things the record store clerk hates to hear

Truth! It amazes me how poorly people treat vinyl, especially 45s. The filthy crate full of a 50-50 mix of dead bugs and unsleeved records that was kept in an exposed garden shed for twenty years is starting to haunt my dreams.

i love 45s. i don't really collect them much but they make my week sometimes. i just bought beautiful 45s. factory sleeve first pressing 50's stuff. so pretty. most of them had barely been played. they look new. so fun to play. or just look at. pristine crickets 45s are a thing of beauty.

60's stuff too. here's a 60's one. they all look like this pretty much. hundreds of them. someone must have worked at a record store in the 50's and 60's. these weren't really kept to be played. they were separated by record label. (sun 45s by jerry lee and johnny but no elvis. a couple of beautiful sun jerry lee picture sleeves though.)

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/24451_10152012012192137_393781840_n.jpg

whenever i'm selling records i hate to see the guy who brings in six boxes of records and they take maybe two and explain that the rest are, for whatever reason, nothing they're interested in. half the time the people are polite and cool w/it albeit maybe a little surprised, the other half try to debate. ime as a customer, at least.

it can be frustrating when someone essentially wants you to pay them to take trash off their hands. moldy records, unplayable scratched records, records missing jackets...

i really think i have begun to resent having to deal with people who are really aggressive.

Corollary to the eBay one: "I saw this goes for $100 on eBay..." Trying to talk people down off of that one is always fun, they never understand that a Buy It Now is not the price they're going to get from us. Which they, of course, expect to be $100. Because we don't need to make a profit.

― Yo Leon, what's this all about? (GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ)

This was every day for me in the sense that even amazon listings were cited as "what it's worth" when it isn't understood that the item rarely also sells for that price. Also that it is assumed we'd pay 80% of that current price when: it isn't likely to sell for that now, may not be listed at that price tomorrow, the copy they've brought is nowhere near the condition necessary to warrant the imaginary price, and mostly likely of all isn't mono/promo/pressing/original/sealed or whatever else needs to match.

Speaking of which... Lady left a message today trying to get rid of her parents' records. Pop vocal, Hawaiian music (I'm guessing nothing outrageously awesome), Broadway shows, easy listening. "I looked them up online and I saw they usually go for $5 each, one of them was on sale for $16.99. I'm looking for $100 for the box of 60, including the $16.99 album, which was... Engelbert... Humper? Dinck?"

it can be frustrating when someone essentially wants you to pay them to take trash off their hands. moldy records, unplayable scratched records, records missing jackets...

yeah this x100. I also hated when customers would bring in disgusting moldy boxes that had records/tapes/vhs/underwear in them. At least clean that shit up, goddam.

One of the managers at my local store told me a horrible story about getting sick for a week when he made the mistake of starting to sort through a box of super moldy records that somebody had brought in. They were in the back of their car and he paused for a moment before doing it to reconsider, but went ahead - and the cloud of mold and cat dander enveloped him immediately. He knew right away that he was screwed.

Ugh. Hate that shit. Got a box of mildly peed upon (by a cat, I think) records recently that we passed up.

Oh, yeah, my boss bought a box of CDs from a guy once... dude had always brought in tons of dubious CDs, smelled like dumpster juice or were filthy, with scratched or missing discs. This batch was actually ok on the surface. So I'm switching out broken cases and weeding out discs when something falls out of a booklet. Bedbug. Dead bedbug, thankfully, but there was one or two in most of the CDs, along with some dead German cockroaches. Double bagged that shit up tight, told my boss he could deal with it.

Yeah a guy brought in dvds to our place once. All were in fine shape, but as I was checking condition of the discs to evaluate a price for the guy I suddenly noticed (without him knowing) a little bedbug running around on the counter. I shined a light on it, confirmed it was actually a bedbug, and smashed it with the dvd case I happened to be holding. The seller gave them to us for very little and I just immediately bagged them and trashed it all.

The stuff is just instantly a biohazard and any area that came into contact with it I meticulously would study for the rest of the day. No thanks.

we have rubber gloves and dust masks and stuff, initially purchased years ago upon realizing we were entering into the home of a true hoarder (who was dead in his home for a while before he was found.)

i got mold in my veins.

"get a real job"

i don't mind being told to get a real job, as long as it's not by people still paying off their law school. ;)

haw

"they're not all in the right jackets..."

this fuckin guy
called a bout six times.
i tried to tell him not to come, because he was telling me things like frank sinatra, kenny rogers, laura branigan... but he was all like "well i gots lots and different things.." and i was like "i'll take a look, but i can't promise anything. and they all have to be in good shape if we're gonna buy em.." so he shows up, records in the wrong sleeves, records in no sleeves, some moldy or water damaged, nearly everything beat to hell. ugh. i hate my job. he was so indignant that we did not want to buy any of them. he wanted us to "work with him." and "shit man it took me an hour to get over here from bedfor stuyvesant.." but i'm sorry i do not run a charity here.

as noted on facebook this is one of the first things i heard this morning:

"I hope you stay in business for awhile. I can keep coming in to get the stuff that makes me not as depressed."

this from a local hoarder. but i guess it belongs on the things that people say that make you a little sad thread if there is one.

