Peanutphiliacs are like alcoholics and smokers. They know that after their first raid, the packet will be re-raided over and again, writes Denis Beckett.
Something South Africa is not short of is persons selling tiny items at tiny mark-ups from desperate cardboard trays. Items like peanuts, alongside single cigarettes and sticky boiled sweets.
These are tiny peanuts, naturally. They make a pea look big. They are not the prettiest. They have a pinkish-greyish tinge, and their body language speaks of huddling in corners.
Your cardboard-tray peanut is the most slender relative of the big golden chompy peanut that frequents the cocktail bar. That is the brassy blonde beauty of peanuts, tanned and confident in a bikini and arriving in the sports-car of peanut packaging, a machine-made kilogram carton in look-at-me colours.
But our humble hero the cardboard-tray peanut populates a jiffy-bag of perhaps thirty grams, wrapped by the hand of the hawker.
Now obviously, Good Reader, you are an admirable human being who keeps your temptations under control. But you may have heard of a disease common among your lesser brethren, Peanutphilia.
Peanutphilia’s victims are incapable of enjoying a portion of a packet of peanuts. Once they start, they go on until the packet is finished.
They try, oh yes. They tell themselves every time “this packet will be the one that lasts”. They vow to eat just a few peanuts at a time, and keep the packet in their pocket for a respectable time.
They’re liars. Peanutphiliacs are like alcoholics and smokers. They know that after their first raid, the packet will be re-raided over and again, at ever shorter intervals until it’s gone.
For Peanutphiliacs, the cardboard-tray peanut is a wonder of the world. Having indulged yourself in a 30-gram packet you have achieved three things. You are contented, you’ve had your peanut fix. You are virtuous, the calories are negligible. You are frugal, the cost is minuscule.
Just one catch. The cost is too minuscule. Finger-maths reveals the vendor’s earnings as so small that the car-guard’s income looks like an advocate’s. You feel exploitative.
Forgoing your change hardly makes amends. You’re moved to offer business advice.
Danger zone. Be Customer, not Consultant. No-one relishes: “I who do not do what you do know better how to do it”. Everyone likes client feedback.
On the spot, battle to untie the knot on the packet. The vendor says: “No, you don’t do that, you break the bag.” Respond: “I make a slipknot or bow, to untie and retie so that peanuts do not spill and oil their way around my pocket.”
Do not expect: “Eureka! A competitive edge for my business!” Vendors may shrug, this has nothing to do with them. Or brows may furrow, or worries be expressed – that the knot has always been tied this way, or that other hawkers would take offence. Or even: “Great, I’ll do that.”
There’s a factor here that President Jacob Zuma might take into account, when he worries about income disparities. But now and again rewards arise.
Like last week. I’m on another side of town, seldom visited, when a beaming hawker bustles up shoving a packet of peanuts at me.
I’m a bit taken aback. What is this? An over-pushy salesman?
No. The packet is tied in a bow so customers can re-tie it at will. He says: “I had this idea after you bought from me before. People like it and I’ve put the price much higher, from R2 to R3. May you please take this packet for free.”
A R3 thank-you present; magnificently memorable.
Contact Stoep: e-mail: [email protected]
* Beckett is a writer and journalist
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.