'tude from record-store clerks: myth or reality?

Yeah, I have to say, I've never experienced this, either.

I definitely remember when I was younger always feeling the cold shoulder from clerks when I would try to chat about what was playing, etc. But they were probably just bored of talking about that shit all day. Anyway, now I never bother trying to start a conversation with clerks, so maybe that bad taste is still left in my mouth.

yeah, i don't get this claim at all. kim's in nyc seems to get this rep especially badly but no one there has ever treated me with any kind of disdain that i can remember and i've shopped there tons of times. (they don't mind when i pop in to put down the occasional flyer for my job either.)

Haha strangely the rudest music store guy I've ever dealt with another poster on this same board thinks is really super friendly so it's probably all depends on catching someone at the right moment.

dudes have been cool to me for the most part.

I've never had a clerk look down his nose at anything I was buying though. I suspect that's probably a myth (or at least definitely not widespread in any way.) But general rudeness or just plain distantness? That's definitely a reality. Hell when I worked at an indie record store I was occassionally rude and distant to my fellow employees, so I sure as hell wasn't always going to be nice to customers.

I've never gotten any outright rudeness - mostly just indifference. The enthusiastic clerk is a rarity.

if you are cool people will be cool. for the most part. or at least ignore you in a non-offensive way. and by cool i mean just acting cool and not being a jerk. but if you are a jerk, you will get treated accordingly. or ignored in a really rude way. lots of people are intimidated as soon as they walk in a record store. same with video stores. and they act strangely. and they imagine things.

I definitely got the "are you sure you belong in *this* record store?" treatment from one of the women at 33° in Austin (which, for the record, isn't even that great a record store) when I lived there. I'll never forget the look she shot me when I asked about the Badman Records John Denver tribute; when I finally got her to look it up (oh!-so-begrudgingly), she seemed genuinely disappointed about the loss of the story to tell her cooler-than-thou record shop pals about the square fellow who came to *her* record store of *all places* to inquire about a John Denver record!

Nah video store clerks are definitely rude.

video store clerks are rude because people who walk into video stores suddenly become RAGING ASSHOLES for no reason. i've been there. i never want to go back.

Haha I'm not saying video store clerks don't have their reasons (I definitely did), I'm just saying that it ain't no MYTH. VIDEO STORE CLERKS HATE YOU!

for the most part, people who go into record stores and hang out forever and ask 400 questions and never buy anything will be treated with disdain.

greatest record store customer = me. head down. silent. spends $$$. leaves. all they see is a cloud of dust. who was that masked man? (with impeccable taste)

i lost my job and went to work at my friend's video store in philly and i didn't do it very long because i immediately started to look for work elsewhere cuz i wanted to KILL on a daily basis. and, yeah, i hated everyone.

video store clerks are rude because people who walk into video stores suddenly become RAGING ASSHOLES for no reason. i've been there. i never want to go back.

-- scott seward, Monday, 23 July 2007 23:43 (5 minutes ago) Link

otfm

Yeah well unlike record stores where most of the customers just go silently about their schtick, a VAST % of video store customers seem to have the sole stated purpose in life of driving video store clerks crazy.

there was one guy who would do this to me every night at the video store:

him: so, did you see this?

me: yeah, i saw it.

him: what did you think...?

me: i liked it. it was okay.

him: OH GOD I HATED IT!!!! IT WAS HORRIBLE!!!! HOW COULD YOU LIKE IT, BLAH, BLAH...four hour scathing review of everything wrong with it...

me: oh, okay.

EVERY FUCKING NIGHT. finally, i wouldn't admit to seeing ANY movie. he would try and try and i would feign ignorance no matter what it was.

Anyone posting any image at this point from a certain Kevin Smith or two deserves a beatdown.

"When is that movie coming in. . . can you call me when you get it in. . . can you call me at this # first and then try this #. . . I'll be in within the hour to pick it up. . . oh I have a late fee. . . how much is it. . . can I pay it next time. . . oh I already deferred it twice. . . I don't have enough money for the movie and the late fee. . . I swear I'll pay when I return it. . . have you seen this movie btw. . . is it good. . . oh nevermind. . . I'll just get something else."

All of the Pier Platters people were really nice and I used to hang out there and chat all the time but I do vividly remember one nearly verbatim High Fidelity moment when someone came in to buy an Anita Baker album.

Thing was, they really only HAD good records so there would have been no way to come up to the counter with anything that sucked.

R.I.P.