"You charge tax?!"

Seriously, this shit. So many asshole libertarians around here who make sales tax their crusade. Got an indignant "Well... I figured we could work out some kind of private sale and not worry about sales tax" today. On a $14 purchase.

this fuckin guy
called a bout six times.
i tried to tell him not to come, because he was telling me things like frank sinatra, kenny rogers, laura branigan... but he was all like "well i gots lots and different things.." and i was like "i'll take a look, but i can't promise anything. and they all have to be in good shape if we're gonna buy em.." so he shows up, records in the wrong sleeves, records in no sleeves, some moldy or water damaged, nearly everything beat to hell. ugh. i hate my job. he was so indignant that we did not want to buy any of them. he wanted us to "work with him." and "shit man it took me an hour to get over here from bedfor stuyvesant.." but i'm sorry i do not run a charity here.

― i guess i'd just rather listen to canned heat? (ian), Saturday, January 26, 2013 4:27 PM (3 months ago)

guessing this was the thing that made you quit? straw, camel, etc.

fuckin HATE that tax shit, I deal with it in my job too. I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said "real patriots pay their taxes" and sometimes I just wanna repeat that to people. Or go off on the "Oh, you don't wanna pay tax? cool, just stay off the interstate and don't use the utilities" line. But instead I just say "sorry, we can't do that".

i feel like there are a lot of parallels between things the record store clerk hears and things the community college english teacher hears. people who do not value the thing that they're selling, but expect you to value it.
papers written poorly and hastily, unformatted, unresearched = but why did i fail? i did the work!

sigh.

fortunately, not all customers/students are like that but the ones that are are so exhausting!

I can't get over the US thing of quoting sales tax separately.

Like, there was some way some people might not have to pay it

At least over here, even if the rate is higher, it's included in the display price

when i was in nyc a few weeks ago i was buying some postcards and the guy added the sales tax and i said something like "oh i keep forgetting about the tax" and the guy said "how do you think we pay for all these wars buddy?" :-)

Yeah, the invisibility of sales tax has pissed me off my whole life.

that sales tax thing kind of weirded me out on my first trip to the US last year.

What was really strange was that out of the 30 or used record stores i visited to - quite a number didn't add any on for sales tax...

"Hey, where are your Led Zeppelin records?! I looked in Z and they're not there."

It's not just that people don't understand alphabetization anymore, it's that I'm going to spend thirty minutes walking them around the store to every single artist because they don't understand that band names and individual artists are filed according to different rules. Like a phone book, which I guess nobody uses anymore anyway.

Also, tired of having to explain why some records cost more than other records. "Why is this copy of Power Windows $8 and this copy of Exit Stage Left is only $5?! Why can't they both be $5?"

I'm going to try that at the grocery store.

Things the record store clerk hates to smell:

- stale odor of cigarette smoke that you can practically see drifting off of someone's clothes. like they smoked themselves into a state of mummification in a tiny, windowless room.

- mildew, mold, etc. obviously.

- unwashed bodies of bearded oldsters who want to get as close to as possible while they yell their entire record collection/concert attendance record into your face with coffee/egg/cancer breath.

- body spray. fucking body spray.

I hate to SEE dudes with Leftover Crack patches. Assholes, all of them, and totally fucking rude about everything. They'll just start opening boxes and pawing through equipment that is not only not for sale but is hidden behind other boxes.

"It says "Pay no more than £4.99" on this sticker!"

"I collect soundtracks"

Don't know why but dudes that collect soundtracks are the worrrssstttt

They're all just looking for that fucking Caine Mutiny soundtrack in the end.

That reminds of a time decades ago I was at the New Public Library for the Performing Arts, when LPs were still the main way of listening to music. I was waiting for a turntable to free up and I overheard a bizarre conversation from some fellows who clearly had some issues. One guy was saying to another "You're not going to kill anyone. If anyone is going to be killed it is going to be you, not me." (!) Clearly one or both of these gentlemen was hearing voices and either attributing them to the other or verbalizing them. A security guard soon saw fit to intervene by saying "If you want to beef, beef outside, beef outside." While this was going on, I peeked at what one of the guys was listening to and it was the Coma soundtrack, which piece of information sent a chill up my spine.

But perhaps this is a different angle on the whole matter.

lol
Thanks to this thread I'm never setting foot in a used record store again
Though I guess used book stores are a very similar scene

Look, motherfucker, you can either be cheap or an audiophile

“You make $10 an hour and your air of unearned superiority is all you have to cling to in your sad life”

“Aaand a pack of gum”

"You make $10 an hour but you should make more money, also you intimidate me"