Five minutes after the estate sale opened a man walked up to the check out table and told Dottie, Mom's business partner that he'd give her 50 cents for a one-dollar LP album. When Dottie told him we weren't discounting anything since the doors had just opened he threw the album on a chair and walked out. Oh how my hands itched to throttle him! It was not an auspicious beginning for a long day of more of the same.
It used to be that Mom and her friend could make a decent "wage" by handling estate and moving sales for those folks who didn't want to be bothered with the mess and hassle of doing one themselves, but since the advent of eBay many buyers want to get items for 25 to 50 cents so they can put it on eBay and make a ten dollar profit. Which is their right, but since Mom works for a percentage of the sales, every dollar that she takes in is important to recoup the time and energy spent in setting up the sale. And the sales seem to be taking more of a physical toll as evidenced by the newly developed high blood pressure/nose bleed thing going on right now.
I don't know what the answer is, but I hate to see Mom and her friend working for what can turn out to be less than a couple dollars an hour when the total sales for the event is added up. It's frustrating and depressing.
On another note, we have a tornado watch going on with a high probably of it turning into a tornado warning. See, this is what I like about Arizona--very few instances of tornadoes. Or mud slides, hurricanes, forest fires or earthquakes. Great sunsets. Warm temperatures in the fall, winter and spring. Believe me, I'm trying to get Mom to move West, but she's holding out for the ocean. Sigh.
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