Much respect to Pier...

i've never really experienced this either. however, there was a shop in glasgow now long gone called echo records that was run by two 50 something brothers who were notoriously grumpy, almost to the point of parody. they had run various record shops in scotland for a couple of decades and had long since ceased to ever speak to each other. on several occasions i saw one of the brothers ridiculing customers who asked about records that offended his sensibilities and once something offended him so much that he threw the customer out. what made this odder was that it was a fairly mainstream record shop except for the fact that the ruder brother and another guy who worked there (who had also mastered the art of extraordinary rudeness to customers) were massive industrial fans so it had an amazing industrial selection. saturday afternoon shoppers popping in to purchase 'now that's what i call music volume 237' would be subjected to muslimguze records at ear shredding volume and unparalleled levels of abrasive rudeness and scorn.

i loved that shop.

Scott OTM re:record stores. I worked at an indie for 5 years and must add that if you repeatedly show up just before closing time you deserve the worst treatment imaginable.

hey fellow ex-video store clerks.

im totally fucking with you.

i had a guy threaten to wait for me outside of the store when i told him i couldn't do anything about his $200 late fee.

(xxpost)Haha wait how can you say you've never experienced it and then tell that story!

i used to work in a video shop. customers would come in with a certain faked "zany" attitude that you could always spot, and then they'd ask "got any funny comedies?"

When it happens 10 times a day, it's simply impossible not end up being an asshole to them, unfortunately.

Scott OTM re:record stores. I worked at an indie for 5 years and must add that if you repeatedly show up just before closing time you deserve the worst treatment imaginable.

-- blunt, Monday, July 23, 2007 11:59 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

boo hoo try cooking at a bar and getting all those fuxx that order shitloads of food right before the kithen closes!!!

(xxpost)Haha wait how can you say you've never experienced it and then tell that story!

i've never experienced it personally as they were always very pleasant to me. probably because i was into industrial and the other guy who worked there was one of my best friends.

customers would come in with a certain faked "zany" attitude that you could always spot, and then they'd ask "got any funny comedies?"

is this a type?! is it like the uncle who does magic/pull my finger type? i'm trying to picture it.

maybe it was the fact I could never think of any good comedies.

/misery guts

I never get attitude at the indies I go to.

I always get attitude at Cheapo's.

Coolness (ie good curating) of store is directly proportional to coolness (ie "let's swap tapes & have beers") of employees, in my experience.

definitely depends on the store and the day. all the clerks in Amoeba SF were totally unhelpful and rude when i went there. (and also, fuck a record store without listening booths). meanwhile, the guys down the haight at Tweekin, who i'd been told were jerks, were so nice and awesome. they even let me hit their bowl.

Echo? is that the one in Byres road that was impossible to browse cds as they were stacked so high? My mate loved that shop and I hated it. But i don't remember anyone being that unfriendly when I used to go in the late 90s. I only went because of FOPP just up the road and I could get all my funk vinyl there.

Now it's just Lost In Music left.

there was one store in toronto that was a bit lame about this but i've mostly only had good experiences. even, very good. you just have to be chill.

and polite.

it's simple enough. people can have a weird chip on their shoulder when entering these stores. it's strange. or a weird obliviousness when it comes to common courtesy. must be all that bad indie rock that hypnotizes them.

hey I work at a record store... and if you're even remotely normal, I'm as nice as possible.

But if you buy a cd, then complain loudly about the music we're playing, ask us to turn it off, don't notice how surprised we are by the request, then *demand* to have it turned off, claiming that we should do so because you "spent money here," angrily grab your confused girlfriend, drag her out of the store, come in again five minutes later to demand your money back, refuse to believe that we don't do cash returns, start screaming, claiming that we're breaking the law, and then tell us that you're going to call 911, get the police in, and see that charges are pressed, then finally just yell "fuck off!" before storming away, trying to break our door...

then yeah, we'll probably be mad enough retort "where?"

(it was the worst comeback I've ever come up with)

seriously half of the people we deal with are nice, and it's great to talk with them, sell them some music, etc. but the other half of them (it really is that many), seem to be waiting for you to do *anything* that they can through a fit about. It's obviously worse when you're buying product from them. People don't like to find out that their collection of promotional slims/skuffed cds/moldy easy listening vinyl is worthless.
And honsetly you hate to break it to them.

er, the "get the police in, see that charges are pressed part" is what the guy SAID would happen. Not what actually happened.

also through = throw... geez

you sound like a dick

anyway i worked in a record store for most of my teenage years and early 20's i was always nice and happy to be there but people still said i was snotty.

haha you think he sounds like a dick = you were probably the snottiest fuck ever.

