Death of "The Guy"

[DrDeth]

@Surly_Chick

I’m bummed. The guy who fixes shoes downtown has also gone the way of the dodo.

Right next door to where I live.

I Love Me, Vol. I or, the cost if fixing it is more than a new one, and less reliable. I had a nice VCR years ago, the repair shop wanted $50 just to look at it, no gaurantees (except that the $50 would apply), but a new one was on sale for $49. No wonder that repair shop went out of business.

[DrDeth]

@Savannah

Wal-Mart did in The Guy. Those little independent businesses seem to be an endangered species.

Walmart did nothing of the sort. Walmart does not offer repairs.

[Kilmore]

@Freudian_Slit

There are still people who fix shoes in my neighborhood. At least one, anyway…

What do you do about the other one?

[footballisplayedwithyourfeet]

@Shot_From_Guns

So he was willing to take advantage of all the specialized knowledge that results in higher overhead (because you have to actually hire the people who know what the fuck they’re talking about), but then he wouldn’t actually pay for what he used. Nice.

Eventhough Justin Bailey has said many things I agree with, I still want to respond. The way this thing happened - all from what i was told, I wasn’t there - is that the friend knew about the Big chain prices (it was on sale) and couldn’t see why he would buy a better version from what he learned online. He went to the specialised shop to ask them if he was right (which he was)* and then told them their quoted price was way higher than the chain price, yet they weren’t able to lower the price at all.

He went to this shop becaue he prefered to support a small chain-less store, but since the price differnence was very significant (guy’s a student) to him, he chose to go for the lower price. I’m sure he wouldn’t have if the difference were 30 bucks.

*Just to show this wasn’t a 3 hour information suck, but just a few quick questions.

[CrazyCatLady]

@Beware_of_Doug

That’s odd. Isn’t specialization a big city phenomenon - the grizzled, cranky old dude who works 40 years in a cramped and dowdy nth floor suite doing nothing but electric shaver repairs or invisible reweaving, and who, if he’s good and lucky, gets a write-up in a local magazine or paper?

I’d think a small-town denizen would have to be generally handy, if not a jack/jill-of-all-trades, and that some of them would be things you wouldn’t know about unless s/he told you.

A lot of folks are generally handy, though that’s falling off quite a lot in the younger generations–people my age treat me like some sort of domestic goddess because I can do stuff our grandmothers took for granted every woman knew how to do; bake bread, grow tomatoes, do basic repair type sewing, drive a nail. But even generally handy people have things they’re much better at than others or things they’re able to do but really, really hate doing. And if you’ve got a friend or neighbor or coworker’s cousin who is really, really good at doing those things–well, if the price is decent, you’ve just found yourself a guy.

[Shot_From_Guns]

@footballisplayedwithyourfeet

Eventhough Justin Bailey has said many things I agree with, I still want to respond. The way this thing happened - all from what i was told, I wasn’t there - is that the friend knew about the Big chain prices (it was on sale) and couldn’t see why he would buy a better version from what he learned online. He went to the specialised shop to ask them if he was right (which he was)* and then told them their quoted price was way higher than the chain price, yet they weren’t able to lower the price at all.

So he got the information he wanted, and *then *offered to buy from them, *if *they lowered their price? :rolleyes: Oh yes, that makes him *such *a better person.

He went to this shop becaue he prefered to support a small chain-less store, but since the price differnence was very significant (guy’s a student) to him, he chose to go for the lower price.

I understand being on a budget, which is why I won’t generally castigate people for buying from larger retailers. *My *problem is when people *take advantage of the benefits *of smaller retailers but then don’t actually give them anything in return. If your friend couldn’t afford the price, he shouldn’t have been asking for advice–at least not without making sure that the person he was talking to understood that there wouldn’t be a sale. Period.