Retail can be VERY difficult. There are plenty of really great people; but, now and then you meet someone who makes you question why you're doing this at all. Sometimes you get a person who doesn't understand that BS means "Blooming Size", not Massive, Huge Specimen Plant. However, most people who don't understand exactly what is "normal" for the price, etc., are newbies and they will listen and learn if you take the time to teach them. But, then there are the people who are NEVER wrong. I could just smack those people.
I especially have issues with people who do not care for their plants and then they blame the vendor for the resulting problems. I once had a customer who bought a 5 bulb Coelogyne Burfordiense from me when I was selling at the St. Lawrence Market in Toronto. It had huge, plump pseudobulbs that could kill a person if you swung the plant hard enough. She brought it back to me 2 weeks later, very shrivelled. It had all it's roots and otherwise looked fine. I said she must've put it someplace very warm and then hadn't watered it enough. Well! Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.....about how wrong I was. She'd been watering it copiously every day, etc., etc. I know what I'm looking at and the potting medium and the roots clearly showed an extended lack of water, not an excess. Finally, to get rid of her, I said I'd let her take a replacement. I told her that there was NO warrantee on the replacement and I would not ever sell her anything else. She took her replacement and left. I took her plant back to my greenhouse and watered the hell out of it over the next week. Because it's problem was her lack of watering, the roots had not rotted, they worked just fine once water was available. The pseudobulbs plumped back up to full volume within days and I took the plant back to the market the next week and sold it to someone else.
That women probably took her new plant home, stuck it in her window and forgot to water it at all while she had it. Then, noticing it's poor condition, she got all upset at me for selling her a live plant that actually needed to be cared for! Some people are so unreasonable. I have actually told some "customers" to buy plastic flowers instead because caring for something alive doesn't seem to be in their skill-set. I don't care if they never come back to me again. It is better to let some people burden the competition with their antics and not take up my time and cause me stress.
So ehanes, why don't you ask your customer this: Since in their world everything of the same size, weight and volume is the same price, ask him where you can get a pound of lobster for the same price as a pound of potatoes!
