[hooples3]

Ok this guy always comes in complaining about his POS bike that he wont invest a dime in but rides all the time.. He needs new cables but wont spend the dough , and its annoying because i know new cables will make a great improvement..
Anyways he comes in today..

Customer: this friggin bike.. its still not changing gears right

me: ( i go through the whole new cable thing.. again)

Customer: asks how much.. again

me: $20
Customer can u do it for $10?

Me: Im sorry.. Im not even charging you labor to install them

Customer: rants and raves about when he goes up a hill and he has to switch gears how it sounds like "its going to fall apart"

me: Where you in 4th gear?

Customer: Im not sure, I think so


Me: Nodding my head.. looking at the owner of the shop, dead seriously I ask the guy.. " when you go up the hill and you switch the gears.. do you feel a jerk on the bike?"

Customer: (having no clue).. yeah i do.. why??

Me: Ahhh now I see the problem.......everyone in the shop is now Hysterical

Customer.. dead serious.. doesnt have a clue.. "can you fix it"????

 

[boogenman]

I could have some fun on this topic. 10+ plus years at 3 different shops and 5 different locations.

Here is one of the better ones. I was doing sales at a HUGE shop, 3 stores in the area. HUGE volume, bad service, bad place to go if you know anything. The owner is a huge dick and hot head. Myslef and a few sales guys are standing close to the service area where the service manager is watching a lady walking a bike up to the door with her 12 year old son behind her, the owner of the shop is in the service area being a dick as usual.

The bike below is a week old Haro Backtrail of some sort
Lady: (10 feet from service manager, yells)This bike is garbage! He has had it for 1 week and it is broken!

Manager: I'm sorry what is wrong?

Lady: It has a flat tire, the chain is broken, the seat is torn and the handle things are ripped.

Managerlooking over the bike) Ma'am this bike has been trashed and abused.

Lady: You are crazy! I want my money back so I can buy a real bike!

Manager: I'm sorry that you feel that way but the bike has been abused and is not defective. I'll you what, we will fix the flat free of charge.

Lady: So you expect me to pay for the rest of this stuff on YOUR defective bike!? How much is that?!?!

Manager: Well it will be about $40, $12 for the grips and $25 for the seat.

Lady: that's crazy! Give me my money back! Who owns this $hithole!?

(owner comes over, has been watching all along)
Owner: I own this store, your kid trashed the bike. I am not giving you anything! Get out of my store!

she freaks out swears a ton and argues back and forth with the owner for 2 or 3 more minutes, he gets her outside and near her car, she loads up the bike and gets back in his face. He gets more in her face, more yelling goes on. A few of us pop the door open to listen. At that point he reaches into his pocket grabs a wad of cash and says "I don't give a f^ck what you do! Get off my property and don't come back, get your bike fixed somewhere else! as he throws the cash in her face and walks away.

Owner: What seems to be the problem here?

 

[sanjuro]

Want to hear about how my co-worker nailed Bert Jr's sister in the backroom?

 

[IH8Rice]

customer: what do you mean WD40 isnt a lubricant? the owner's manual said to use it on the hubs and gears.

me: oh, i must have missed that part when i read it

 

[JohnE]

My best was when a friend (Now ex...) brings his and his wives bikes in to trade in for MTBs. Both are 10 speed(!) older Schwinns or Raleighs, not bad neighborhood bikes in the old days, but this is now. Errr, then. They do look brand new, probably ridden around the block then forgotten in the garage. Owner says I will give you $20 each towards a trade in. Friend says you're crazy, they are both worth $250 at least!
Owner says Well, then go sell them yourself, come see me when you do...he never came back.

 

[JohnE]

Forgot this...
Owner/manager has a guy walk into his house one night, walk out with his full Campy Iforgetwhatitwasbutitwasexpensive racing rig.
He shows up late, extremely bummed out (And high as a kite...) the next morning. Spends the opening hour pouting in the office. He and I make a bagel run later in the morning, and swing by a couple other local shops to ask them to watch for his ride. He get to the used bike/fix a flat place, he looks in the window, and there is his full Campy Iforgetwhatitwasbutitwasexpensive racing rig, leaning on the wall of the still not open shop. He freaks, starts dancing and shaking me around..."Thatsmybikethatsmybikethatsmybike" etc and looking for a brick to smash the window and reclaim his scoot. Thinking calmly, I advise him to call 5-0 and see the owner when he opens. Owners response when confronted with my boss and the cops? "I knew that it was too good to be true when the junkie only wanted $50 for that thing"...

Neck still hurts from him shaking me about. He was a large human.

 

[boogenman]

Want to hear about how my co-worker nailed Bert Jr's sister in the backroom?