I don't really think I am... seriously my coworkers and I try to be really nice, I just wanted to illustrate that there are customers that can kinda push things a bit.
Was it the comment about how there are "really that many of them" that made me sound like a dick? Cuz maybe that was a bit extreme, but it really does seem that a lot of people enter our store angry. And I'd like to think that we are still polite with them, as a rule.

just turn down the fucking music if a dood says its too loud.

Echo? is that the one in Byres road that was impossible to browse cds as they were stacked so high? My mate loved that shop and I hated it. But i don't remember anyone being that unfriendly when I used to go in the late 90s

that's the one. i pretty much stopped going in in the mid 90s when they stopped stocking vinyl. anyhow, they were typically only unfriendly if they didn't like the look of you or if you asked for something they deemed awful. but even at their best, it wasn't exactly service with a smile. i think part of their bitterness and general misanthropy stemmed from the fact that their former outlet - listen records - went bust primarly due to the staff robbing the place blind.

no he didn't want it turned down. he wanted it turned off. because he didn't like it.

(it was pretty quiet)

my bad

Haha strangely the rudest music store guy I've ever dealt with another poster on this same board thinks is really super friendly so it's probably all depends on catching someone at the right moment.
-- Alex in SF, Monday, July 23, 2007 11:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

HI!

i was a dick when i worked at a record store. the majority of my job was finding new and unusual ways to make the customer feel stupid without them realizing it. i eventually was asked to work at the headquarters of the company doing weird business shit, probably because they could tell i was getting jaded and angry.

but seriously, it was because when you work in retail you realize how fucking stupid most people are.

it's all gravy.

ps. I'm pretty serious when I say that it sucks telling someone how little there stuff is worth. Today an older lady was pretty crestfallen when I told her that we couldn't pay much for Readers Digest LP Boxsets.

xpost - most people dont' know when i'm kidding (which is always) so even when i'm making a joke, people think i'm a dick. go figure?

I'm a bit of a gormless, awkward twerp who probably deserves to be sneered at every so often, and I've never encountered anything but exceptional pleasantness above and beyond the call of duty. Even in London, where I was being incredibly annoying by dragging around luggage in spaces where it really shouldn't have been, and where I think everyone is depressingly surly even on a good day, all of the record shop staff I encountered were good people. I can only imagine that those who complain should stop liking bad music.

Never had a clerk treat me rudely that I can remember. But then I don't often strike up conversations with clerks either. I just go in, look around for a while, grab a few things, pay, and leave.

I've never had a problem at music stores. Mostly I see this at movie stores.

See I don't see this at movie stores either. Maybe people in Austin are just chill by default.

Chill snobs, but chill nonetheless.

Don't really understand this thread: people working in them are in retail, without normally having been trained in retail, and so they neither feel the need to do retail speak, but nor are they (mostly) happy with their job. apart from the owners, they're underpaid people filling in time.

...

Today an older lady was pretty crestfallen when I told her that we couldn't pay much for Readers Digest LP Boxsets.
Jokes on you pal. Some of those Readers Digest Boxsets are filled with hidden gold. On the heaviest quality vinyl that's available too.

xxpost yeah i don't expect perkiness anywhere anymore much less record shops.

people working in them are in retail, without normally having been trained in retail, and so they neither feel the need to do retail speak

how is record store retail different from any other kind of retail? why shouldn't they behave like other retail employees? (i mean, besides the fact that they can be cloying and awful)

they're underpaid people filling in time.

underpaid?

My point is that very few (independent) stores are gonna teach customer service. Therefore employees don't need to practice it, which is good for them, sometimes bad for customers.

Underpaid? I suppose my generalization (perhaps wrong) is that, compared to cheap dept. store retail, or Best Buy retail etc, record store employees may be paid marginally more, but may have an education that makes them feel that the record store isn't their future. Best Buy etc is actually probably similar, but hopefully m point stands.

yeah we just have waaay to much of it (re: readers digest vinyl). we are a store after all.

btw... starting pay = minimum wage

but then we get music real cheap

when I did my two years in a record store I always tried to be as nice to people as possible. Probably partially because I didn't want to be that stereotypical record store douchebag, and also because I generally did enjoy the job! Except when it was slow. So, the more people the better is how I looked at it. Made the day go by.

