RECORD STORE WORKERS POLL: WORST COLLECTRO TYPE?
SoulOnIce
13,027 Posts
For me, it's MONKEES COLLECTORS. ((shudder)
They are like some strange subset of Beatle Collectrowho are afraid to run with the Wolves of Beatlemania - like people who only like the minor league affiliate ofa popular sports team "I'm a PAWTUCKET Red Sox fan!" We had a not-for-sure-related pair of somewhat challengedcustomers known as "The Monkee Brothers" at a store I used towork at. Whenever we would get some oddball "Last Train to Clarksville" picture sleeve in, the owner would have these guys in a lather,counting out pennies to cover the $15.99 he squeezed them for.
RUNNER UP:
with all due apologies to Batmon, I gotta go with CASSETTE COLLECTROS.I'm cool with the hip hop aspect of collecting mixtapesor oop/private hip hop jawns, but I'm talking about the zombie army that haunts every used record store in the US,duct-taped walkman always at hand, prowling the tape racksin an effort to mint-up their scratched-chassis copy of Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814 or Def Leppard Hysteria. I do have to admit we would have good things to listen to on cassette in-store sometimes, I had a few favorites that just sat on the shelf the entire 3 years I worked there.
I wanna hear from other ex-and-current counter jockeys:who are the scourge of the dusty bin circuit?
Comments
Not the collectro dudes that really do "Got That"
But the dudes that walk into the store and ask "Hey do you have..." and when you hand it to them, they look at you and tell you they say something alone the lines of...
"Oh, no it's ok. I got it already."
Either that or the dude that walks in and is a listening collectro.
Forget MP3's... That dude comes in once a week and listens to records and never buys. He just adds it to his fantasy file to talk about to friends, other record stores, on the net, etc, etc, etc.
2) DJs with bad taste who have better gigs than you.
3) People who flip everything forward in the crate while looking around the room. aka Hipsters.
4) One time a guy complained about a scratch on a mint hesher rock record and I blew it off and said "that's a hair". Probably his. That pissed me off. Basically people who want minty crap.
I got that dudes are idiots as well.
OMG SO ON POINT
b/w
I JUST GOT THAT (for $1 at the market or buy-it-now for $9.99)
SportCasual's are on point as well.
I like the guys that come in with a purposeful air of knowing EXACTLY what they're looking for, then look at a few records quizically, walk to the front, and ask for one of the rarest records known. As if I just had a magical stash of the title behind the counter. "Invaders?"
This is similar to the guys who come in asking for [insert trendy subgenre of the moment] and when you recommend a couple of titles in stock, they listen, put them back, and say "yeah... well I was more looking for something like [insert RARE AS HENS TEETH title here]. Do you have that one?"
A fella who comes in regularly to bring me dregs from what he's brought to other stores and tells me tales about flipping such-and-such on ebay for $$$ or selling stock copies of this or that to TSL, and then asks me to show him all my unpriced stock. HA HA HA. Why the FUCK would I show a guy like that anything.
One guy came in and asked me for, no lie, like a whats-what of rare breakbeats. I didn't happen to have any of the titles he wanted (Lyn Christopher, Labi Siffre, Malik, etc) but a couple had just been sold (Stop & Go and another I can't remember). I played him some stuff along those lines and he was like, "that's cool. I'm just trying to knock off titles on my list though."
Sometimes I envy you ebay dudes!
Beni B said it best in Phill's column: don't ask for titles. Just ask if there's anything else to look at.
When I used to work in a record store, we had no customer turntable or CD player, yet we would play a record for the asking.
I used to HATE it when jazz or dance-music deejays asked to hear something.
Why?
Because with fans of other kinds of music, it only took them a few seconds to gauge where a particular song was going.
But with jazz and dance music 12"'s, it ALWAYS took a while before the record built up to a climax, see. So we'd be all like: (after a few seconds) "So, is this okay?" "No, no, I need to hear more..." (after a minute or two) "Good enough?" "Wait a minute, here comes the sax solo," etc., etc.. It always took fans of these musics a long-ass time to get their nut! By which time the record was half over!
Since then, a couple of area stores have installed public turntables, and guess who's always tying those motherfuckers up? Not the jazz guys, surprisingly...but usually some fool with a stack of 12" disco singles.
Since there are a lot of jazz and disco fans on this board, don't mean to offend
Unless you know them as friends and even then it's probably a similar ratio.
i think you need to love the records more than the random douchebag customers if you are a pro.
thus by nature it tempers you into a semi hard stance when dealing with people who walk thru your front door
and i guess each customer is guilty until provrn cool/non shoplifter/timewaster
usually 45 guys, they check every record against their dogeared Kreiter doowop book etc...
a local dealer/shopowner here made a custom dust jacket for his manship book - so no-one would know what he was looking at. (rolls eyes)
if you are a dealer that's one thing, but collectors should be interested in the MUSIC before the value perhaps???
glass houses, stones etc.
