my Leica Store Berlin experience - snobbism at its best

Roger Vadim said:
(PS: I love you Berliners! But beeing nice to strangers doesn't mean you loose your pride and Identity!)
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I know this from Berliners very well, but I've also witnessed the same from New Yorkers in New York and from Muscovites in Moscow. I guess it's Big City Syndrome - some people get an arrogant attitude from taking too much pride in the city they live in.

You don't even have to be a native of the city to be gruff. Many Berliners are gruff - Berlin taxi drivers are legendary in this respect. But newcomers take on the attitude very quickly. On the other hand, being born here does give you a certain amount of weird special credibility with the right (or wrong) kind of people. For example, I'm not a "native Berliner", but my younger brother technically is. We lived in Berlin in the 1980s after coming there from from Sudan, and he happened to be born in Berlin, and we moved away again when he was three. A couple of years ago he came to Berlin for half a year for an internship at a hospital, and when he was hanging around with students people were comparing how long they had been in Berlin. Discussions went like this: "Three years." - "Wow!" - "Five years." - "WOW!" - "I was born here." (Ten sets of eyes gaping at him in awe. A real Berliner giving them the honour of hanging out with them!)

Berlin is a bit hyped at the moment. They are trying to push the image of a renewed version of the Golden 1920's roaring cultural capital of Germany and a modern administrative and economic centre rolled into one, and at the same time they have a huge amount of social problems and a very weak local economy, with most larger corporations having either closed shop or moved away. Economically Berlin is one of the less successful cities of Germany, and in many areas it shows, but five blocks from there you have newly-constructed office towers (largely empty) and representative government buildings. To me this discrepancy between hype and reality is one of the more fascinating aspects of Berlin - I regularly take visitors on tours through the gentrified Eastern areas where all the hip people concentrate, who derive part of their pride in life from living in the big B and who have their attitude reinforced by having new New Berliners pour in every day to live in the big B as well. It's quite artificial, but this artificialness and overhypedness has its own weird charm.

Philipp
 
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EmilGil said:
Hmm, maybe we better steer the RFf Euromeet 2008 clear of Berlin?

How about Prague or Barcelona instead? 😀
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Oh, in the long run I think it doesn't make a difference... In Prague at least you will be ripped off instead just as any tourist is 😉

Philipp
 
Mohan said:
one notable exception is Aperture in London , who on a few occasions have virtually insisted on pulling stuff out of cases to show me even though I’ve made it clear that I’m not in a position to buy.
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Yup, they did that with me, too. And I said to them "You've been really helpful, even though you know I can't afford anything right now. Why?"

"Because you'll come back when you can."

And you know, I have. I've bought more stuff from them than from everywhere else put together.
 
Since most of my camera shopping is done online, I only go to a local camera store and even that not too often, but there they know me by first name and are usually very nice.
But as far as restaurants go - I'd suggest to watch a movie called "Waiting". For those who doesn't have access to it, I'll summarize it in one phrase - "Don't mess with the people that handle your food!".
Suggestion to deal with the issue(s) after you get a check is the best as they can't do much to your food at that point.
 
Big deal... I actually like being treated like that as a stranger in town. It makes a good laugh afterwords. Distance. Nick, that attitude sucks. Be humble, and you will earn respect, if not, at least you have your good "karma" intact!
 
A good story... The Cocktail Lounge, Lower East Manhattan, a classic "dive" that doesn't lean on their friendly service "love all serve all" style... Nono, my friend asked the bartender somewhat naive as a fan of his business, "Do you have anything to recommend?" - "No, whatta ya want!" Said the almost 90 year old man behind the register. That makes him special. That's why we can still laugh at this episode. It's the way you look at it. 🙂
 
Dunno if I agree with the post about "treat the lady like a tramp". In my neighborhood in downtown Manhattan for example, nearly every waiter/waitress is a wannabe actor or art star or rock star. Usually they're fine to deal with, but some are unplesant. But -- it's just too much effort to respond to. Life's too short to worry about some small person's bitterness. I have better things to do than remind some random person how they should do their job. Much easier to not get bogged down in someone's problems. If it's worth responding at all, maybe the best response is to be a little more polite, to highlight the rudeness that's occurring. Ths is what most people do in Manhattan; they're just too many of us, and we're too tightly packed together, there's no room for things to escalate. So really the best way to get by is just to be extra tolerant.
 
