That’s Retail
So I’s readin’ this post from the good folks at Surly, which incidentally features a whole buncha people doin’ awesome things with their Big Dummies, and caught an excerpt of this Best of Craigslist post from an anonymous bike shop rat in Seattle. At first, I thought it was pretty funny, there were certainly some clever quips like…
I can tell you, if there is one thing I’ve learned from you fucking squirrels, it’s that “doesn’t shift right” means your bike could need a slight cable adjustment, or you might just need to stop backing into it with the Subaru. Bring it in, I’ll let you know for sure.
Tee hee, stupid people sure are stupid, ain’t they? But I read on, and before it was over, Anonymous had dumped buckets of manure on:
- People that want to have their bike serviced because it’s sunny out, and they’re ready to ride again
- People on the phone for a variety of reasons
- “Inventive types and Do-It-Yourselfers”, with a special flip of the finger to anyone on a recumbent
- Hipsters, for whom Anonymous gets especially vitriolic (and, by the way Anonymous, there’s an ‘o’ in ‘Douchebag’, I think a ‘Duchebag’ is something you pass on the lef’ han’ side)
- People who want to buy a new bike, with bonus put-downs if you’re interested in racing or triathlons
- Anyone with kids
I thought it was going to be funny, and it was, sort of, for a little while. But as I read on, it began to dawn on me that perhaps this person’s in the wrong business. So I’m going to do a little ranting here, you have my apologies in advance. Let me speak directly to Anonymous for a moment.
Anonymous, do you wish that your customers didn’t have such silly, ill-conceived notions about what they needed, were clear and succinct on the phone, and could give you the specs you needed to help them find the parts they wanted? You may have some of those customers, which will be nice for you, but I’m afraid that many of them now order their parts over the Internet.
The thing is, Anonymous, the same Internet that allows you to publicly unload on those people making your days intolerable (i.e. “customers”) also took away your job as the Gatekeeper of the QBP Catalog, which means you’re going to have to find other reasons to exist. You’ll have to help people who don’t know as much about bikes as you do. You’ll probably have to correct some misconceptions about the kind of bike they need, or how much it will cost. You may have to inform them that there’s no way to know how long a bike will last a growing child, or that the parts for the hot rod they’re building in their garages don’t exist. You may have to help someone find a part for their recumbent, or correct the bad advice someone gave your ironically-mustachioed customer about their fixie.
Undoubtedly, you will have to do something you find irritating, and maybe not for the first or last time that day.
Because ya know what? That’s showbiz, Anonymous. That’s what retail’s all about. That’s why your shop isn’t dead now, crushed like so many others by JensonUSA, Universal Cycles, and eBay. Your shop survives because you, the owner, salesperson, or wrench adds value to the purchase with your expert advice, technical expertise, and comforting demeanor.
Does it mean, Anonymous, that you’ll have to provide advice and service for the masses, many of whom are ignorant, ill-mannered and thoughtless? Yepper, it sure does. It means that frequently, you’ll have some shit to eat and pride to swallow if you want to make that sale, and win that customer’s loyalty, rather than their enmity. But that’s why it’s called “work”, and not “blowjob from a unicorn”.
Let me provide just a few of the reasons I’m willing to pay more for parts, and wait longer for them to arrive, from a few local shops here in DC:
- As a citizen, I like being loyal to small, locally-owned businesses that employ local cyclists and support local cycling organizations.
- As an “inventive type” “do-it-yourselfer”, I like talking face-to-face with knowledgeable folks that can help me with the dizzying array of compatibility matrices, and keep me from going too far down dead-ends. I also like holding things in my hands before I buy them.
- As a parent, I like knowing that the local shop’s okay with me bringing the kids, because if I’m going to do some live shopping, instead of shopping by laptop, it may very well mean that the kids gotta come with. And man, if the folks at the local shop even know my kids’ names? I may just go ahead and buy Little Mermaid / Thomas the Tank Engine bikes on the spot, even if they are set up with an XTR build kit. Because my family is the most important thing in my life, which might be funny to you, but that’s f’real, dig?
