Borders

[Mokole]

So a friend of mine gets asked by an older American farmer, "Can you deliver some hay to me from Canada?" Sure, and after 4 pages of forms filled out, off he goes. To deliver hay. In the U.S.

No problem at the border. Gets across, farmer says hooray, thanks for the hay. Farmer doesn't have a loader but he can rent one. Now here's the kicker:

Rental place won't rent him a loader because he's using it to unload Canadian hay. They will not rent stuff that may wind up 'helping' a Canadian.

Jerks.

[Barnacle13]

Sounds to me like it'd be helping the American farmer more than the Canadian supplier. Seems pretty idiotic. So much for Free Trade, eh? Also kinda counter to the principles of free enterprise. There is a demand for a good that you have supply of (in this case rental equipment) it would seem as a businessman you'd want to sell your goods. Doesn't make much sense.

[JohnnyCanuck]

I guess he shouldn't have told him where the hay was from. If he(the renter) asked what it was for is a reasonable question. But to need to find out where it was from is not relevent.
If the Farmer offered up the info without being asked then I guess he learned his lesson.

Either way the renter is a jerk. But that doesn't make all americans jerks.

JC

[Ben]

certainly not, there are lots of great Americans! Piles of them here, my best employee this summer was from the US, awsome guy. Met lots of nice American tourists. I guess the ones I'd meet IN Canada would tend to be more tollerant towards us ;) I did have fun telling them that we did not accept American dollars at our establishment. None of 'em were expecting that, as just about everywhere else does take 'em.

Ben

[Powersurge]

Yeah. It is hard to consider Americans jerks when they are basically the same types and motley assortments of "jerks" you'll find in any of the Euro or Euro descended natio ... errr ... multinational states.

Of ocurse, then there are the poltical as opposed to the cultural realities ...