Sales Isn’t Everyone’s Thing

There are so many wonderful things we love about Maine. The beauty of the sunrise. The pristine water. The clear blue skies.

The single item stores where you know that the pies have to be wonderful since that is all they sell. Or the cheese is the most delicious so they don’t bother selling anything else.

Then there are the the places that sell two items, not always related. Today Nancy, Karen and I went into one we liked, a popsicle/ apron store. We didn’t buy an $85 apron, but we did get a $6 wild Maine blueberry or a raspberry lemon popsicle.

For the most part Mainers are friendly industrious people who put up with those from away because we help their commerce. I’m not sure how many Mainers are buying $85 aprons.

On my tour of fun Maine places I took Nancy and Karen to Belfast. We had plans to also go to Camden, but Belfast was enough for us. We bought fabric and art supplies at the Fiddlehead Artisan, we admired the Dahlias, bought a fly swatter at the best hardware store, looked at shoes in the oldest shoe store in America and ate the best lunch at Chase Daily.

One stop I raved about on the way to Belfast was a bookstore I love. Not for the books, but for the orange Julius cookies. Warren and I always make a trip there for these special cookies and I wanted to share them with Karen and Nancy.

So after lunch we walked down the hill to the book store. Most years I am helped there by an ex- New Yorker who is gregarious and fun. Today when we entered the store I did not see him behind the counter, but instead was a woman. As she was helping another customer, I went to the back of the store to see if she had any of her famous cookies. I spotted four in the glass fronted case.

As I made my way back to the counter I heard her large dog barking at a rather large man in the store. The dog belonged to the store owner and she calmed him down. I asked if she could come sell me some cookies. Her response was odd. “I can’t go back there and leave my dog here, because she does not like this man.”

I looked at the man, who appeared to not be interested in buying anything and was just hanging around. I asked him, “Are you leaving soon?” He felt no compulsion to answer me, nor leave. The store owner asked him if he would come back to the cookie area with us so that the dog couldn’t see him. He obliged her and together the three of us went to the back.

“I’ll take all four of the cookies,” I announced. The women responded, “I don’t want to sell you all of them. How about you take three?” I am unaccustomed to having to bargain to pay full price for a product that someone is selling. If you have it for sale and I want to give you the asking price then it’s a deal.

“I came all the way from North Carolina, like I do every year, to buy these cookies.”

“If I sell them all to you, there won’t be any for someone else who might come in.”

“I have my two friends with me and my husband back home so I wanted four cookies. Do I need my friend to buy a cookie?”

“Ok, I guess you can have them.”

Have them? I’m buying them.

When I inquired where the nice guy from NY was, she said he had left her years ago. “But I bought cookies from him last year?”

“Oh, he took a long time to leave me.”

I handed her the cash for the cookies and thought the New Yorker couldn’t have gotten away fast enough.