Perhaps it is honest rather than embellished. I have had similar experiences with bike shops. Some seem to be more interested in converting or repulsing customers who don't fit their definition of serious.
That being said, the author did walk into the shop with a rather difficult request. How do you recreate something personal?
Many of these shops aren’t business so much as a labor of love/personal church. So you go in and obviously they try to convert you to their way of thinking
On the contrary I feel like the author came in with an easy request. He wasn't looking for anything rare or expensive or special. He was looking for world stamps. Show him world stamps you're willing to sell him.
Re:Stamping the joy out of collectors
by bittercynic on Saturday April 17, 2021 @04:20PM
(#26847126)
I thought this was written in an open enough way to leave room for a wide range of takeaways, and it also seems fair to say the shop keeper was acting like a jerk. Not that he's obliged to serve a client who's looking for something so different from what the shop provides, but he could have been more pleasant, and just let the customer know he doesn't have what he's looking for.
I think there is a place in the world for people with specialized interests to have a shop that caters exclusively to other people who are deep into the hobby, and to be a little brusk to normies who wander in looking for something else. It sure would have been a lot nicer if the shop keeper just understood the situation and kindly explained "That's not what we do here", but, hey, not everybody's gonna be super nice. It's part of life.
I understand the point of the article, but the characterization of the shopkeeper seems unfair. If you're unwilling to learn from someone because they don't understand what exactly you're trying to do, or because they speak condescendingly, or because they smell bad, or because you disagree with their opinion on X, Y, or Z, you will not learn very much.