I know I've told this story before (which is why I know we have had a thread on this precise topic before): The only time I can honestly remember getting any sort of negativity from a record store clerk was back in high school, when I brought the then-new Sonic Youth "Master-Dik" 12" and a CD compilation of pre-Slide It In Whitesnake tracks (because I was and am a massive Deep Purple fan) to the counter at Schoolkids Records in Ann Arbor, and the college girl behind the counter said something like "well, since you are buying Sonic Youth I guess I will forgive the Whitesnake."

record store employees may be paid marginally more, but may have an education that makes them feel that the record store isn't their future.

definitely. this is the source of any perceived 'tude.

Is the difference between "feeling" and "knowing"?

anyway, I definitely concur that the only real fraught part of the record store experience for me was definitely the used thing. Everybody is always so shocked and/or saddened that you don't want to buy their crap.

"BUt the sign says LPs bought!" etc

i say myth, but i just shut up and shop like scott said way upthread.
way back in the day i used to shop at wax trax! all of the time (speaking of industrial) and the guys there were definitely surly (probably hungover), but never rude. i loved buying stuff there because sometimes the artists would be working the counter which i thought was the coolest shit ever. sometimes al j0urgensen would be scowling about.

what's tough with us is that "we buy everything"

meaning that we already have 50 copies of everything. Often I tell people that I could give them $1 for a stack of 20 cds (yup 5 cents a cd), but then tell them that they should really hold onto their stuff, or try selling at the store up the street, which might have more use for what they've got. It's a lot of "are you really sure you want to sell these? you don't have to, you know."
there is stuff that we actually pay real money for though. paid $30 and $45 for some Miles Davis LP box sets earelier today. Also, if someone can get more money from selling on eBay, I'll often let them know. They usually have no idea.

i worked in a record store last week! i was very helpful. and polite.

sometimes the artists would be working the counter

that reminds me of the time i saw bjork buy a Jane album at OM and i gave $<0tt /\/\0u a knowing *nice!* nod.

I worked at Best Buy, in the CD section. I tried to be polite. They taught us to be. I'm not the most expressive person, though, so a lot of people probably thought I was a bastard. I talked a father out of buying his pink-haired Marilyn Manson-T-shirt-wearing son a Limp Bizkit album, which was one of my prouder moments working there. But mostly the customers sucked. Except for one dude, who introduced me to Carnivore. That band rules.

(I don't really have any point, by the way. I've had pretty varying experiences at record stores. The people at the store near me are pretty cool, the people at Amoeba LA vary, and the people at the Princeton Record Exchange were generally snobby college student bastards.)

coolest customer I ever waited on who started out really annoying me being that "guy who goes into a record store and hangs out forever and never buys anything" until I found out who he was and started talking to him: Joe Carducci

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Most of the customers I deal with are great, fine, normal people.

There's a handful or more of eccentrics, only one guy we've ever had to ask to "please not come back." This was a fellow who freaked out and yelled at me when I said I couldn't hold a stack of 25 or so LPs for a week, but would gladly hold five or six of them for him. He wanted me to hold the records because he didn't want to wait in line for the listening station. He was very argumentative. He was a cokehead, who would often come in and try to sell us records and be incredibly rude and condescending, telling us how much we ought to give him. Anyway, I haven't seen him in a while now.

I try very hard to be nice and polite to people. I did have one very rude and angry customer who was upset when the distributor of the LP boxes we sell changed to a slightly different style of box. He began the conversation by saying to me that "IT WAS BULLSHIT." And then after a while got to his point--new boxes were about 1/2 inch smaller than the old boxes, and thus should cost a dollar less. Gave him a dollar from my pocket, which he took. He still comes in now and again and I go out of my way to be extremely polite to him, just because he's always so rude in return.

Never had a bad experience at a record store as a customer. Most of the people I know in this line of work are totally normal, (reasonably) well-adjusted people.

i ended up befriending my record store clerk, actually, and partied down with him on many occasions!!

years ago, i had my own little store, and every once in a while someone would come in and tell me that my store was Satanic. But it was. So that was cool with me.

I used to work in a cd store/videogame store, so I'd have to listen to some guy apologize
for "not knowing my yo la tengo like I should" while busting little kids for stealing gameboy advance games on the side.

I used to think of the Kim's clerks as pricks until I realized I was using them to personify the fact that Kim's does a shitty job of inventorying their merchandise.

P.S. some great testimonies about indie stores sent in to Sasha Frere-Jones' blog ( in 11 of these posts) last summer after the "Greying of the Record Store" article in the NYT.

Can't add much that hasn't been said already. Just wanted to say that the lady who works at M-Theory in San Diego is the nicest, friendliest record store person I've ever met.

