bad negotiating skills

For the last year or so our team has been trying desperately to help this sweet like minded woman who sells shoe inserts at the gate in front of our school. We've tried just giving her money or food or offering to help in some way. She rejects all of these things...foreign help is not welcomed 99.9% of the time. After much frustration, I decided to just buy some shoe inserts from her. Well, tonite she wanted to give them to me for free! Ugh...that's not the point. For those of you who watch 'Friends,' it was like when Chandler was trying to give Joey money so he made up a pretend card game and let Joey win.

So I refused to take them for free. She kept insisting and finally charged me 1 kuai (chinese currency). I told her I wanted to pay 2 kuai...she refused....1 kuai she said adamently back. So I told her 1.5 kuai was it. I finally stopped and realized that I had been bargaining UP with her! I just wish she would receive our help instead of me having to negotiate UP the price. Sometimes we just need to receive help and not struggle to do it on our own.