Day 6 and 7 Supply and Demand
My food bank client, stooping over the table, eagle-eyed a box of apricots and nectarines.
“How many of these did you say I could have?,” she asked 
“One,” I said.
Today was my first day “working the line,” which in Food Bank parlance means giving out perishables- fresh produce, yogurt and milk, pre-made salads, wedges of cheese, pies, muffins, and cakes on a limited basis.
The program manager did the run-through every day as to how much we could give out from each section. The experienced “liners” made it easy by placing citrus with citrus (lemons with oranges) and apples with apples (Pink Ladies mixed with McIntoshes) so calculations among type were standard.
But then there were always limited selections of exotic produce that didn’t have a logical place for display. This is where strategic merchandising, like in any retail store, kicked in.
“Move those three eggplants from the box with the corn to the box with the fennel,” said the program manager as clients leaned against the heavy warehouse until we open for business. “If you give them a choice of corn or eggplant, the eggplant will never go.”
After the line had been shopped and amounts of items sat or went quickly, volunteers had to reset guidelines by a loose but logical process.
Volunteers would take a glance at how many pieces of fruit were left in a box and measure how flush we were in, let’s say- bananas. For example, if we only had a half box full of pale yellow green bananas left in an hour, clients were allotted two. But since we had two full boxes of riper ones pockmarked with dark chocolate-colored dots and they weren’t moving, the clients could take four.
It often took some quick judgment calls. One of my clients was more attracted to the smaller and more munificent plums, so I let her take two to make up for her not taking a larger one.
The amounts clients were allowed to take also changed midstream if we got a surprise delivery. An allotment of two nectarines could be changed to four in an instant if our bounty increased.
The client’s bubblegum short-taloned nails tickled over the apricots and nectarines. Because she was having a hard time reaching over, I offered one to her.
She looked at it and frowned.
“I don’t want this one. It’s mushy. Sorry to be so picky,” she said.
“Why not be?” I said.
The client’s “sorry to be so picky” qualifier brought up the argument that if clients were getting something for free, they should be grateful with what they were getting. I had heard this argument swirling around the Food Bank.
But I believe they should be just as picky as if they were paying money – or maybe even more so. The apricot she is trying to find may be the only one she has all week- so why shouldn’t it be pristine?
With bending the rules also comes some second guessing.
My co-volunteer overheard a client talking about a family birthday party they had coming up.
“For that reason, you get two pies instead of one,” said the volunteer.
I was the dessert monitorer on this line with this dispensation. So when the couple came to survey the lemon breads, bran muffins, and three varieties of fruit pies, I was confused.
Did this mean that they got a pie and a box of muffins, or two pies and another selection?
The client started taking two pies when I noticed she had also taken a package of chocolate mini lava cakes.
“Sorry, you can only have one pie because of the mini-cakes.”
“Oh, ” she said somewhat embarrassed. “Okay,” and she put one pie back.
I am still not sure if I did the right thing.