| Nerd moment. This reminds me of the part in The Hobbit (the book, not the movie) where Gandalf takes the dwarves to meet Beorn, the skin-changer. Before entering his house, Gandalf warns the dwarves that Beorn is tempermental, and that in order to get him to help them, they should stagger their entrances. Gandalf initially only enters with Bilbo, but as he tells Beorn about the adventures they have had so far, he repeatedly references an increasingly large number of dwarves. e.g. "You have mentioned a dozen, yet there are only ten dwarves here!", to which Gandalf replies by having two more dwarves enter. In the end, master businessman Gandalf gets Beorn to house all 16 in their party, by means of exactly this "nibbles"-like negotiation strategy. I really do think Gandalf has a lot to offer the business community as an astute and personable negotiator. |
"Wait, no, I have a better idea, how about this. You sell me the gray Prius for 2.5% under factory invoice with the 2% APR financing we talked about earlier, or I summon the great worm Catyrpelius from his resting place in the Abyss to digest your entrails over a thousand years. What? Sure, I'll wait here while you run it by the sales manager."