"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

Hello, fellow turophile!

Will it be the feta or the queijo that was in the wrong?

Have to go with the Feta, my fellow person of cultures.

Now, if Stinking Bishop were involved it would be much more obvious.

I suspect all this is an attempt by nearby Akkawi to discredit both Feta and Queijo...
Or possibly Gouda may be involved

Take the food back and demand a refund.

I don't think that food would be accepted in the stae it is by now😂

All that proves is that they needed cutlery for the next days business.

Firstly the stall you bought the food from should be pointing out they’ve run out of cutlery before you buy. Secondly the second stall was being mean and lost out on a sale to you how stupid. Can’t think those plastic forks are more than pence if bought in large quantities.

Just gets more and more far fetched every time.

Actually when the small sandwich and snack business I worked for a few years ago bought some sporks to include with salads etc, , they costed out at 15p each, which all adds up over a year, especially if you're not selling your own stalls food with them

Just gets more and more far fetched every time.

Eh? How is it far-fetched to think that a food stall would have in at least one day's supply of something essential to their customers, without which their main product is pretty useless (unless you're a bludging, entitled CF, like the Greek stall)?

If anything, it's much more far-fetched that the Greek stall didn't - and then didn't even bother to send somebody out to get more - even though there's a big supermarket and a catering supplies place a few minutes away.

It's shocking how many people who don't bother preparing ahead see people who have planned and bought in what they will need in good time, and then assume that they must have loads to spare for any and everybody who feels entitled to them.

Actually when the small sandwich and snack business I worked for a few years ago bought some sporks to include with salads etc, , they costed out at 15p each, which all adds up over a year, especially if you're not selling your own stalls food with them

That's a very good point. People are assuming that they just buy in the cheapest, crappest ones they can find, but if you actually care about your customers and want to provide them with decent cutlery that doesn't snap the instant you put a modicum of pressure on to it, it will cost considerably more - an investment of quite a lot of pounds for a big box of it.

For all we know, depending on their commitment to the environment and level of care for their customers, they could even have paid extra to supply people with a proper basic re-usable travel cutlery set, like they sell in Asda for about 99p (presumably a bit cheaper if you buy them in bulk from a wholesaler) - and priced the meals a bit higher to take this into account. But everybody is still making assumptions of wasteful profligacy and saying "pah, it's only 2p at most".

With that in mind, there's every chance that they may have bought just enough (with maybe only a few spares) for the number of meals they will have available to sell - thus they can't even give them to genuine customers who are only buying drinks and thus don't need them; in the same way they most probably don't allow for a straw for every meal, only for the drinks.

Well we've gone from ooh, the Brazil stall only had enough forks for the day to, ahhh they had an oversupply for the next day

Straws and clutching come to mind. The Greek stall may have brought enough but had an unusually large amount of custom.

None of the market traders here have acknowledged that food stalls are notoriously unpredictable and usually have food left over at the end of the day.

Any business in this situation not taking a quick win for themselves and the OP are pretty poor. The idea that they can't do this because they will then not be able to plan for the next day is laughable.

The Brazilian stall is better off not giving away forks, then word will get around that the Greek stall has no forks and people will buy their food at the Brazilian stall. A far better strategy!

Right, that's a valid explanation, trying to undermine their competitor.

The first stall is undermining itself by not being properly prepared!

Or it's really popular and ran out of cutlery

Was it giving the cutlery away without sales then?

Because, unless they were doing that, it's just piss poor planning. They must know how many portions they can sell. Thus how many boxes, napkins, forks etc. And some extra as contingency.

And, presumably, once they had an empty fork box, they stopped selling, and the OP must have been the last cust. Because they surely would not go on selling once they had run out of forks.

If I were the OP though, I'd just have gone back to the Greek place, told them the other place had refused to give me a fork, and asked them to either sort it out or give me a refund and I wouldn't eat it with the my hands.

Well, no. it's not predictable. They might have just been rushed off their feet and overlooked it.

Or it could have been piss poor planning.

Just at the Brazil stall could have been selling nothing and were being petit, or had immaculate planning with their large tub of cutlery.

Right, that's a valid explanation, trying to undermine their competitor.

I can only think that you or your family own the Greek stall, with your determination to defend their poor business sense AND their CFery to the hilt.

How is it undermining somebody who is taking people's money selling them a product without telling them that it can't realistically be used and they've just wasted their money? It's perfectly legitimate to warn people against using a business that is effectively scamming them - which is exactly what they're doing by deliberately selling a product that cannot be used for its sole purpose.

Even if they initially made a big blunder with counting how much cutlery they had, with Morrisons and Nisbets just around the corner, it isn't that they can't help the situation but that they simply don't want to. For all we know, they could regularly have stalls at the same market as the Brazilian stall, turn up undersupplied and try to pull this trick every time.

Well, no. it's not predictable. They might have just been rushed off their feet and overlooked it.

Then they simply send somebody off to Morrisons or Nisbets (or close the stall temporarily if there's only one person there - whatever they'd do when the stallholder needed to go to the toilet) and resolve the problem in the easiest, most straightforward way.

Alternatively, if they're exhausted and have done a load of trade, they can just put up the closed sign and call it a day.

Why are you so furiously defending scammers?

Not sure what you're referring to. I didn't say anything was "predictable".

What I meant was, if every meal has a kebab, or a chicken leg, and a flat bread, plus a scoop of salad and some sauce. For example.
Then they know how many kebabs, chicken legs and flat breads they have, that dictates how many boxes, napkins and forks they should bring.

I mean, I'm not even in catering and this is obvious to me.

Equally, if it's so easy, why hasn't the Greek stall asked the Brazilian stall for, say, a hundred spare forks?

I mean, they're only 10p, right, you'd give someone 10p, wouldn't you?

Market traders say no, there is limited space. Read back the thread.

I have read the thread.

Are you saying there is not enough room on a stall for the correct amount of cutlery to match the food provision? If that's what you are saying, I think that's simply not true. For a start, they could just keep it in the car until they need to restock the stall

But, it's utter nonsense.

I go to a lot of festivals and markets, if what you are saying is true, there would be a lot more cutlery related issues. And I have never yet had a cutlery related issues other than those stupid plastic forks breaking.