My friend Tim lives in Moscow and in his career he has been a school teacher in Sukhumi, a wine executive for a Georgian winery, a land developer in Moscow, and probably many other things I’ve yet to discover.
Tim’s English is excellent which is fortunate for me. My Russian language has already been demonstrated in previous articles to be enough to avoid a shotgun wedding at the Russian border and to convince hockey players to drink wine. Beyond that, I’m lost with the Russian language.
We were working on a bulk wine deal between Russia and South America and trying to ensure that we were on the same page about how a particular transaction might go. Tim told me this allegory which clears up a question about how serious a buyer or a seller is.
Tim’s story goes:
Two men sat down to talk business.
One said, “I will sell you one liter of honey for one dollar and twenty five cents”
The other said, “I will buy the liter of honey for eighty cents.”
They negotiated for a long time and eventually agreed on one dollar for the liter of honey.
Then both men got up from the table.
One man went to go find honey. The other man went to go find money.
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