over the last few months, i have been engaged in a feud with a local garlic farmer. what originally started as a great friendship was corrupted by greed and selfishness. but i have enacted my revenge. jim you are so fucked you don’t even get it.
i attended the same farmers market for over a year, purchasing garlic from the same local farmer. we will call him jim because that is his name. fuck you jim you stupid fuck.
originally i would buy 2-4 pounds of garlic from him on a weekly/biweekly basis. it was good for him and good for me and we developed a nice friendship. he even had me out for dinner one night on his farm with him and his grandson. it was pleasant and i was genuinely excited to have made a new and unique friend.
soon into our friendship/business relationship i started increasing the weight of garlic i would purchase from him. 8 pounds, 10 pounds — he had excellent cloves and i wanted them.
one day, however, he betrayed me. i arrived at the market as usual, greeting the lovely people at their stands. we had all come to know each other. i was the garlic guy. jim was the garlic guys garlic guy.
jim met me with his usual smile and handshake but i sensed something was off. and i was right.
jim explained to me he could no longer sell me the garlic in bulk for the price he was — he had to charge a premium. this made no sense to me, i wasn’t getting a bulk discount and was paying full price per bulb. i tried to reason with him and he became hostile.
in that moment out of frustration i asked what he valued his full garlic supply at the market as. he gave me a number. i pulled out my wallet, put the exact change on the table, and slowly transported all the garlic to my truck.
jim’s greed was and will be his downfall. immediately upon sitting in my car i was hit with visions of my vengeance.
i continued to go to the farmers market, making a beeline to jim and his exorbitant garlic. every weekend i haggled with him— not on price but on how much garlic he’d let me buy. i tried different times of day, different approaches, and always got different results.
regardless, jim continued to sell me at minimum 60% of his allotted garlic supply. weekly. to him it was an easy profit. i was a fool and he was playing me. you fool.
and that brings me to today. i have my inventory accounted for. i have my permit secured. i have my table and tent ready. and i have my revenge in my reach.
you see, today is the garlic festival. real garliccels know how important this event is for a local farmer. it is the only garlic festival for the next 3 weeks in a 280 mile radius. rural america is beautiful, but slow.
ive already bought a significant amount of jim’s garlic. and now im going to sell it. im going to sell it with my tent directly next to his. and im going to sell it, at a loss, for significantly less than whatever he decides to charge.
he will know instantly when he sees me what is going to happen. he will see me with his garlic and know my exact plan. his exact fate. but there will be nothing he can do. he started this feud. but im moving differently and he will pay. im moving very different.
nobody will buy his garlic and i have enough supply to last for 7 hours of constant sales. he has severely miscalculated.
you stupid bastard. you greedy imbecile. you have absolutely no clue who you fucked with.
when the day ends, ill still have enough garlic at home to plant enough to get my own stand at the farmers market next year. within 3 years ill put him entirely out of business. then i will buy his farm. i will raze it to ash. you stupid greedy motherfucker you have no idea who i am. you fucked up so bad. fuck you.
im neil mccauley. don’t let yourself get attached to anything you’re not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner. you fucked up jim
i am very excited to report back when the day is done. it’s not about the money. or the garlic. it’s about sending a message.
Stick it to a garlic farmer by buying their garlic? Even if selling it again means that they dont get the sales at that event, thats still garlic sold at previous events above the amount that they might otherwise have sold. Maybe growing more changes things, but unless one is a farmer oneself, I doubt one can so easily grow more garlic that a professional garlic farmer, because of the land and tools needed.
This guy is looking at the long view. If you read it to the end, he's starting his own garlic farm and is going to constantly undercut Jim's prices, so that Jim won't make any (or many) sales, until Jim goes out of business. He's doing this even if it means a loss for himself; his goal is to ruin Jim's business.
Now, this is what's known in Birdman culture as "a Dick Move," but Jim seems a bit of a dick himself. However, while it might screw up the beginning of my season, if I were Jim I'd simply pivot to onions.
It all comes down to how far OP's poster is willing to take it. He certainly seems petty enough to pursue all paths, at whatever cost, to prevent Jim from being able to still produce at that farmer's market; changing crops as Jim changes crops. If Jim's invested enough, he could rotate his crops between a half-dozen different root stocks and the odds Vengeance Boy would happen to match whatever he's selling that season would be slim and spoil his plan.
I don't understand Jim's deal. He wanted to charge our protagonist MORE money per bulb than he would charge someone buying less garlic? Why?
Was it a deeply shortsighted, cynical attempt to turn a quick buck? Was Jim weirded out by the dynamic forming with TokyoSunbather and was trying to put some distance between them? Was there some sort of subtle dynamic occurring where TokyoSunbather would take the best bulbs and leave only shitty ones behind, and that was causing subsequent customers to perceive Jim's stock as low-quality, thereby negatively affecting his reputation?
I don't understand. Something is missing. TokyoSunbather is either holding something back, or is overlooking a key detail. Either way I want to know. It doesn't make sense. Jim doesn't make sense. What is the missing piece I need to know.
Oh I didn't for one second think it was a true story. But it is a fun story that, with the exception of this one massive glaring hole, reads really well. Which just makes the one plot hole stand out even more.
Does the 60% mean he was buying 60% of ALL of Jim's garlic? That would be pretty annoying, to have someone clean you every week and have none for other customers. Obviously selling all your stock is great, but everyone else needs some too.
If you have enough customers that you can sell 4 lbs to one at a rebate and the rest is sold at regular price to the other clients, but then that one client starts buying all your stock at a rebate, you're losing money compared to the past situation, so you might be better off losing that client or forcing them to pay full price and hoping that they just continue buying depending on how the math works out...
But according to the story, he was buying at full price. No bulk discount. Jim was demanding more than his regular price. And, depending on when in the day he showed up, the price that Jim demanded fluctuated.
There was another tweet from before this one about "When the farmers market has a deal on bulk garlic" which leads me to believe he was getting a discount before and feels slighted at the removal. But who really knows? Either way I followed and am looking forward to an update.