What The Word “Commodity” Means

Someone at the executive level recently attempted to console me on my unemployment by slapping me on the back and exclaiming “You’ll be fine. You’re a commodity.”

This put me in the uncomfortable position of having to either a) be insulted or b) tell myself that he had no idea what “commodity” means. (I opted for both, actually. Wouldn’t you?)

A commodity, in the business sense, has two basic characteristics:

a) People want it.

b) They don’t want it specifically.

Take this barbershop, for example (in my neighborhood here in Park Slope). The proprietors put a poster in the window illustrating the various hairstyles they offer. But they didn’t make the poster. They ordered it from a poster company that got the hairstyles from a barbershop in Baltimore.

What’s interesting is that the barbershop with the poster in its window (here in Brooklyn) makes no effort to hide the fact that it isn’t their poster. They don’t care. They don’t think that their customers should care either. You want a haircut? They have haircuts. They are not trying to convince you that there is anything special about their haircuts. They are admitting that they are a commodity.

The thing about commodities is, people aren’t picky about where they come from. They get purchased from the vendor that delivers them fast and cheap. So if you’re a commodity, then you are in demand, but you are never in more demand than any of the millions of other people who are, for all practical purposes, exactly like you.

I guess there are a lot of people in the world who aspire to be commodities. But I’m not one of them. Are you?