My grandfather was a chemist at GSK, and at one stage in his career was responsible for sourcing raw ingredients for many of their products (toothpaste, soft dr

My grandfather was a chemist at GSK, and at one stage in his career was responsible for sourcing raw ingredients for many of their products (toothpaste, soft drinks, etc). One such ingredient was lemons. He used to travel regularly to Sicily where he would sit down with the local Mafia families and try to negotiate huge lemon juice contracts. They would trot out some juice and he would taste it and perform various chemical tests. His first time doing this he decided they had excellent juice and ordered all the juice they could produce that season, but when the full shipment arrived and he tested it in London he found it was fake lemon juice - water with citric acid and some other crap. So he goes back to Sicily to sit down with these families again. This time he tells them: I have authority to spend more money on lemons than anyone else in the world. I'm also a better chemist than anyone you could possibly employ. I'm buying the same amount again, but this time I'm testing every tank before it boards the ship. We get the best you've got this time, and every time in future. If anything is off, we're never buying lemons in Sicily again. He said he half expected to disappear that night, but instead the next day he got VIP treatment at the dock while he and his team tested every single tank of juice, and it was all perfect. For the rest of his career GSK got top quality lemon juice. After he died my grandmother received several letters from his contacts in Sicily, thanking him for being fair and honest. The sad thing is that it's the locals who really get fucked over in these scenarios: they fear the Mafia and their livelihoods are totally under their control.