We had the first items from our recent eBay garage sale collected today, two people came.
The first guy - I don’t know his name, arrived to pick up a 12 piece dinner set. He used to build his own motorbikes when he was younger, starting with a Harley, and remembers when the Japanese first started selling their bikes in Australia. He lost his drivers license in the days when it was a separate piece of paper to the motorcycle licence and the police didn’t have computerised systems, so still had his bike license. He even called the RTA (road transport authority in New South Wales) to check if he still had a licence and was advised to not get caught speeding! He now has three bikes, a tourer, a cruiser and an off-roader. He used to work as an electrical engineer for the communications department of the Victorian government before some premier closed the whole department, and then hired him back as a sole trader to work on a state-wide communications network. He now repairs ride on mowers and was disappointed recently when he realised his wife seems to have picked up a thing or two when she called him on his plans to install a motorbike engine in one. Oh, and the reason they bid $2.75 for the 12 piece blue dining set was that his wife is a Carlton supporter (Australian Footy: the blues) and everything has to be blue. He even had to repaint his car!
He paid $5 and didn’t want his $2.25 change. He paid 181% of the winning price, spent 20 minutes chatting and walked off happy as pie. Pie is very happy!
This evening, Matthew came to pick up the coffee machine. He stayed outside (we were keeping the cat in). He asked me if it worked. The eBay description said it it. I confirmed it did. He have me $260 and accepted my offer of $3 change, which I went inside to find. Then he left.
There wasn’t much opportunity for Matthew to start up a conversation, and of course I realise that this is not a fair comparison, but it struck me that in general terms there are those that take their time, have a chat, share life stories and don’t care about the change, when others just want to do business and get out of there.
Another message to take life a little more slowly, appreciate the beauties and understand value. The dinner set man got way more than $2.25 worth of value from the extended stay, and I got to enjoy his visit and got paid $2.25 for the pleasure! *grin*