a venda tale

At last night's game:

I am selling cotton candy in the upper deck. It is a pretty bad game and having already sold one load, I am kinda puttering around with my second load, knowing everything has been covered well. My manager comes up to me and tells me there is a cotton candy sale in the outfield they need me to make, a birthday girl. Normally I wouldn't be too thrilled about being sent to the outfield in the middle of the game, but like I said, it's a slow game, so I wasn't going to miss many sales in the grandstand, and I thought perhaps the birthday girl had friends with who would all need cotton candy. 

I get to the designated section after being stopped by a few sales and the girl was nowhere to be found, but another manager-type-polo-wearing-person spots me and says, "Cotton Candy! Thanks for making the trip down, the birthday girl is over here."

I see the girl, around 7 or 8, there is a boy her age walking with her, and an adult male (I won't say "dad" because I assume no dad would actually act this way). They group approaches me and the adult says, "Tell her what you want." The girl replies, "It's my birthday, can I have a free cotton candy?"

At first I smiled sweetly (getting asked for free product happens a lot), apologized, and said no I can't do that (assuming the adult would quickly get the money out of his wallet). But no, the adult follows with "Oh come on, it's her birthday." I say again, I can't do that, and the adult follows with, "you seriously can't give her a free cotton candy?" At this point I explain that I have already paid for these myself and it would be coming out of my pocket and I can't do that. He presses TWO MORE TIMES to get this free cotton candy, not understanding (or not caring) that he might as well be asking me for $5 in cash. I continue to say no, at this point mostly just annoyed with the gentlemen. When he is finished, I wait for a few more seconds, still expecting him to dig out his wallet, but he doesn't, so I turn to go up a new section.

I hit an outfield section and when I get back down to the bottom of the stairs the group is waiting for me, to make one more attempt to get this free cotton candy!!! Seriously?!

The good news is that my manager thought the whole thing was really funny. The bad news is I felt bad for that poor girl the rest of the game and simultaneously pissed off at the guy with her who had to make me feel like the jerk for not paying for her birthday treat... but seriously, what grown person does that?