Monday, May 14, 2012

Are you the grasshopper, or the ant?


It is best to prepare for the days of necessity

That’s the moral of the Ant and the Grasshopper, an Aesop's fable, and it’s one that I had to keep reminding myself of this weekend.

Being Mother’s Day weekend, advertised yard/garage sales weren’t quite as plentiful as normal, and after looking around the backlog in my storage room (AKA our great room), I decided to take the day off, sleep a little later, and try to get caught up on my listing.

Ella, however, wasn’t buying it (pun intended), though, and took it upon herself to peruse Craigslist on Friday night, and make a list of yard/garage sale targets for Saturday morning.  Admittedly, there were more than enough sales to keep us busy, but the lure of sleeping late still lingered in my mind.

Dutifully, though, I set my alarm, and was up at the crack of dawn on Saturday, and we were out the door by 6:40ish, running a little late for the first 7 a.m. sale.  I was still grumbling to myself, wiping the sleep out of my eyes, when we pulled up to the sale, and saw our main competition already there, getting the perceived, and probably a few real, bargains.

At that moment, I realized that I was being the proverbial grasshopper, and, much to my chagrin, my competition was being the figurative ant.

It was an eye opener, literally.  So, I spent the rest of the morning shedding the grasshopper mentality, and becoming very ant-like, and very methodical with my purchases, with an eye toward not only maintaining a large inventory, but also making sure I always have something to list, no matter how big a mess my great room is.
 
D'oh! Moment of the Weekend
  
It wasn’t the first time, and knowing me, probably won’t be the last time, but we tried to go to a neighborhood yard sale a week in advance.

The sale was to be one of our main stops, but when we pulled into the neighborhood, we were surprised by the lack of open garages.  Now, it’s not particularly uncommon to find sparse participation in a big neighborhood, but this was nothing, nada, zilch, zippo.

After riding around the block, I stopped to look at the Craigslist ad.

D’oh!!!!!!!

It was scheduled for next weekend, as the ad plainly said, but they listed it right in the middle of this weekend’s sales, and we goofed by not reading the date.

I hate it when that happens.

Email of the Weekend

I sold one of those urban dog-tag type charms/pendants designed to be worn on a chain that seem to be popular these days.  It was from my failed experiment of buying storage units, and had taken forever to sell.  I had lowered the price repeatedly, and it finally crawled out the door for $40.  



Obviously, it’s cosmetic gold jewelry, probably gold plated, but it is labeled as 14k on the back, which was plainly detailed in the ad. So, I had no problem using “Gold” as one of the keywords in the title.

What I should have done, though, is put this in the description:

“No, you idiot, I am not selling a high-end gold pendant for $40 that you can sell to the gold store on the corner for 10 times that amount.”

Had I done so, though, I might not have received this email from the buyer:

“I received the item today. I need to return it to you so you can refund the money to me since the item it's not gold. It's metal.”

I was nice, and said he could return it, instead of commenting on the fact that gold is actually a metal, and that he should spend a little more time on his grammar instead of trying to make a quick buck off eBay.

 Sale of the Weekend


It was a nice way to end Sunday evening.
















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