Dude, that is F^CKING GROSS! Steve Peat has better teeth than Renee or however you spell her name.

Please tell who is your co-worker?

 

[I Are Baboon]

hahaha...I love hearing shop employees whine and complain about customers and then wonder why people take to shopping on teh internets.

 

[sanjuro]

Does she still work there? She had a tight bod back in the day, but the same bad teeth. And my friend/co-worker did mention a certain anatomical anomaly if proof is required.

In case you don't believe that I used to work for Bert's Bikes, I do remember he would pop his zits in the showroom mirrors.

 

[boogenman]

One more for tonight kids.......

Boogenman: is cleaning some greasy ass bike part over a large trash can full of rags and regular bike shop trash. I'm spraying an ass load of White Lightning metal prep all over, part, hands and trash can. I get sick of cleaning the part so I ask little grom Matt to help.

Boogenman: Matt, finish cleaning this cassette I'm sick of doing it.

Matt: ok, dick.

he sprays even more metal prep all over the place, now just scrubbing.

I proceed to grab a lighter and a can of Giant Bikes brand ghetto lube and direct the flame thrower at Matt's little grom hands. The hands burst into flames along with everything in the garbage can. It was like a mini-mushroom cloud of black smoke, flames and burning rags.

A large shop mat melted, balck soot was on the walls, some tubes melted, Grom lost arm hair and I lost eye brow.

It was a good day

 

[maddog17]

i had a similar customer to Boogeman's. guy buys his kid the cheapest POS mtb we sold, it was about $200 new. comes into the store complaining bike is broken, blah blah blah. so i happen to be walking by the service shop and overhear what's going on. kid's had the bike for all of 2 weeks. he's got both wheels all f'ed up, scratched fork, frame. the drive train looks like he leaves the thing laying in mud when not being used. he's even got the cable ends all frayed. of course he's demanding a new bike, this thing sucks, we were mislead that it's a good bike and whatever other bs he was passing out. so i chime in and say that no, he wasn't mislead that i know who sold him the bike and he would never say that. i ask him about all the mud and crud. he says the kid only rides it around the neighborhood. so i say, well then that really doesn't add up does it. if he's only ridding it on the street, explain all the mud. he mentions how the wheels are all f'ed up. again i say, if he's only riding it on the street then this doesn't happen. unless you live on a potholed filled street with moon like craters, something isn't being told. so b4 dad can get all pissed that i'm calling him a liar, i ask the kid just what the hell he's doing. now the truth comes out. he does ride it in the woods with his friends and he likes to go jumping and doing tricks with it. what kind of tricks i ask. you know, endo's and stuff like that. i like to ride up to curbs and try to get the back up and balance it like my friends do with their bmx bikes. his buddy tried to fix his rear brake, didn't hold the cable and let the V brake snap open and that's how they messed up that cable. the scratches were from his "endo" tries. so my boss looks at me, i look at him and say looks like a simple repair. 2 wheel trues, replace a couple of cables. i'll work up the estimate for you. dad flips out, boss says sorry but your kid is abusing the bike nothing i can or will do. you can do 1 of 2 things. accept our estimate for repair or leave with the bike as is. gotta love the loudmouths. my experience from my retail life is the more they yell and scream the more you know their lying.

 

[boogenman]

Does she still work there? She had a tight bod back in the day, but the same bad teeth. And my friend/co-worker did mention a certain anatomical anomaly if proof is required.

In case you don't believe that I used to work for Bert's Bikes, I do remember he would pop his zits in the showroom mirrors.

I have not worked at Bert's in 6 years so I have no idea. I don't doubt you,
I didn't mention any names in my story and you knew what shop it was. When did you work there? What store?

Are you from here? or just here for college?

Did you know that her Husband blew his freaking head off in thier basement a few years ago?

 

[loco-gringo]

Can't even begin to start on this. Too much.

 

[sanjuro]

I have not worked at Bert's in 6 years so I have no idea. I don't doubt you,
I didn't mention any names in my story and you knew what shop it was. When did you work there? What store?

Are you from here? or just here for college?

I lived in Buffalo long enough to act like I miss the place. And I was at Bert's about 10 years before you.

I did see that schmuck at Interbike a couple of years ago. I am glad he didn't recognize me....

 

[boogenman]

Bert isn't that bad of a guy if you get on his good side. Bert Jr. is probably the biggest asshole, tool, homer, moron, dork and loser I know.

So you worked there when they had the huge store in the old toy store at the thruway mall?

Know Mark Billman the borderline retard mechanic?

