Ranting and Raving (Bitching and Whining)

*For those of you that don't know me (RV), I manage a bike shop. It is in Lynn, MA. It is glory and hell.

Whether this is the right kind of place for it or not--it is bike related, in a way. I thought I might share with you, the invisible public, a little of what my job is like.

If you're not in to reading, or you just don't give a shit, scroll past this and check out some of the sweet videos we, and some friends, have made. We also have pretty pictures to look at.*

1

This woman is out of her fucking mind.

So here’s this woman, and she’s standing right in front of me. She’s standing, on the other side of the counter, and she’s trying to convince me to let her return her purchase to us. It’s not that I’m trying to be argumentative.

What it is is, it’s just that she didn’t even make the purchase here. We don’t sell laser pointers at a bike shop.

And all of this—trying to tell me that it’s just the wrong receipt, that she really got it here—it’s after rudely asking how long it was going to take us to unload all of the shipment that we were receiving at the side door. It’s after rudely demanding, “Well, how long is that gonna take?”

We still don’t open for another fifteen minutes, and I really don’t feel like opening the door, but, obviously, I did it anyway.

Now she has me wait. “Hold on,” she says. “I’ve got something else in my car,” she says.

When she comes back, now it’s brake pads. Yes, they came from us. No, she doesn’t have a receipt. “Sometime last year, maybe,” is when she thinks she bought them.

During the week, we mostly bring in repairs, deal with the drunks and crazies, and fix flats. We show up early. We stay late.

When you come in, asking for pedals, I ask you what size spindle you need. “Half inch, or nine-sixteenths?” You ask us what kind of question that is. So for the sake of simplicity, I ask you what style of crank arms it’s for, and I even give you visual references. “One-piece, or three-piece?”

“It’s all one piece! It’s a whole bike! What kind of fucking question is that,” you answer. “I want some god-damned metal pedals!”

“Well, we have these ones,” I say. “These are forty.”

“I just want some standard ones,” You say.

Guessing that that means cheap, I grab some used ones. They look like the only use they’ve had is being taken out of the packaging. “Fifteen dollars,” I say.

The first words out of your mouth are, “Fuck you, motherfucker! I can get fucking pedals for nine dollars down at the [something I can’t understand.]”  I’m pretty sure you’re drunk.

Have a nice day.

If you think you’re starting to understand how little patience we might have near the end of the day, then you probably still don’t really know shit about what it’s like to work here. This city is different breed.