Playing for free

This has been posted a million times on fb but saw it again today and had a new appreciation for it.

Today, I got an email from a tapas bar asking me to play "for exposure". I wrote back and told them I would do if for my normal fee of $300 since this is how I make my living. They wrote back and said they don't pay their entertainment. They told me that they don't know of any venues that pay their entertainment and said that they found it hard to believe that I did no unpaid concerts.
So I wrote back and said, "Well, Carnegie Hall pays me every time I perform there. And The Kennedy Center managed to dig up a little something. Walter Reed Medical Center offered to pay me but I refused when I saw the sea of young veterans recovering from their recent amputations. Oh wait, do you serve your hummus and olives exclusively to disabled veterans?"

Jerks.