 

[sanjuro]

No recollection, it is has been too long ago, and I barely count Bert's Bikes as a place of employment, except as how I wouldn't run a bike shop.

BTW, I never met Bert, but I am sure he is a decent guy. I only worked with his children, to my detriment.

 

[hooples3]

I once showed an older lady how to put her bike into the cyclops trainer...
after i was done she asks me "where does the front go?"

 

[TKCastle]

Does she still work there? She had a tight bod back in the day, but the same bad teeth. And my friend/co-worker did mention a certain anatomical anomaly if proof is required.


Large clitoroty?

 

[jonKranked]

One day we had a guy come in with an old clunker. My luck, being half drunk still, he comes straight to me, and starts accusing me of stealing his reflectors. Mind you, this guy stutters like Porky Pig. So I was trying to be professional and not crack up, and tell him very frankly that none of the mechanics would ever bother stealing someone's reflectors, because we have a whole box of them in the back. He yells at me to get him some so I do, just to shut him up and get him out of the shop. While I'm installing the reflectors, he keeps stammering. Come to find out, he had never even been to our shop before. I finish on the reflectors and as I'm rolling his bike back to him, he won't take it, so I start rolling it towards the door in the hope that he gets the picture that its time to get the heck out. We walk past my manager, and the guy asks me if I want to buy a kickstand that he found on the side of the trail. My boss runs into the back room trying to contain his laughter, and I roll the guys bike outside. I walk back in while he's still talking to me. This was just one member of what we referred to as "the Whack Pack"

 

[DirtMcGirk]

I got busy in a major VB chain bike store's fitting room once...

 

[JohnE]

(Dirt...doing it by yourself doesnt count.)

 

[PsychO!1]

Lots of customer stories, here's one about an employee.

I was manager of a shop in a strip mall. We were having a huge annual 'parking lot' sale.....tons of crap and loads of bikes. The sale is over and we load up the unsold merchandise into a big rental delivery box truck. Tell one of the guys to drive the truck around back while i head into the store.
About five minutes later he comes walking into the showroom, from the back, with a front bumper from a BMW over his shoulder and says "anybody own a blue BMW license plate #", pausing to look over his shoulder at the license plate still attached to the bumper , "DJR 756".
Ha! Turns out while pulling the truck around back he had clipped the BMW and tore the bumper clean off AND the only customer in the store at the time was the owner of said BMW!

 

[Prettym1k3]

Lady comes into shop.

"Can I help you?", I ask.

"Yes. I'd like airless tires for my bike."

"Oh, you mean tube-less tires?"

"No, airless tires. I'm tired of getting flats."

"To be perfectly honest, ma'am. We don't carry those, and I don't think they've even been made for decades. We have rim strips, tire liners, and thicker casing tires all which will help prevent flats, along with Slime."

(Mind you, by this time, the lady is being a total b*tch because, obviously, a gremlin lives in her vagina and is generally just making her feel like a local bike shop employee deserves to be hassled.)

"Yes, they have. My friend has them. I want them. Can you help me or not?"

"Well, ma'am. We don't carry them, and I've never seen them in one of our suppliers books."

"Fine. I'll go somewhere else that carries airless tires."

"Good luck with that!"

*I later found out that there is a company that still manufactures airless tires, but they're so heavy, and nearly impossible to seat on a rim, I sincerely doubt the company sells very many of them.

 

[boogenman]

I have installed a few of the solid tires in my day. They are much easier to get on the rim. Getting them off is basically impossilbe, you have cut them.

The shop I managed sold a ton of J&B's Industrial Trikes to a local steel/brass place. It was a upgrade to get solid 24" tires on them.

On a side note: Those Industrial Trikes are the bomb! super duty durable, heavy as a tank and they have a HUGE flatbed/shelf on the back. Perfact for a giant cooler full of beer

 

[Streamline]

I have seen the airless tire inserts sold in WalMart Just a couple weeks ago. Picked one up and dislocated my shoulder

 

[Westy]

Lady comes into shop.

"Can I help you?", I ask.

"Yes. I'd like airless tires for my bike."

"Oh, you mean tube-less tires?"

"No, airless tires. I'm tired of getting flats."

"To be perfectly honest, ma'am. We don't carry those, and I don't think they've even been made for decades. We have rim strips, tire liners, and thicker casing tires all which will help prevent flats, along with Slime."

(Mind you, by this time, the lady is being a total b*tch because, obviously, a gremlin lives in her vagina and is generally just making her feel like a local bike shop employee deserves to be hassled.)

"Yes, they have. My friend has them. I want them. Can you help me or not?"

"Well, ma'am. We don't carry them, and I've never seen them in one of our suppliers books."

