which one?[/quote]
Presidio.
I have nothing of the calibre of idiots you guys mention. When I was 14/15 I would ride on saturday mornings on my MTB then go to a shop maybe 20 minutes drive to work out the back all day, building bikes up. The shop owner was a dick and wouldn’t give us money, only goods to the value of $40. So every saturday when I finished, I would go to each of the other employees and they would give me $40 worth of shit, totaling $120.
Once the shop owner went away for a month, and we went to the butcher over the road and got a liver. We put it in the roof, and after about a week it started to smell - really badly. It was hilarious watching him try to find what and where the smell was. I sometimes wonder if it’s still in there.
Oh, God, the pump…
Commuter dude has come into our shop on the weekly for the last year or so to top off his tires and either COMPLETELY DEFLATES THEM, or forgets to unscrew the presta head and just lays into the pump with all he’s got to no avail. I’ve personally explained the mechanics of the presta valve to him three or four times, and once he started ranting about how stupid he was in a really serious, almost scary manner. Was ridiculous.
woah. honestly sounds like he might’ve been on to something there. i mean, i accidently let out 5-10 psi regularly enough but total deflation? that takes several seconds of doing it completely wrong.
I was hanging out in the basement of the shop one day and this real bro dude comes in with a Giant cross bike with a carbon fork. There’s already a rack on the back, but he wants one for the front, saying he’s going on a bike tour. Mark, the owner of the shop, tells the guy that he doesn’t have any front racks that will fit the fork and that he should probably just get a steel fork anyways if he wants to run a front rack. Mark even offered the guy some discount on a crosscheck fork, but the guy insisted on putting the burliest Jandd rack the shop sells on his bike. Of course, the fork isn’t equipped for a rack and doesn’t even have fender eyelets. Mark suggests that he could use P-clamps if he really wanted, but it would be best to just use an appropriate fork. The guy seems not to like the idea of P-clamps and says “Nah, I’ll just drill the fork so I can use bolts”.
Everyone just looks at him in disbelief for a few seconds and eventually Mark tells him that that’s a really really bad idea. Then the guy gets all indignant and says, “Dude, I install cell phone towers for a living! I KNOW how to put shit together!” Then he buys the rack and storms out of the store probably to go tell his buddies how stupid the old guy at the bike shop was and how he tried to rip him off.
A shop I used to work at sold/rented wet suits to tri geeks. The owner would always go into his office when a hot girl was changing into a suit, the office happened to be located next to the fitting room. He was gone for a week and I needed something from a cabinet in his office so I went in, hopped on a stool (he is 6’10") and looked on the top shelf to find what I needed. I then saw that he had setup mirrors in an air vent in the wall so he could watch the women change.
^holy shit!
[quote=yung jeezy]jeez…
i have so many stories from working in the cracked out spot in town.
i’ll type some up later.[/quote]
This.
If I had a nickel for every time I was drunkenly cursed at about not having motor scooter chains I’d have a fuck load of nickels.
2 days after I realized that he got back from his trip he accused the head mechanic and I of stealing a really expensive stem from the QBP order. He left the 2 of us to run the shop for 10 days, we worked all day every day during that period and didn’t even begin to check in the shipment as it was so busy. Apparently if you don’t report a missing shipment item to QBP within 2 days of receipt they won’t send you another. We quit on the spot, bikes in the stands, etc. Fuck that dude.
There’s this intense dude that used to come in all the time with his ss mongoose mtb slick thing. He had custom fabbed a sick trailer with used tubes and an effing HANDTRUCK. he was wrapping the tubes around his saddle, which made it look like some grotesque kinda penis thing. He had a buncha boxes and stuff on it, and had installed a siq suspension fork from some POS bike he found on the railroad tracks.
Telling us all this WHILE wearing a full-face helmet, wife beater, juggalo shorts and sandals. The true nature of his visit was to inquire about parts for his newly acquired pedicab, which he wanted us to all take a ride in, complete with stickers from a sponsorship by our shop.
He frequently gets aggro when things don’t go his way, and smells awful.
Every time he comes in now, we all hide.
omg i would rage on people so hard. straight up 187 on mofucka
[quote=beargrinderrrrrr][quote=yung jeezy]naw the kc mart on killingsworth and vancouver.
cascade cycling.[/quote]
oh, THAT place? ha ha, is the owner still a crazy old dude? i remember stopping in there and all the bikes were, like…recumbents and shit like that, or…i don’t think it was belt drive, i think it was the rod style, like on cars and such, and he was telling me it was the “wave of the future”. i sorted of nodded until he finally shut up for a second and said “cool, see ya”, and left.
that shop?[/quote]
yes. the dude that owns the shop knows nothing about anything but conspiracy theories and drinking the day away. he bought so many of thos shaft drive bikes and they never worked. we had to throw them away. straight up in the dumpster.
the owner cam in one day and his handlebars were all fucked up so we asked him what had happened. this is at around 11AM and he reeks of booze. he said that he had ridden down his driveway and that someone had swerved at him so he fell. well he was drunk as a skunk and we knew he was bullshitting. when we were fixing his bike we found that his two water bottles were full to the top with wine. he left the shop and went directly to the bar across the street to drink for the rest of the day.
