my Leica Store Berlin experience - snobbism at its best

Charles Bogel said:
Please note I was not talking about looks alone.

I'm talking about the entire gestalt of a customer. Visual and non-visual cues.

Don't get so huffy, you know it's true.

I used to sell on the camera show circuit for many years. In my case, I can tell you I could always tell a buyer from a non-buyer at a glance.
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How did you know the person you prejudged by their "gestalt" to be a non-buyer just didn't "not buy" from you, and instead didn't go down the road and buy from somebody else who didn't pre-judge whether they were going to buy or not based on their "gestalt"? 😎
 
Don't worry, they didn't.

I'm very friendly with most of the other dealers. They know what's going on.

NickTrop said:
How did you know the person you prejudged by their "gestalt" to be a non-buyer just didn't "not buy" from you, and instead didn't go down the road and buy from somebody else who didn't pre-judge whether they were going to buy or not based on their "gestalt"? 😎
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tbarker13 said:
Not terribly surprising. In my own experience, that seems to be a pretty common attitude when dealing with salespeople in specialty shops - camera stores, golf stores, gun shops, etc. It is almost as if they feel that they are part of some exclusive club - with the authority to decide who else gets in.
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Yes, this is correct and I think the reason is we are dealing with the self employed here. Sometimes (not always of course) people are self employed because they can't hold down a job as an employee due to their eccentric or otherwise socially unacceptable status. In my experience used book store owners are some of the strangest. I have some friends who use to frequent a used book store in San Francisco run by a kermudgendy owner who had a poster at the check out register that said "If you try to bargain with me on the price of the book, I'll double it".
 
despite all the gloom, I'm all for a Berlin RFF meeting. where Bessas and Leicas coexist in peace, (tm).
 
ywenz said:
That's why I'm done with Leica.
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Unfortunately, this attitude/clerk snobbishness thing isn't restricted to Leica. Any camera brand and item, or for that matter, any item in any specialty store can bring it on.

It's a problem with staff training and attitude, not brand.

Henning
 
Even through I prefer that the salesman don't have a stuck up attitude, I sympatise with Charles due to my experience in selling off my surplus camera gear.

I, on my part feel that since I cannot change the salesman, nor the buyer if I'm selling something. The only person I can change is myself, so I will do my best to be a courteous buyer and a great seller. If the buyer or the seller is nasty, I take it in my stride and move on while mentally blacklisting the person or the store.

Samuel
 
Maybe they ARE better than you, and don't want to deal with the hoi-polloi.

If you were Albert Einstein or Oppenheimer, would you want to deal with idiotic physics questions from neophytes or ignoramuses all day?


David Murphy said:
Yes, this is correct and I think the reason is we are dealing with the self employed here. Sometimes (not always of course) people are self employed because they can't hold down a job as an employee due to their eccentric or otherwise socially unacceptable status. In my experience used book store owners are some of the strangest. I have some friends who use to frequent a used book store in San Francisco run by a kermudgendy owner who had a poster at the check out register that said "If you try to bargain with me on the price of the book, I'll double it".
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Maybe they ARE better than you, and don't want to deal with the hoi-polloi.

If you were Albert Einstein or Oppenheimer, would you want to deal with idiotic physics questions from neophytes or ignoramuses all day?

Like I said, some people sell for pleasure. They want the mental stimulation of dealing with people who mentally challenge them and the type of people they want to interact with.

If that doesn't include YOU (in the broad sense of the word), there's nothing worse than an embittered, befuddled dork who feels rejected.


David Murphy said:
Yes, this is correct and I think the reason is we are dealing with the self employed here. Sometimes (not always of course) people are self employed because they can't hold down a job as an employee due to their eccentric or otherwise socially unacceptable status. In my experience used book store owners are some of the strangest. I have some friends who use to frequent a used book store in San Francisco run by a kermudgendy owner who had a poster at the check out register that said "If you try to bargain with me on the price of the book, I'll double it".
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Charles Bogel said:
Maybe they ARE better than you, and don't want to deal with the hoi-polloi.

If you were Albert Einstein or Oppenheimer, would you want to deal with idiotic physics questions from neophytes or ignoramuses all day?
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Did you just try to justify your attitude by comparing yourself to Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer?
 
if you make little money from a dead end job, maybe working on commission, it's pretty easy to get stressed out and rude. this is especially true when you always see people with money to burn. window shoppers grate on their nerves because they don't look like they have any money either.

someone should do a photo essay about this. i would, but i don't live close enough to rodeo drive or whatever. 😀
 
Charles Bogel said:
Maybe they ARE better than you, and don't want to deal with the hoi-polloi.

If you were Albert Einstein or Oppenheimer, would you want to deal with idiotic physics questions from neophytes or ignoramuses all day?

Like I said, some people sell for pleasure. They want the mental stimulation of dealing with people who mentally challenge them and the type of people they want to interact with.

If that doesn't include YOU (in the broad sense of the word), there's nothing worse than an embittered, befuddled dork who feels rejected.
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Like a said before displaying that kind of snobbery just makes you look incredibly insecure and un-classy.

In my opinion I think a large part of the attitude displayed by this type of person comes from the fact that many of these people are failed/untalented Photographers and have to settle on being gearheads, and are uncomfortable being subservient to photographers rather than their preferred customer base of rich fellow collectors or armchair photographer types.
 
robert blu said:
my suggestion after having read this story : let s make next european RFF meeting in Berlin, and every ten minutes anyone of our group enter this shop and ask...if they have that new cheap plastic lens with an M mount...
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Don't forget to do it in German. If I had a flood of people walking in speaking Mayan, and pretending like I should know the language would probably make me look a little pissed off, too. That sort of thing happens when you don't know the language, you know? 😱
 
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