"Fine. I'll go somewhere else that carries airless tires."

"Good luck with that!"

*I later found out that there is a company that still manufactures airless tires, but they're so heavy, and nearly impossible to seat on a rim, I sincerely doubt the company sells very many of them.

LordOpie put a set on his commuter.

 

[OGRipper]

So many but I love this one:

Guy gives us a fake wallet, takes a pricey mountain bike for a test ride and doesn't come back. Owner of the shop eventually jumps in his van and goes out searching. About an hour later he comes back wheeling the bike with a big grin on his face. Turns out he spotted the guy, who then tried to bolt across some yards and a field. Owner followed him - in the van - across the yards and field and basically ran the guy down, knocking him off the bike. Said he got a few punches in before the dude ran like a little girl.

A disbelieving co-worker went and checked it out. Apparently there were van tracks all over the place, the owner had wrecked some pretty nice lawns.

And of course we all know about people wrecking bikes driving INTO the garage. I've dealt with more than one person who did it driving OUT of the garage. Doh!

 

[moff_quigley]

My LBS sucks and went out of business. True story.

 

[jonKranked]

So many but I love this one:

Guy gives us a fake wallet, takes a pricey mountain bike for a test ride and doesn't come back. Owner of the shop eventually jumps in his van and goes out searching. About an hour later he comes back wheeling the bike with a big grin on his face. Turns out he spotted the guy, who then tried to bolt across some yards and a field. Owner followed him - in the van - across the yards and field and basically ran the guy down, knocking him off the bike. Said he got a few punches in before the dude ran like a little girl.

A disbelieving co-worker went and checked it out. Apparently there were van tracks all over the place, the owner had wrecked some pretty nice lawns.

And of course we all know about people wrecking bikes driving INTO the garage. I've dealt with more than one person who did it driving OUT of the garage. Doh!

I'm picturing him driving the A-Team Van and smoking a cigar.

 

[Jim Mac]

Not my story, but one nonetheless: (reference, the shop I work at is the ONLY downtown shop in Albany, so there's a lot of theft). A guy comes in, tries on a pair of gloves, then tries to walk out. The alarm goes off and all the employees (well, all two who were there) come running out and stop the guy at the door. They, the employees, who shall remain nameless, were low on smokes and noticed that the offender had a cig lined up over his ear.

Employee #1: Well, we can do this two ways. We can detain you until the cops come or you can do something for us.

Employee #2: Yeah, what he said.

Employee #1: I see that you have a fine tobacco product placed above your ear. I am out of them, as it is.

Employee #2: Yeah...such a drag.

Employee #1: Do you have any more?

Offender: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got a whole pack! You can have it all! Just don't call the cops!

Employee #1: That's mighty generous of you! I'll take them, as a matter of fact, and the gloves back, too (if you don't mind).

Employee #2: and DON"T EVER set foot in this shop AGAIN!

Voila! Gloves returned, jail avoided, employees rewarded with cancer sticks!

 

[Kanye West]

So many but I love this one:

Guy gives us a fake wallet, takes a pricey mountain bike for a test ride and doesn't come back. Owner of the shop eventually jumps in his van and goes out searching. About an hour later he comes back wheeling the bike with a big grin on his face. Turns out he spotted the guy, who then tried to bolt across some yards and a field. Owner followed him - in the van - across the yards and field and basically ran the guy down, knocking him off the bike. Said he got a few punches in before the dude ran like a little girl.

A disbelieving co-worker went and checked it out. Apparently there were van tracks all over the place, the owner had wrecked some pretty nice lawns.

And of course we all know about people wrecking bikes driving INTO the garage. I've dealt with more than one person who did it driving OUT of the garage. Doh!

The best I have ever seen is someone who installed a lift kit on their truck in their garage. The truck was then too tall to back out of the garage (even with air-ing down).

Epic. Fail.

 

[Jim Mac]

...and one story of my own:

A guy comes in and wants a kickstand installed on his bike. I take note of the gent: very big, spider web tats on his elbows, etc; but he is kind of 'off'. Almost like a tattooed version of Lenny from Of Mice and Men. He had just purchased a new bike from us a month ago.

As some of you know, kickstands come usually in one size, and you sometimes need to cut them to size after you install them.

So, I had done the installation and was cutting it with our giant bolt cutters - a good 30+ inches long! A coworker was going to help me with this

The guy sees us on his bike with the cutters. He suddenly yells out, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MY BIKE?!?!?!?!??!?!?!??!!)&(!&!*_!*^&&&&88*****?!?!".

