Tehran's Fruit Sellers

 Citizen Journalist

Some call it a pseudo-job. But the fruit sellers themselves say that, whatever you call it, the carts and the fruit they carry are the wheels that take their lives forward. Mobile fruit sellers can be seen all around town and remind one of the old times, when mules or donkeys pulled wooden carts along alleyways, going door to door.

They have their faithful customers. Their prices are much lower than those of regular shops, an important factor in attracting customers.

Every few days they pile up their carts with a particular fruit and station themselves on crowded sidewalks and next to busy intersections and hawk their produce. All they need are a four-wheel cart and a small scale.

The sellers get the fruit from the main produce market in Tehran early in the morning, buying it at wholesale prices. They then get a cab and take the fruit to where they have parked their carts, arrange the produce in the cart and push it to whatever location they choose.

According to one report, the market’s wholesale prices are sometimes 300 per cent lower than shop prices. This is not, however, the only reason why street fruit vendors can offer lower prices. “Shop owners have many expenses,” says one seller. “Rent, electricity, water, phone, taxes – you name it. We don’t have any of these expenses so we can charge less.”

Nevertheless, some economists classify this type of employment as a “pseudo-job” and believe that they do not add value to society. This view, however, is not shared by everyone. “The term ‘pseudo-job’ is a concept without proper meaning,” writes Hamed Ghoddousi, a PhD candidate studying finance. “It is a journalistic or political term with no significance in economics.”

“To understand why it is meaningless,” he explains, “first we must study the process of exchange in the marketplace. It takes place when both sides receive more value than without the exchange. So when we see a job in the ‘market’ that can stand on its own, without government help or without recourse to illegal activities, and provides customers with lawful goods and services, then it is a job like any other.”

Real or not, many young people in Tehran make a living by selling fruit from carts. Their customers are happy too.

“Like me, many of the fruit vendors come from Kurdistan,” says one of the vendors. “Like me, many used to work at the produce market, but the work was hard and the pay was low. Little by little, we learned from others how to do it and since we knew about the fruit market, we bought a cart and got into it.”

The job is not without its problems. “After all, this is street vending,” the Kurdish vendor says. “Municipal agents are a nuisance. Heat and the cold bother us and we must stay standing most of the time. There are other problems, too, but what can you do when you can’t do anything else?”