I realize this sounds like I’m being self-centered, that this is all about my needs. But ultimately, as the customer making the choice about where I’m going to spend my money, that’s my role in the relationship. If you don’t have something no one else does, and you don’t have the best price, then there’s gotta be another compelling reason for my loyalty and continued patronage. The other tricky part for you, Anonymous, is that if I feel like I’m getting vibed, you’ll never have to worry about me, or anyone I tell about the experience, coming into your shop to annoy you again.
So, Anonymous, good luck this summer, and here’s hoping you and your shop survive it.
PS: I eagerly await a reasoned yet devastating response from a real-life bike shop owner I’ll just call “Jim” (because that’s his name), setting me straight about the indignities of running a bike shop. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit to learn from others’ experience that my take on this is totally wrong, and that I’m a jerk for feeling this way. But it’s not like I haven’t worked retail, or railed on shitty customers privately to other folks working the floor. That Craigslist post just gravelled my ass.
PPS: I’d be remiss if I didn’t give some love to the folks that make bike world a better place to live. My favorite shop in DC is City Bikes, far and away. Being the tinkering parent of toddlers that I am, it does not escape me that they not only tolerate my questions and my kids, but do so with grace and a smile. They’re awesome. I’ve also been well treated at The Bike Rack (who also carry Swobo!), and Proteus is a great shop as well if you’re up in that neck of the woods. To those of you who handle the demands of cyclists, day in, day out, good customers and bad: thank you for all you do. I’m a fan.
July 14th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Uh, can you go into more detail regarding the blowjob from a unicorn?
Thanks.
July 14th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Ha! I’ve been called out!
I can probably relate to all anonymous’ complaints, and we sometimes grumble amongst ourselves at the shop. It’s a common experience that serves as conversation fodder, and I imagine that happens in every business. But I have to say that 95-99% of our customers respect our knowledge, experience, and personal boundaries, and, in general, don’t expect us to do unreasonable things to win their “loyalty” (that said, I often go to great lengths to get and keep loyal customers). Of course, that leaves 1-5% of the people who visit the shop, either physically or virtually, who I could really do without. These include:
1. “I openly admit to knowing almost nothing about bikes, but I’m going to make you spend many hours on email and over the phone defending every single component that you suggest because somebody on bike forums had a bad experience under questionable circumstances…”
2. “I openly admit to knowing almost nothing about bikes, but I’m very anal about really tiny details over which you have almost no control.”
3. “Fifteen dollars to fix a flat! The whole bike didn’t cost that much! Oh, and sorry I forgot to mention that entire can of toxic/flammable fix-a-flat that is now a sticky puddle on your floor.” This happened just yesterday.
4. “That 40 year-old bike you have for sale was the hottest thing you could get when I was 16. I will buy it if it will be as light/fast as my Madone and restore my lost youth.”
5. For the 19th time from the same guy: “I know you’re closing in 5 minutes, but I have a race (during which I have no hope of being anywhere near the front) in an hour, and I need you to go over my whole drivetrain and “throw” these new parts (bought elsewhere because you told me they were a bad idea) on my bike.”
July 14th, 2009 at 10:38 am
I should probably use more precise language. I use the word “customer” to denote a person who a) buys stuff, and b) with whom there’s some feeling of mutual respect – i.e. s/he respects that I do this for a living (not just for money-losing fun), and I respect that they want to get something of value in return for their money. I love my customers. Not everybody who walks through the door is a customer. Most of the non-customers require services that I am not qualified to render. After dealing with one particularly neurotic phone-caller (who ultimately used the voluminous advice I gave him to make informed purchases over the internet), my partner K said, ’sounds like he doesn’t need a bicycle, but a therapist.’ I am not a very good therapist.
July 14th, 2009 at 10:49 am
This is such a deep topic! I can’t stop commenting!
I wonder if you’d have been as annoyed with the CL post if it was not a bike shop employee, but instead an employee of some other type of business. Would an employee of any other type of business be making such a post on CL? One thing bike people share is deep emotions related to their bikes and the activity of bicycling, and I think it’s not universal to all retail disciplines. Do carpenters and hardware store employees get this fired up about hammers and saws? If your dental hygienist ranted about the prevalence of tartar and bad flossing habits amongst his/her customer-base, would you have a visceral reaction to the rant?
July 14th, 2009 at 11:05 am
Rev. Dick: unfortunately, I cannot give you any details on Unicorn Blowjobs, as I chose “work” when I reached that fork in the road. Poor career decision, I realize, but it seemed like the the right thing to do at the time.
