Green Juice and Egos: A Farmer’s Market Fable

Green Juice and Egos: A Farmer’s Market Fable

(Because sometimes the biggest drama isn’t on reality TV—it’s in front of a juice booth.)

One of my more unforgettable experiences at the farmer’s market happened on a sunny afternoon that started off just like any other. I was manning a booth, selling healthy snacks and drinks to the wellness-obsessed weekend warriors—samples of flaxseed crackers, bottles of cold-pressed juices, and the star of our show—the green drink with a cult following and a reputation.

It was thick, slightly menacing in color, and suspiciously sludge-like—but packed with so many fruits, vegetables, and superfoods that it could probably balance your chakras and do your taxes.

I’d been doing this job for two summers and felt like I’d seen it all—yoga moms with strollers the size of Volkswagens, overly enthusiastic kombucha fans tossing around the word probiotic like it had stock value, and conspiracy theorists convinced chia seeds were listening to their thoughts. It was all new once—but by now, I was seasoned. I figured I could handle just about anything the market threw my way.

But that day… that day tested every ounce of my patience and wit.

The booth was buzzing—mostly women sipping their samples and asking thoughtful questions like, “Is this sweetened with stevia or monk fruit?” and “Do these crackers have sprouted grains?” Then I noticed them—three guys in their early twenties approaching like they’d just stepped out of a frat house and into a cologne commercial.

They were loud. They were cocky. I knew immediately that if I had never met this trio, it would not have ruined my day. I glanced around for the “we just decided to close” sign.

The ringleader of the group had an ego that needed its own parking space. The kind of overconfident swagger that makes you want to hand someone a mirror and a long talk with a therapist. His sunglasses were too large, his shirt looked like it had lost a fight with a dryer, and his energy screamed, I peaked in high school.

If this guy was God’s gift to women, then clearly God had skipped the return policy.

He strutted up to the table, picked up a bottle of our green drink, squinted at the label like it was written in ancient Greek, and smirked.

“Seven bucks? What is this, Hulk juice?”

His buddies burst out laughing like he’d just dropped the punchline of the century. I smiled politely, bracing for whatever genius-level commentary was coming next.

Then he hit me with it.

“So, what does this stuff even do?” he asked, swirling the bottle like it was a cocktail at a Vegas pool party. “Does it help people who wear aprons in public stop pretending they’re scientists?”

His grin said he thought he’d nailed it. His friends gave each other the kind of nudges that only happen when someone thinks they’ve roasted you into another dimension. One of them actually said, “Yo, savage,” which, in hindsight, might’ve been the highest praise any of them had ever given anything.

Now, if this guy had given me the tiniest shred of evidence that he was smarter than a toaster, I might have been surprised. But he'd spent the last minute doing his best impersonation of an undercooked meatball, so honestly, I was just impressed he knew how to read the label.

I took a slow sip of my green drink, giving him a long, deadpan look over the rim of my paper cup. I was tempted to clap—not because it was clever, but because it took real commitment to be that confidently wrong in public.

Then—displaying my best customer-service smile—I said, “Not quite. It actually increases brain capacity,” pausing just long enough to make it sting. “So you can start thinking about something smarter. Can you do that?”

Dead. Silence.

And then… the snickers. Soft at first, like popcorn in a microwave, then louder, as a few women turned away pretending to examine the nutritional yeast while very obviously shaking with laughter.

His expression changed instantly—from cocky to confused to Did that broccoli just insult me?

I’d seen that face before. Sophomore year. Right after I stabbed a guy with a freshly sharpened No. 2 pencil because he wouldn’t stop bugging me during geometry class. Sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

Anyway, for a moment, I wondered if Captain Swagger was going to launch himself over the folding table and challenge me to a duel right there between the beet hummus and the barley sprouts. But to his credit—and perhaps due to the subtle pressure of an audience full of giggling women—he just scowled, muttered something that probably wasn’t, “Thank you for enlightening me,” and turned to leave.

His sidekicks followed, looking like hyenas who had just watched their pack leader get outwitted by a cucumber smoothie.

I watched my back the rest of the afternoon, half-expecting him to return with a gym friend who had more muscle than brains and a vendetta against leafy greens. But he never came back. I like to think he’s somewhere now, trying to impress a girl at a party by telling her he once got roasted by a juice vendor and lived to tell the tale.

That little encounter stuck with me, though. It helped solidify something I’d been quietly stewing on: I wanted more from life. I wanted college. I wanted conversations that didn’t involve food-shaming and overpriced sunglasses. I wanted to be surrounded by people who, to put it kindly, had been out of Darwin’s ocean a few more generations.

Now, let me be clear: not everyone without a college degree is an idiot. Far from it. But every now and then, life gifts you with a walking cautionary tale wrapped in a muscle shirt and hair gel—just to remind you what you don’t want to become.

They say, “Don’t argue with an idiot—they’ll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.” Wise words. But sometimes, if you’re lucky—and armed with a pitcher of vegetable juice—you can outwit them, out-sass them, and send them back to wherever they came from a little more humble than before.

And hey, if nothing else, it’s a great story to tell. Especially when someone asks, “So, why did you decide to go back to school?”

Well… let me tell you about the time a green drink nearly started a fistfight.