Going beyond stores -but sometimes including them- eBay/Discogs sellers thrive on positive feedback nowadays, reaching for that elusive 100% satisfaction rate. Not much 'tude there

but the funny thing is: i can hardly recall a time when i was truly treated rudely by a record-store clerk, and i've gone to record stores nearly every week (sometimes several times a week) for the past 15 years.

I think you answered your own question there. A bunch of record geeks have never been treated badly at record stores? Incredible!

touche

i ended up befriending my record store clerk, actually, and partied down with him on many occasions!!

-- s1ocki, Tuesday, July 24, 2007 4:26 AM

this is my secret wish.

;_;

Why are record store employees so cynical?

The only time I can honestly remember getting any sort of negativity from a record store clerk was back in high school, when I brought the then-new Sonic Youth "Master-Dik" 12" and a CD compilation of pre-Slide It In Whitesnake tracks (because I was and am a massive Deep Purple fan) to the counter at Schoolkids Records in Ann Arbor, and the college girl behind the counter said something like "well, since you are buying Sonic Youth I guess I will forgive the Whitesnake."

stormy I hate to tell you this since it's now too late to do anything about it but she was trying to put the mack down on you inna record store employee stylee

There was this place in the NW suburbs of Chicago, Rec0rd Br3akers, that had the worst staff ever. These dudes were all in shitty emo/hardcore bands and would treat customers very rudely if they dared interrupt their conversation to actually pay for a purchase or something. It never happened to me, but I often saw them openly mock people for buying albums they didn't approve of. These guys lived up to every record store employee stereotype, but they didn't even have good taste!

but seriously, it was because when you work in retail you realize how fucking stupid most people are.

real talk.

but yeah, i always tried to be nice. i think our clientele skewed way older and more suburban (in the entitlement sense), which made it hard.

xpost john otm! i think a lot of record store clerks who are being "mean" when they rib a customer of the same age range about their "uncool" purchases with their cool purchases are trying to be "friendly" but it comes out in a weird, garbled, socially retarded way.

Here's my Bleecker Bob story favorite and least favorite record store in your city/town/village

I wish I had been as quickwitted as suzy was on the other thread.

I worked in record stores for years, and usually tried to keep from taking out my bad attitude about work on the customers. Definitely saw some rude clerks and rude customers, but both were the exception not the rule. It's funny, no one really cares when they buy a toaster at the Best Buy and the clerk's just obviously not into it, man.

This is just a pop psychology answer I know, but maybe it's the inherently emotional & personal aspects of record-hunting that makes customers respond to any perceived failure-to-validate in a way that's out of proportion to any actual exchange with the clerk. Buying a record you really want feels like filling in part of your identity. Especially because the core market for the music industry is teens and preteens whose picks dominate the hit parade, and who are in the middle of those identity formation years when any slight is felt most strongly. So people are more likely to feel insulted when record store clerks are indifferent to their choices, or just busy with other aspects of their low wage work, or having a bad day and not particularly trying to hide it.

The only time I can honestly remember getting any sort of negativity from a record store clerk was back in high school, when I brought the then-new Sonic Youth "Master-Dik" 12" and a CD compilation of pre-Slide It In Whitesnake tracks (because I was and am a massive Deep Purple fan) to the counter at Schoolkids Records in Ann Arbor, and the college girl behind the counter said something like "well, since you are buying Sonic Youth I guess I will forgive the Whitesnake."

stormy I hate to tell you this since it's now too late to do anything about it but she was trying to put the mack down on you inna record store employee stylee

-- J0hn D., Tuesday, July 24, 2007 10:00 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Huh huh, she wanted to forgive his Whitesnake

Stirmonster was one of the Echo guys bearded? I vaguely remember a grumpy bearded guy in a shop up the west end but I forget if it was Echo or Lost In Music.

many (okay, three or four) is the time that a nice person behind the counter tried to talk to me about a record i was buying and i was on neptune that particular day, only to slap my forehead later.

WHY YES, I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE AN HOUR LONG CONVERSATION ABOUT THE OEUVRE OF JUSTIN FROM UNWOUND. A/S/L?

haha a record store chick and i hit it off once because i bought the "last" vinyl copy of Leaves Turn Inside You

strongo otm, I probably would have some friends for life if I'd been able to croak out more than a few words at the right moment.

the college girl behind the counter said something like "well, since you are buying Sonic Youth I guess I will forgive the Whitesnake."

yeah she was totally flirting with you!

