going on about the lack of cutlery in front of other potential customers. Sending her to another stall penalises their competition and removes a potential disincentive for other customers (she might return if she can’t cadge any from elsewhere, but less likely to do that at that point as most people just give up - and, indeed, OP spent her time in an exchange with the Brazilian stall, not having a go at the Greek stall for selling her food without cutlery).

If anybody needed 10p for something and asked, I’d give it to them.

It’s 10p.

Wouldn’t you? To help someone out?

Ever heard of paying it forward?

So, no? You don’t often just give 10p to caterers who haven’t provided you with a service? As that was the question.

Well, neither does anyone else. Passers by don’t just pop in and gives small business owners a bit of cash for nothing in return. So there is no reason to expect the reverse other than entitlement.

They are businesses and are not there to help people out, fulfil needs for which they are not recompensed or pay it forward. They are there to turn a profit.