A little role-playing never hurt anyone. Sure, those live-action-roleplaying nerds to get their share of mocking on the internet, but that’s only because they benefit so from their imagination and creativity. The Wifey and I use some creativity, improvisation, and down-and-out cooperative meanness to benefit. We call it “good cop, bad cop.”
The term hails from the film noir form of police interrogation. Wanting to coax a confession out of a criminal whose guilt lacks evidence, these two crafy police officers drag him into a dimly lit room. One cop asks if the criminal is comfy, the other glowers angrily in the corner. The “good cop” asks softball questions; the “bad cop” throws the chair against the wall and pounds his fists on the table. “Good cop” excuses himself; the criminal panics at the possibility of being left alone with “bad cop”. In the end, both cops get what they want out of the criminal; their act, their ruse, is successful.
Our “good cop, bad cop” uses less chair throwing, but about as much uncomfortable passive-aggression.
See, the wifey and I are frugal to an almost obscene degree. “Made in Japan” porcelain figurine marked 25¢? Maybe we can talk them down to a dime. Huge box of latchhook wool (easily worth twenty bucks) marked $5? For $2, maybe we’d see ourselves buying it. We’ve missed out on some genuinely good buys, simply because we need to make our last $10 bill last another hour or so. While I won’t give away our full arsenal of techniques for making rummage-sale proprietors and flea-market dealers feel like they’ve got no choice but to give us a good deal (trade secrets, you know), “good cop, bad cop” is probably the most fun, and most successful.
First, inaudible signals must be communicated, to let the other know the game is on. The less audible, the better; sellers can catch on to excited whispers, no matter how far away. Next, this can further be communicated by giving the desired item far too much attention. The Good Cop is the person who wants — really wants– to buy the item…but their partner, the Bad Cop, doesn’t think it’s a good idea. To make “good cop, bad cop” work, the purchase has to affect both parties; boyfriend/girlfriend or husband/wife make for excellent pairing; roomates, siblings, or other emotionally intertwined groups can work as well, if you’re creative and in character. It doesn’t need to be realistic, just convincing enough.
Bad Cop, as you might expect, thinks that Good Cop already has enough of whatever’s being bought. Bad Cop’s opinion is that Good Cop has already spent way too much money today. Bad Cop is tired of Good Cop stopping to examine every freakin’ salt and pepper set that Good Cop sees. Bad Cop hates having to bring Good Cop with to these sales, because it’d be a lot easier if Good Cop would understand that Bad Cop doesn’t care about early 20th century costume jewelry. It’s all an act, of course — the person playing the role of Bad Cop doesn’t really want to interfere with the sale, because that defeats the objective. Bad Cop is actually helping Good Cop make the purchase, at a nice discounted price.
The seller just wants to sell their stuff, but what they see is that Bad Cop is interfering with their sale. And, boy, that Bad Cop is really a jerk, too — so the seller does what they can to help Good Cop get what Good Cop wants. Manipulative? Sure, just a tad; there’s less guilt when you go to a rummage sale and see a real jerk trying to talk their partner out of spending money at a rummage sale. Maybe they’ve just figured out the technique on their own; like sniping on eBay, waiting until the auctioneer lowers the starting bid to $1 before bidding it back up to fifty, and calling a below-average rummage sale an ‘estate sale’ in the classified ad, there’s a lot of manipulation going on in this market.
In general, we’ve got some standard crotchety comments: when I’m digging through the record albums, wifey complains about how my record shelves are full. When she’s looking through books, I tell her she’s got unread books at home, she doesn’t need any more. She has a rote conversation that she starts with the seller when I’m looking at antique radios or vintage computers, beginning: “Uh oh — he’s found the stuff with cords. Anything with cords, he’s got to look at it, and our basement is full of the stuff. Cords everywhere…” An annoyed “and where are you going to put that?” or “Five bucks for that?” is often enough to get a deal; the Good Cop should look crushed, defeated, when told they shouldn’t buy it. Then, it’s the seller’s turn to jump in and make it all right — by giving Bad Cop a deal they couldn’t possibly refuse.
So, for example, I run across a box of sheet music shoved under a card table at a rummage sale. I glance at the first two or three in the box, think it could be valuable, and point it out to wifey; she spends an inordinate amount of time digging through it, debating which ones should be purchased, and which should be left behind…but the secret objective is to buy the whole box. I give her some time, then check in on her. Then I go and stand at the end of the driveway for a while. I return while she’s in price negotiation with the sale proprietor, ask if she’s ready yet, mention that the kids are 
waiting in the van (they actually are; important note: this would be hard to pull off if the kids weren’t in tow). She blows me off. After a minute or two, I sigh loudly. In desparation to just get going, she asks how much for the whole box, and she’ll go through it when she gets home. The seller makes an offer; I interrupt with a much lower counter-offer.
We got the whole box for a song.
Later, I was actually chastized for being too convincing…wifey wasn’t so sure I was play-acting Bad Cop for a little while there; the sigh was a little too much, but it worked. I felt I had to turn it up a couple notches, because the seller wasn’t budging early enough in the transaction. It’s not guaranteed to work — the $5 box of latchhook wool was as low as they’d go no matter how displeased I was with it, and I closed a deal on a bunch of 78 albums too quickly, before wifey could properly use her Bad Cop skills to get us a better deal. It takes a bit of strategy, an understanding of the seller’s motivations, and just a smidge of acting 101, but we make “good cop, bad cop” succeed for us.