Oh, God, the pump…
Commuter dude has come into our shop on the weekly for the last year or so to top off his tires and either COMPLETELY DEFLATES THEM, or forgets to unscrew the presta head and just lays into the pump with all he’s got to no avail. I’ve personally explained the mechanics of the presta valve to him three or four times, and once he started ranting about how stupid he was in a really serious, almost scary manner. Was ridiculous.[/quote]
these are the people who need those solid rubber tires
double bubble
When I was working at Copeland Sports (the bike shop was almost like it’s own shop that happened to be in a sports store, this was the same with every department and why the store was successful until they were bought and ran by this corporation), I basically had the best job ever. The 4 others that were in my department were my great friends. We got commission on sales AND repairs, AND we got $ per bike built even while on the clock. So many lulz were had at that place. If we weren’t selling or working on bikes, we were riding them around or causing mayhem. In the back hallway of the work area we would set up old cardboard boxes and have “tomahawk” and “ninjastar” (ds crank arm with a single ring and chainrings, respectively) throwing contests. We made water and fire guns out of yakima rack tubes + air compressor and also used it as a cannon quite regulary in department wars. We built a bmx front-end out of spare parts to just hang-five around the store. We took chairs from the camping dept and took naps, and did pretty much whatever we wanted. The management left us alone for the most part because our numbers were killing it. I worked there for two years and we constantly would blow out prior year’s sales.
Well, one day I was called into the security office and accused of stealing. I NEVER so much as took a stick of gum without paying for it. There was a few times I borrowed a jacked during lunch because it was cold and once I left without paying for a chain, but I paid for it when I came in the next day. But these dudes were accusing me of stealing FUCKING FIFTEEN FULL-SQUISH ROCKY MOUNTAIN BIKES. Fifteen! WTF? How the hell would I get out of that place with cameras everywhere? And fit 1, let alone 15 bikes into my toyota corolla? I told him to show me the proof/video that I stole these bikes. When he said he wasn’t allowed to show evidence, he handed me a “repayment plan” paperwork and told me they were willing to settle for the amount of $300. Yeah, I just stole, at the very minimum, $20k worth of bikes and all the company wants in compensation is $300? I told the theft dude to fuck off and told my store manager I quit. By the end of the day, the other 4 people in the shop all quit. Fuck that place. They went out of business a few months later.
Some of these recent posts remind me of some more of my own. The first one is the amount of fun and useless stuff we use to do at the shop. Our owner was pretty much never around so we kind of did what ever we wanted to. In the middle of winter in Michigan there is pretty much nothing to do so we improvised little games to keep us entertained. One of those games was called “Coming in Hot”. We were a recumbent dealer so the game involved one of the recumbent trikes and ridding it into the repair area around all three stands and ridding out between the wall and the counter. It was called coming in hot because you were not supposed to use the brakes at all and try to do it as fast as you could. We had some great two wheel turns and a few minor crashes into the repair benches or repair stands.
The other thing I am reminded of is or most pain in the ass customer, lets call him Don. He was originally riding an older electric bike that the electric assist didn’t work anymore. So he would ride around town through snow on a 50lb+ bike with no assist. He would often come in for flat tires as he was a good 250lbs+ and had trouble walking normally so he had another 30-40lbs of crutches and other assorted crap on the back of the bike at all times. One time we eventually told him this is the last time we will ever work on this bike. The shifter and none of the brakes worked anymore because they were so completely rusted out the only way to fix them was a new bike. He eventually bought a new Giant Electric bike from us (70lb + unloaded), and put himself and his brother on the original sales documents because he was worried if he died would his brother still be able to warranty parts on it. He would often come in before he bought it asking the same warranty questions about the possible upcoming purchase. He ended up buying it and had rear wheel flat problems because of the 300+ lbs of himself and the other crap on the rear wheel. I think all but one flat was a pinch flat. He also had some shifting problems on it every other day it seem, and nothing was wrong most of the time. One of the times something was wrong I said he would have to leave it for me to fix the shifting problem. The cable wasn’t moving freely through the housing the way it should. He had a fit as it is his only means of transportation. I told him to look around and see how many other people were working here (most of the summer it was only myself open to close 7 days a week). He did leave it and I found out the next day that he got ahold of the owners cell phone and called him to complain. The owner I am happy to say backed me 100%. It ended up being a dual problem of frayed cable and the Nexus shifting parts on the hub binding. It took myself and the owner a few hours of messing with it to eventually figure out the problem. Don’s first words after I called and told him it was ready to be picked up was, “that is covered under warranty right”. My response was of course not as it was only a $10-15 charge for it.
The worst part of Don is actually talking with him. Here is a recap of a normal conversation I had with him during one of the tire flat fixes:
Don: “Um, um, um, I, um, um , um, want to, uh, um, uh use my other bike un, um for winter riding”
me: “Okay”
Don: “What, um, uh, should I, um, uh, um,uh do for storing it, uh, um, uh, um for the winter”
me: “take it inside”
Don: “um, uh, I, uh, um, wasn’t sure, um, uh, if I had to, um, uh do anything different”
me: “Nope”
I think you get the idea of a conversation with him. It should only take 10 seconds to tell me what you want, but it would take him a minute or two. The other thing that always bothered me about him is he would pay with a check and would round up to the next dollar value because it was easier to balance his check book that way. He also knew he would be paying with a check and should know how much it costs since it is the same everytime. He never once would make out his check in advance. He would grab the chair we had on the floor, and put it in front of the register, and then start to write out everything and explain (every fucking time!) how it was easier to make the check out for an even dollar amount ($11.77 was a normal flat charge and he would do $12 for instance). Because of him I often would end up with customers stacked up because his flat repair would take 30 minutes + because of him and his checks. I actually rang him up once and while waiting for the actual check repaired a flat on another bike.
When I worked with multiple people we would take turns dealing with him since it always sucked. This last year I got to help him almost every time by myself, good times!
Well, hindsight being what it is I’m sure you’ve seen the err of your ways.
- Coming in hot
- Don
- ???
- Profit
I’m pretty sure every shop has at least one Don.
coming in hot sounds fun as shit.
dude. that’s absolutely insane. Good of your friends to back you up.
sounds like Don just has some problems.