“Hello?”

“Hey, man.”

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Nothing. Alright, listen to this. Last Saturday I was driving through my neighborhood and there were two little girls with a stand on the side of the road.”

“A lemonade stand.”

“Right. Just a typical lemonade stand. I always try to stop at these even though I usually don’t want to.”

“You’re a good man.”

“Thank you. Anyway, so I pull over and they come up to the car. The girls tell me they have lemonade, brownies, and bouquets. The flowers look like they picked them from one of their houses.”

“Got it. Nice mix of offerings.”

“So, I say I’ll take a brownie. They say, ‘ok, that’ll be $2’. I’m a bit surprised and question the price and they say, ‘yes, everything is $2’.”

“OK.”

“Two dollars?”

“This offended you?”

“Deeply. It was ridiculous. I looked at the girls and made a bit of a questioning face and repeated, ‘everything is two dollars?’. They said, ‘yes, our moms said to sell everything for $2’. I look up the driveway and their moms are sitting in lawn chairs watching our exchange. They looked like uppity, snobby bitches. Now granted, I don’t know if I’d have made that assessment ordinarily or if it was only after knowing they’d advised their girls to sell shit lemonade for $2.”

“Why did this offend you so deeply?”

“Well, one, because it’s fucking ridiculous. They’re little kids selling hot garbage lemonade. The whole thing is a silly charade. It’s a charity case done with the pretense of the kids learning a lesson. We commend them for enterprising and they get excited about doing something well, and that’s fine. But, charging $2 is just exploiting the situation.
“Secondly, it wasn’t the little girls’ fault. It was the fault of their snobby moms. I can picture them discussing this activity on a legitimate profit and loss basis. I’m sure they had to purchase and make the brownies and lemonade. They totaled the material expenses plus their estimated labor rate and came to a total project cost. Then, in order to make a profit, they backed into the sales price for each item. I’m sure they felt smart and thought this practical.

“What they clearly didn’t understand was that this isn’t a real fucking scenario of supply and demand. The girls may as well hold a sign that says ‘$0.50 per smile’ because people would still throw money in their cup. But these bitches think it’s a good idea to run a practical P&L statement on the endeavor. It’s just fucking bullshit.”

“Wow. That’s a lot. So, what did you do? Did you drive off?”

“No. How could I? I’d already stopped. Not buying anything would have been worse than not stopping at all. I ended up getting the flowers. Then I drove off pissed.”

“Well, I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

“Yeah, well me too.”