Gotta get a carpet!

The first time we went to Turkey was in 1964, by the time we got to Istanbul (Constantinople), we were almost broke. We had spent five weeks in Greece and this was the end of our trip.

We could not resist going to the market and attempting to buy a rug. I knew the principle of negotiating, but not the finer points. We found a fabulous, small prayer rug and decided to do the middle-eastern thing; after all, my roots are Asia Minor. I asked how much, the guy sized us up, offered us tea, and said 250 US dollars. It was early and we were his first customers, I knew that was to our advantage, he had to make the first sale or his day would be a disaster.

I am an impatient guy and immediately went to my final price, $50. He went through the act of clutching his heart and claiming it was an insult to everything under the sun, as well as his mother. He came down to $220, I said $50, he said $200, I said $50, he said $150, and I said $50 again.

We had some tea and he explained that when he comes down I should go up. He was just trying to explain the game; he also had to make the first sale. Little did he know I had given my top price first. We get to $85, and I say $50 again. He is now troubled, he turns to Jeannine and explains the rules to her, “I go down in the price and your husband goes up.” The tea is flowing like crazy, we even get sweets, and one hour has gone by.
He finally understands, this idiot, me, does not understand, he grabs my hand to close the deal and says $51, “come up just one dollar, please.”
Fortunately, Jeannine had the extra buck and we got the little carpet. He was very relieved to see me go, I hope the rest of his day was good, he made his first sale of the day, and we had our $51 carpet.

I realized that you must go even lower so you can come up a bit, so the procedure follows the unwritten rules.

This bargaining process is so ingrained in most people, from that part of the world, that it is done automatically. I was in Macys with my mother when I was a kid, she was buying some fabric…in those days they had a huge fabric department…. she kept adding a foot to every yard the guy rolled out, he would roll it back six inches, she would add a foot. I got embarrassed and told Momma to stop. The salesman, a Jewish man, looked at me and said,“ Listen college boy, this is the way your mother and I do things, we bargain, not on the price but on the length of the material, go look at some shirts, and leave us alone putz.”

Bargaining is in the blood; it wasn’t quite in mine the first time. I am getting better, though not quite as good as Mamma was, she would have gotten the carpet for $20, guaranteed