I was listening to the radio on the way in to work the other day and some guy sent a text message in with the following story. He's woken up in the morning and his Mum is wigging out thinking they've been robbed because there is no sign of the toaster or kettle, she asks both him and his Dad and neither have any clue as to the whereabouts of the kitchen appliances. She is about to report the robbery when they get a phone call from the taxi company. Apparently Dad got blind drunk the night before and paid the taxi driver with said toaster and kettle and the driver wants to know when he is going to come and pay some real money and pick up the appliances. Focus: Have you or anyone you know tried to pay for something with anything out of the ordinary. Alt-Focus: Has anyone tried to give you something strange instead of money?
My senior year in college (well my 5th year) I lived in a dump of an apartment with a couple of scrubs that I was friends with. One of the friends used to have his buddy from home come up and stay with us for weeks on end. I didnt really care much, I liked the guy but he was always playing Call of Duty at a high volume while we were trying to study. When left one time, he tried to compensate us by giving a plastic bag full of half-empty spray paint cans he had used to graffiti various locations.
I traded an old shotgun for a laptop with a former roommate. It was a good deal for me. When I used to work at a farmer's market I would trade leftover brats from the grill for good stuff from other vendors, the cheesemonger nearby had these killer cheese curds and was good to me. There was also the time my car door got caught by wind and nailed the car next to me in a parking lot, and the lady accepted a huge sirloin steak I was bringing home from work for the little dent it left.
About the strangest thing I can think of is someone offered to trade me a bag of "really good weed" for a guitar I was selling on Craigslist.
My friends had made a fifty dollar bet on the super bowl and even after it was apparent one was going to win he offered to take this hilariously bad painting of what looked like George w Bush in lieu of actual cash. My other friend quickly accepted thinking it was a joke. It wasn't. I think it was a painting of his mom he had made in high school.
Focus: Have you or anyone you know tried to pay for something with anything out of the ordinary. A friend and I used to fix up and flip cars and motorcycles for extra cash. We had an old Nissan pickup for sale. This guy shows up (I think his mother drove him). He was desperate to buy this truck but was a hundred short. So he offers food stamps to make up the difference. Nope. Well, he says, how about some eight tracks? This was well past that era and shitty music besides. Double nope, sent him packing, and weeping.
I got these cheeseburgers, man... On a more serious note, we could have a whole thread just about weird things that were bartered with in prison. I've got to go, but I'll elaborate on this later.
I was actually reading an article the other day that say ramen noodles had a higher value then smokes in prison because the food is so bad. But I think it was more in the for profit prison where they cut food to cut costs.
Texas prisons have been smoke free since the early '00s. Ramen noodle soups (about $.25 at the commissary) are a standard unit of currency for smaller transactions. Larger transactions use postage stamps, because of their higher value and ease of concealment (trading of ANY kind is against prison rules, and can result in a "Trafficking and Trading" case, which can affect your parole status). When I was locked up, I liked to have at least $50 in stamps at all times, and I had almost $100 worth of them when I walked out the prison gates in Huntsville. Some guys don't want stamps ("I can't eat stamps!" is a common complaint), so then other arrangements have to be made. The guy being paid might have the payer buy him some requested items from the commissary, or he may have the payer's family/friends put money on his prison account. However, that's just the straight-forward trading. Guys would pay off debts by doing laundry, tattoos, art work, writing up legal documents, smuggling contraband, etc. The rates on non-monetary transactions was negotiable, and could vary from one unit to the next. EDIT: I almost forgot to touch on this subject: At the units I was at (shitty ones), the food was decent; think of school cafeteria food. Larger units that hold guys doing 10+ years tend to have better food, because the inmates in the kitchen take more pride in their work (they know that they're gonna be there for the long haul), and those units are usually better funded. Now county jail food... Jesus H. Christ, that shit is heinous.
One of my good friends waited over a year for his federal sentencing (moving drugs & cash across the country) and bounced around from one County jail to another during that time. (He was tried and convicted in Tennessee, but spent some time in a County jail in Georgia, which is when I visited him.) The food, rights, supplies, etc are ALL worse in County jail, because they're intended to be short stays. But, things get full, so prisoners awaiting sentencing, for instance, get stored at whichever one has space and the best rate. He is an artist. He used to save up M&Ms, group them by color, dissolve the coating in water and place them in a pan near an air vent to evaporate and make paint. He'd do paintings of inmate relatives in exchange for money, and magazines, and more M&Ms.