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The "Hidden Record" dude.....these are the folks who go to a store, find an LP and for one reason or another hide it in what they think is an inconspicuous place.....usually the Johnny Mathis or Classical sections.
If they are definitely going buy it and just don't have the money, the store will usually hold it behind the counter for a few days.
But if they are gonna go home and "look it up" and wind up not buying it, the LP never gets put back in the proper place which hurts the store and the guy who might actually buy it if he was able to find it.
I've found some damn good psych and funk records in the Brahms section!!
The other guy that sucks is the guy who is in the store when a collection is put out, stacks up 50 LP's and puts them on "hold" only to come back and only buy 5 of them.
Fuck those dudes,
This happens at record shows too, which to me is even worse. At least a shop can then put the record back out another day.
Now I am pretty aggressive at shows, I am buying for my shop and I get pissed if I miss a good box. But what I take, I take, and what I don't - well, shame on me if I slept. I get burned sometimes on records that either looked good and weren't, or I didn't inspect condition closely enough. All part of the game.
I cannot stand these guys who pull anything remotely interesting without even looking, and then hand the pile back to the dealer and say "hold on to these for a sec" while they run to the next table. Then they come back an hour or two later, discard 75% of the pile, and buy five records. Super lame.
There is a foreign guy that does this around here, Tim knows who I'm talking about...
He shoulda marked out all the artists and titles with a sharpie a la DJs so nobody could ever figure out what's IN the book
Sometimes I feel more like musical social worker than a record store employee.
My bottom three record store customers buying strictly vinyl are:
3. I gotta throw Ebay flippers in here too. We try real hard to keep good records at good prices and it really pisses me off when people take advantage of that. Case in point, we put a Dorothy Ashby "Afro Harping" on the wall in VG+ for $30. Saw it on Ebay that night, I knew who bought it and their account name. It ended at $48. So this douchebag flipped this record for $18 not including time and fees and denied a local customer who would have really wanted that record the chance to own. I can understand getting over on a piece no one knows about but high grading and flipping well known items, that's straight up dog shit.
2. High price fixated dudes. Usually guys with no taste and no money who have to grab every shitty dollar record and yell across the store to you or their one friend in the world about how much "this record costs in New York" or "I saw one on GEMM for fitty dollars". To them every record is mint and worth ten times what it actually sells for currently. My guess is they have shitty collections and it is in their best interest to believe those records are actually worth that much rather than realize their own collection is a piece of shit. The flip are the dudes who brag about how much they paid for a record on ebay which we usually have in the bin for a tenth of that price. I secretly (sometimes not so secretly) laugh at them. $60 for Ohio Players Climax! Fuggin' douche bag.
1. Surly rock dude who can't face the fact that the game has changed in the last 15 years. Nobody cares about the uncensored Mom's Apple Pie record, ZZ Top picture discs, the Skynard record with the flames still on it, and you most likely will not stumble into Mystic Siva, The Index, Marble Phrogg or any other giant psych piece. It's 2006, get a haircut and a flea dip. Folks work hard at this game and while our knowledge has not only progressed it has changed with the times. They stomp around the store looking for records that were either all collected up years ago or haven't made it onto a record store floor in 10 years. They flip records furiously, and end up buying a couple of shitty dollar records from the oldies section.
Honorable mentions to:
"I got that" dude
"Got anything new?" without even flipping through the bins guy
grab a stack of records and bring them all up to the counter, clog up the register , ask me what each record is about, and end up only buying $3 worth of shit guy
Beatles fixated guys (motherfuck the Beatles)
New jacks who walk in and ask for Melvin Bliss (it's happened twice) or any other holy grail and actually look dissapointed when you say you don't have it
Sleeve/record flippers, either putting the record back in the plastic sleeve wrong or putting the record back in the bin wrong (it's like a territorial thing I believe)
Guy eating barbecue chips while flipping through the 45s (only happened once)
Whew! That felt good. I like record day.
SONIC
One thing that gets me is the dude with his baby in the stroller, crying, obviously unhappy, and dude just HAS to flip through another bin of jazz. It's like, dude, the records will be here. Your baby is CRYING.
I have a confession to make, I once bought a copy of Bill Dixon 'Intents and Purposes' at your store for $12 & then sold it to aschrock for $20.
can you ever forgive me?
Just for the record (as a customer), when I find stuff like that, if I don't buy I generally refile it correctly (someone make an anal retentive/passive agressive graemlin plaese...)
I dont collect tapes, but I wont hesitate to cop a sealed classic if seen.
What about 8 track collectros - yah or nay?
Let me say for the record I love this type of worst collectro.
sounds like
I guess I'm not as bad as that dude you described.
oh i love these dudes, because whenever i stumble upon a hidden stash i move everything to the most conspicuous place possible, the front of the racks, the new arrivals section, or just move 'em to a different spot. the funny thing is the shit that's hidden is usually