“Jim” (if that is your real name): ouch, argh, grr, whuh-huh?, and I think the answer to 5 is: “Okay, but I don’t think you can afford it”.
But here’s the thing: yesterday I read your post on aggressive riding and parts failure, it made sense, but didn’t feel like an admonishment. And this morning, as I rode in, I was paying closer attention to downshifting before stops and smoothing my acceleration. I learned something and my parts and I thank you for sharing the observation.
That’s the kind of thing that makes me think that you’re in the right business, and suspect that you’re probably pretty good into turning new, uninformed customers into loyal educated ones. And that makes you more than just a guy that owns a bike shop, it makes you an asset to the community.
Maybe I’m totally off-base, maybe your midwestern customers are just that much more polite than Seattlites, and a week in Anonymous’s shop would drive any reasonable person to reshaping their forehead with a brick wall. But I doubt it.
July 14th, 2009 at 11:54 am
Heh, okay, so why the visceral reaction, it’s a good question and one I’ve asked myself a lot since I read it.
The most general, short-sentence evaluation I can give is, “that’s not funny, that’s just being an asshole.” Anon’s not being passionate about bikes, he’s just insulting everyone.
Everyone whose attention turns to their bike when the sun comes out is an idiot. People are fat, squirrels, raccoons, douchebags, stoners, shitty Subaru drivers, creepy recumbent riders, stupid tinkers, Internet twats, racer poseurs, triathlete poseurs, and shitty parents of retarded kids he’d feed to sharks.
Then, Anon has the nerve to drop this into the middle of it: “Please listen to me on this stuff, I really do have your best interests at heart.”
So there’s that. I think I also have a strong reaction to this kind of thing because I want more people to get on their bikes and out of their cars. Probably because I’m frequently piloting nice-looking longtails with happy children on them, people come and talk to me quite a bit about how they’d love to do more biking, and about solutions for biking with kids, and about bike stuff generally. Most of them don’t know much about bikes, but nothing’s obvious to the uninformed, so I do what I can to bring them along.
And if I can give advice from my own experience, I will. But more often than not, their questions require a wider scope of experience than I have, so I cheerfully advise them to visit a local shop and help them come up with the right questions. And about half the time, they’ll tell me about a visit they made to a shop where they were treated badly and felt like they weren’t in the club, and how they’d rather have a root canal than go back.
That’s part of the rub, right? I’m advocating for local shops, hoping the uninitiated will get a hold of someone who can help them get their feet wet, and maybe eventually become enthusiastic cyclists who will help someone else get into it down the line. So it’s frustrating when the biggest obstacle to getting people into a bike shop is their experience of having been in one.
July 17th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
I hear a lot of complaining about rude bike shop staff, but I’ve never really experienced it myself. Sure, I occasionally go into a shop and have to deal with a staffer who doesn’t know much, but at least s/he’s reasonably friendly.
One thing about bikes is that experiences are widely varied, and to some extent, we are all experts. When the customer and the shop person (both experts, of course) meet and discover that there is a disagreement about some fundamental concept, it’s hard for one expert to defer to the other. For example, for years I told people that a big squishy saddle was not the answer for being comfortable on a bicycle, and they said, ok, and walked out the door, presumably to buy a big squishy saddle elsewhere. I recently started selling big squishy saddles. Now I say, “not what I would recommend, but here they are for the absurdly high price of $40,” and I can’t keep the damned things in stock. I hope that these folks become more avid about cycling and move on to better equipment, but I defer to their expertise, which tells them that they need a saddle that resembles a sofa. To each his own.
July 18th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Whatever kinda saddle will get people to put the bike to use :)
Perhaps you’re lucky, or maybe it’s not a midwestern phenomenon, or perhaps I or the people that have complained to me are unlucky.
I know I’ve been asked by a couple of people within the last 3 weeks, “so what is it with bike shops anyway, are they all like that?” I tell ‘em they aren’t, and direct them to the ones I’ve had good experiences with.
One thing is certain: I’d never knowingly send anyone to Anonymous’ shop, in spite of his assurances that he’s got everyone’s best interests at heart. (I suppose it’s sexist of me to assume it’s a him too, it’s just a hunch.)