I was going to a grocery market yesterday with my spouse.
What happens usually when we go to a grocery store — we ask for a little more, you know. A few extra chilis. Maybe some coriander thrown in, over what we already purchased.
We think it means nothing to that grocery vendor.
But here’s what struck me:
The same situation happens with our business or product.
Let’s say I’m selling a dress, and I’ve priced it at 1000 rupees. You want to negotiate it down to 900.
That 100 rupees feels small to you in the moment. Just a hundred.
But that 100 rupees might be the vendor’s entire profit.
It’s the same as the chili.
To you, a handful of chilis is nothing. A sprig of coriander is nothing. You’re not even really asking — you’re just assuming.
But to that vendor, standing behind a small stall, working on thin margins — that “nothing” adds up. That “nothing” is real cost, real loss, taken from someone who has far less room to absorb it than you do.
We do this without realizing it.
We look at a request through our lens — “It’s so small, it won’t matter” — instead of through theirs.
We measure the ask by what it costs us to give.
Not by what it costs them to lose.
This is true in negotiation, in relationships, in everyday interactions:
- The extra discount that feels tiny to you might be someone’s entire margin.
- The “small” favor you ask might be a bigger sacrifice for them than you assume.
- The little thing you think “surely doesn’t matter” might matter enormously — just not to you.
What I’m learning to do differently:
Before asking for something extra — before assuming it “means nothing” — I try to think from the other side.
What does this cost them, not what does it cost me to ask?
This is what I mean by thinking out of the box.
Not to overthink every small transaction.
But to remember: what’s small in your world isn’t automatically small in someone else’s.
The chili in your basket. The 100 rupees off the price. The favor you didn’t think twice about.
Somewhere on the other side of that exchange, it might be the whole profit. The whole effort. The whole margin someone was counting on.
Next time you’re about to say “it’s just a little extra, right?” —
Pause.
Ask yourself whose “little” you’re really measuring.