This is the beginning of flea-market season, so my auction buddy Janet and I decided to clear out some excess stuff from our basements – you know, that junk we’ll never use again. We shared a space Sunday at a flea market near where she lives.
We were parked next to the “seller from hell.” She was a big woman, tall with unnaturally yellow hair pulled back in a ponytail and a sun visor shielding the 90-degree temps. She was selling new stuff – a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Very loudly. Anyone – from small children to adults – who stopped at her space of five to seven tables were brow-beaten or coerced into buying. No coddling here.
We heard her tell a friend that she retrieved a box of discarded junk from a seller after a flea market the day before. Maybe those were the 50-cent items she was hawking all day. (“If they were throwing it away,” Janet pointed out, “why would she think anyone else would want it?”)
I found her amusing. She had an in-your-face attitude and didn’t seem to care what anyone thought of her. All around her, most of us just sat back, allowed people to touch and look at our stuff, and waited for a sale. This woman did not wait. She pounced and got up close and personal – sometimes too close. Talking to them, nagging them, badgering them.
Every time she spoke, Janet eyed me and cringed. “This has been going on since 7 o’clock,” Janet groused, referring to the early-morning start of the flea market. It was now about 6 hours later.
I chuckled every time Janet shuddered. I was enjoying the show. I thought the seller was funny.
Here’s what we saw and heard all day (Janet’s chair was closest to the woman’s space so she was front-row):
Less than an hour after setting up, the seller complained to her friend that someone had stolen items from her table. Janet was not buying it.
She badgered a little girl into taking a Barbie suitcase on wheels when the child wasn’t sure she wanted it. The girl finally bought it for 10 cents.
She shouted “It’s only $8” at a man who didn’t want to buy a sports card from her.
She tried to force a little boy to buy a sports poster for 25 cents.
She screamed “2 for $10, 2 for $10” at a 20-something man who was undecided about buying two low-pixel digital cameras (why waste your money?). He pulled out a roll of 20s to help negotiate a lower price, but ended up leaving without the camera. After he left, the seller told her friend that he had plenty of money to pay for the cameras.
Soon, two more men looked at the digital cameras. “They’re new. My husband won them at work. (She has a husband? Poor soul).” She was willing to hold the cameras while one of them went to a cash machine for the money. The flea market was in a shopping center with a bank and grocery store, so an ATM machine was close by.
Leaving her space for a moment, she noticed a man pulling a half-empty cart. “That’s empty. Let me fill it for you,” she said. He smiled and kept on pulling.
She got up from her chair as a woman in a group of four fingered a spice rack on one of her tables. “I’ll take $2 for this. $2.” The woman shook her head, no. “No, you don’t want to pay $2?” No, the woman said as they stayed a few seconds longer and then moved on.
She started chattering about how she came across some items on her tables to a woman who walked up as the husband lingered at another table. The woman actually listened to her. “You a lawyer?” the seller asked. “A therapist,” the woman replied. “You’re a therapist because you listen,” the seller said. “I figured you were a therapist or a lawyer.” The husband appeared. “You’re a corporate lawyer?” she asked the husband. He was a general lawyer. She talked him into buying a belt for 50 cents. Then she complained that business was bad today (she was right about that). “Know what’s bad,” she said. “People use the internet. That’s bad.” With an attorney so close, she then told a long story about a leak from her upstairs neighbor’s apartment into her own and how she was handling it. The couple finally tried to leave but it wasn’t easy.
We did agree with her on one thing about buyers, though: They want to pay pennies for your stuff. “One guy didn’t want to pay 50 cents for a thermometer,” she told her friend. “What did he want to get it for? A dime? … Even if I marked it down to a nickel, they’d want it for a penny.”
With her ebullient personality (which bordered on obnoxious), her incessant chatter and her forceful attitude, she’d make a good reality show, Janet and I decided. The public would love her because they’d hate her. And isn’t that the key to a successful show? It could be called “The Flea Market Seller,” and cameras could follow her around as she bought stuff for her tables (can you imagine her negotiations for merchandise?) and sold it at flea markets. It would be similar to “American Pickers.”
She’d be a hoot to watch.