Suddenly it clicks with me - the guy has TBI (traumatic brain injury). So I shift back into human service gear and explain to him step by step what we are doing and why are doing it. He calms down. I look behind my and my coworker had the bolt cutter raised and ready to rumble....close call! Nothing like an adrenalin rush at your 2nd job to end the day!

 

[OGRipper]

The best I have ever seen is someone who installed a lift kit on their truck in their garage. The truck was then too tall to back out of the garage (even with air-ing down).

Epic. Fail.

Bwahahaha! Like building a boat in your basement.

 

[Secret Squirrel]

Bwahahaha! Like building a boat in your basement.

That's what Mark Harmon does on NCIS. He builds the boat. And drinks. Then starts over. I'm kinda thinking this is a good idea.

 

[sanjuro]

Well, to continue this vein of comments...

My current shop is located near several bad suburban neighborhoods, and the residents, which I refer to as "tweakers", really piss me off. I've worked with the stupid and the rude, but never have these kinds of people demanded respect.

One brief story is when two different sets of trashy girls asked for money for cigarettes and gasoline, respectively. Even though one pair were black and the other white, I think they were all together.

But one time my buddy Jason was hanging out, and this homeless bum came in and wanted me to pump up his tire 'cause it was flat. He was on an older but flawless Gary Fisher and it was pretty obvious he stole it.

I told him I would pump it up but it needed to be fixed. He was insistent that putting air would take care of the problem. Naturally I gave him an offish answer, and he responded with, "What your problem, you f****** Chink!"

Well, I haven't been called a Chink in anger since grade school, so his response was more surprising than infuriating. However, this guy was drunk and belligerent, so I told him to get out of the shop.

The guy looks at me, and quickly scurries off. I was thinking, "I'm a bad ass", until I realized my friend Jason had stood up and gotten my back. The ex-bouncer is what scared this stupid a-hole out the shop!

 

[boogenman]

My first shop job was when I was in high school, we used to have grip wars when it was slow or when our work was done. It was the owner, myself, the manager and another grom. We all had our secret stashes with our best grips hidden(fast, accurate and painful).

Many fixtures and displays were broken or destroyed from these grip wars. The worst was when the owner had a 100% clear shot of me from about 15-20 feet away, he had one of the grips we called the stinger a old GT cruiser grip. I saw him getting ready to release and jumped out of the way and jumped the wrong way. He hit smack dead on my COCK! It broke blood vessels and did not feel good.

 

[maddog17]

a gremlin lives in her vagina

dude, i f'ing spit coke all over my comp screen!!!!!

 

[w00dy]

The head mech at my old shop nearly lost a set of eyebrows on the crapper when two other guys at the shop fired a torch and some PB Blaster through the baffles in the bottom of the door.

During one of the yearly parts-washer-fluid replacing, the manager dumped the old fluid out the back window. It killed everything it touched. A couple weeks later the same guy flipped a cig out the window and lit the back yard on fire. Luckily a neighbor called before the building went up.

 

[Wumpus]

http://www.bikemojo.com/speak/showthread.php?t=57720

 

[Hulkamaniac]

I don't normally post about my experiences working in a bike shop (of the many I have) as a second job, but this one is to good to not post.

About two years ago I accepted a job at a local shop that also sold many other outdoor related items (gear, clothing, etc). I didn't last long there because of managers being total tools, but this incident has stuck with me. The first few days on the job I get this whole rundown of how we were located in a very high theft "area" and how they have a code word for calling attention to a suspected shoplifter. If we saw someone or suspected someone of shoplifting, we were to call out over the store-wide intercom the specific name/code word. The code word was a specific name that you typically don't hear often, so it seemed a logical choice.

Anyways, a couple of weeks into the job and I'm busy working on a repair when I hear over the intercom a co-worker calling the name out and asking for said person to come to the front counter, which was mere feet from the bike repair area. As I look up, a guy and a girl come walking up to the front counter and proclaim "I'm_____, what do you need me for?" As I see the store manager and shift manager converge I know something is up, but I had a few other customers in my face so I didn't get to take it all in.

Long story short, the girl was the name that was called out and was also stuffing her down North Face coat with items that her boyfriend was pulling off the racks in the outerwear zone of the store. As the manager walked up, the girlfriend immediately gave up on the scheme and opened her coat, letting everything fall out onto the floor and the boyfriend promptly started crying!!! Within moments, both were balling and sobbing their eyes out, claiming that they were meth addicts and how they had warrants....begging, pleading, and trying to bribing the manager to not call the cops. As the couple heard the sirens of the cop cars outside, both tried to split on foot and go their own way out the front doors, but neither realized that pushing out on a glass door that swings inwards wasn't a bright idea.....both hit the glass, hit the floor, and had cuffs on them before they could get up!