I never visited the shop but dealt with them on-line and on-phone........... only very positive and pleasant experiences .............. perhaps that specific guy had just a bad day 😉
 
J. Borger said:
I never visited the shop but dealt with them on-line and on-phone........... only very positive and pleasant experiences .............. perhaps that specific guy had just a bad day 😉
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...or maybe you did not use any CV related term 😉.
Out of joke, when i was in Berlin i also visited other camera shops and labs among many other kind of shops and I can only tell nice things about them. Bad manners and snobism are just cosmopolitan as good manners and good common sense ...
 
principe azul said:
Or, if you're sassy enough to get away with a line from Absolutely Fabulous,

"You can drop the attitude. You only work in a shop.''
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That's what I say "Hey- just cause you work here doesn't mean you can afford anything. (What do you make, $6 an hour?)"

I got real attitude from the women in the Gucci shop at Paradeplatz in Zurich once. They followed my wife around (Japanese) but acted like I had the plague. 🙄
 
That store in Hamburg sounds good - and their price list is OK as well. A secondhand M3 for about 650 euros and an lens for some 300... Not too bad for a retail store. Besides, people in Hamburg are friendly indeed. Just say the magic word 'moin' 🙂
 
Or, if you're sassy enough to get away with a line from Absolutely Fabulous,

"You can drop the attitude. You only work in a shop.''
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Ha, my wife and I loved that show...

When she wants me to do something for her she calls me "sweetie darling" in her best, bad British accent. 😀
 
An experienced salesman can usually size up a deadbeat, doofus, toxic cheapskate, time-waster, tire-kicker, touch-and-play-but-no-buy or dunce in about 3 seconds flat, if not sooner. If they have been in the business awhile, they are deadly accurate. It's not worth their while to pander to them.

Look in the mirror and see honestly if you're one of those. Don't overestimate yourself.

A huge majority of those on this forum are abject penny-pinchers and are paralyzed with fear over spending 10 cents too much on an eBay auction.

Myself, I usually look and dress like I'm practically homeless, but when I speak I exude knowledge and never get treated rudely anwhere.

Just an observation. Maybe the authoritative NYC accent.
 
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Charles Bogel said:
An experienced salesman can usually size up a deadbeat, doofus, toxic cheapskate, time-waster, tire-kicker, touch-and-play-but-no-buy or dunce in about 3 seconds flat, if not sooner. If they have been in the business awhile, they are deadly accurate. It's not worth their while to pander to them.
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That doesn't allow them to be unpolite anyway.
 
Now what's wrong with tire-kicking? Or is one supposed to buy something in every store he ever walks in?
 
Charles Bogel said:
An experienced salesman can usually size up a deadbeat, doofus, toxic cheapskate, time-waster, tire-kicker, touch-and-play-but-no-buy or dunce in about 3 seconds flat, if not sooner. If they have been in the business awhile, they are deadly accurate. It's not worth their while to pander to them.

Look in the mirror and see honestly if you're one of those. Don't overestimate yourself.

A huge majority of those on this forum are abject penny-pinchers and are paralyzed with fear over spending 10 cents too much on an eBay auction.

Myself, I usually look and dress like I'm practically homeless, but when I speak I exude knowledge and never get treated rudely anwhere.

Just an observation. Maybe the authoritative NYC accent.
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What a bunch of crap. I worked in retail once and took special pleasure in selling items to the smelly, hippie timewasters who'd been ejected from ther snooty shop down the road. Equally, as a kid, I used to waste lots of time at the music shop down the road, trying out their 50s Les Paul Junior, I remember.

I went in for a chat with the proprietor at his new shop, 10 years ago .There was a 1952 Telecaster hanging on the wall which now resides in my living room. This was a guy took the long view, and realised today's penniless tire-kicker is tomorrow's cash cow.
 
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