Driving Too Hard a Bargain

When shopping in exotic markets filled with colorful goods around the world, it’s often too easy to be swept up into the excitement of securing a bargain. Don’t get me wrong, in most markets haggling is customary, and indeed in some places vendors would be disappointed if you didn’t try to bargain at least a little, as it’s a chance for them to interact with visitors and to show off their negotiation skills.
Scoring a good bargain becomes almost a high, and I was one of these travelers myself until one day I found myself in Guatemala trying to knock the price down for a piece of cloth with brightly colored embroiderey. I haggled over the piece and the vendor asked for a price that wasn’t much above the amount I decided I wanted to pay for it.
I didn’t realize how deeply the bargain fever had taken hold of me until I found myself telling the vendor, “It’s not worth that price.” As the words escaped my lips, I looked down at the item I was holding in my hands. I stared at the tiny intricate stitches the woman in front of me had carefully sewn on what probably took many days to create; I felt my heart drop. To my shame, the amount I was quibbling over was only the equivalent of a few dollars, not a huge amount of money to me; in fact I would probably spend that much later on a bottle of something cold to drink on a warm day. However, for the woman I suddenly realized it might be a considerable amount to this craftswoman from a tiny village, the creator of this delightful object. For all I knew it might be enough money to feed her family for a few days. I was so caught up in ‘winning’ that I had completely lost sight of the true value of the workmanship and even more, my humanity.
I stopped talking and quietly handed her an amount of money that was considerably more than the final price she had asked for. As I walked away with the charming handcrafted piece I realized that my handful of dollars had bought me something much more valuable than the decorative object. It’s not easy when you have grown up in a consumerist nation to change, but that day was the start of a personal evolution. When I look at the cost of something, I think about how much that could buy for someone in a poorer country, access to healthcare, water, food and more.
I still love a good bargain, and enjoy haggling for the social aspect when I have a chance to visit foreign markets, but I do so in a more thoughtful way thanks to that woman from Guatemala.