Before they moved to Wmsburg, the clerks at Rox In Yr Head were really nice to me, but eventually I realized that I was one of the only fools going in there anymore.

I have always been treated well at record stores. A big part of this is not presuming that you have anything of interest to say to the people who work there.

good point

The guy at Penguin Music here in Toronto is really nice, and has never bad-mouthed anything I've bought - it's a small place and he's the only clerk there, which I think helps. The attitude from The Record Peddler folks back in the day was pretty noxious.

I never really encounter rude clerks... but I'm the customer who comes in, quietly goes about my business and usually spends a little dough. The only semi-surly clerks I've ever seen are the hott chick clerks who have to deal with pasty geeks trying to chat her up an/ or impress her with their questions/ purchases. Can you fucking blame her?

I was at PAss Out Records in Brooklyn a few weeks ago and the clerk (?) was literally passed out on a sofa. Like, the whole time I was there (probably 15 minutes or so). I didn't wake him, as I didn't want to incur any 'tude.

and/ or

I don't know about Passout, but I went to this other store in Williamsburg. I'm going to call it "Wackademy". I was going through libraries and dollar funk records beatdigging, y'know, jackin' beats. This skinny dude working there comes by and acts all nice to me. Later I realize he was being fake nice. He told me he had a $100 box set with nothing but drumming on it. It was by Steve Reich so I was like, word, DJ Spooky remixed dude. I bought that shit but when I took it home to sample it was nothing but chardonnay mock turtleneck music.

fuck that guy.

The only surly record store person I've run into was the owner of a store that was pretty much dying. I'm not sure which caused which, but their location and prices both sucked.

I've met a few angry college-aged record store clerks, but I think that was because they were in the middle of the cycle of going to college and wanting to work in a record store, dropping out because they realized they didn't need a degree to work in such a place, and then realizing that you can't make a living being a record store clerk. At some point during that timeline I think a few had failed bands.

I've have only ever gotten praise from clerks recently, when I look like an old businessman and don't seek record store clerk praise anymore. Picked up a Rod Lee cd, a Sublime Frequencies thing, and that R. Crumb-covered rarities comp a couple of weeks ago at Soundgarden in Baltimore, and dude behind the counter nearly asked me to marry him ("You, sir, are very eclectic. I approve." Yup, that's a quote.) I would have been left completely cold by the encounter but the woman I was with fluttered her eyes at me after the encounter. Score!!!

the college girl behind the counter said something like "well, since you are buying Sonic Youth I guess I will forgive the Whitesnake."

yeah she was totally flirting with you!

-- will, Tuesday, 24 July 2007 14:17

whar have all the college-girl-clerks gone etc

I went through a close variant of mh's cycle, never dropped out of school though I did fantasize about my own store. But why angry? Whatever else was going on age 20-22 I was usually happy at work in the store if only because we listened to records all day. My co-workers were mostly classical music students and the manager was a jazz collector, everybody shared their tastes. The store wasn't even the cool store in town, we sold plenty of Village People and Gino Vanelli albums. If anything the clerks were too enthusiastic trying to push new wave and punk on people buying Journey and Heart albums.

<i>See I don't see this at movie stores either. Maybe people in Austin are just chill by default.</i>
I think this is indeed the case -- I've been to most of the record stores around here and Vulcan/I Luv Video, and have found peeps pleasant and even outgoing/chatty at times. That seems pretty much in line with Austin generally. Same with almost any of the independents that are/were around Philadelphia when I lived/bought records there during the 90s.

The only times I got guff -- not so much tude -- was in Chicago, at the Broadway Reckless store. It was mostly that "couldn't be bothered" to engage in a transaction, take my money, move my hands... That said, the peeps who worked at the Reckless on Wilwaukee were always pretty nice and engaging.

Yeah, I gotta say that the Milwakuee Reckless people are usually very wonderful and helpful. I bought a Jay Reatard 7" there the other day and while the clerk I had was ready to give up after not being able to find it in the stacks, another dude stepped in and made it his personal mission to track it down for me.

xxp - soundgarden clerks are total bros, generally! actually, almost all the record store clerks i've ever met have been total bros. it's just like any retail situation - don't be a dick, and employees won't treat you like one.

As an aside, I visited Reckless when I was in CHI recently and their flimsy card filing system was enough of a pain in the ass that I couldn't effectively browse there. I know it's a space saver, but if you're using one of your two hands to hold something you're pretty much screwed.

While are shouting out the good ones - the folks at Permanent Rex in Chicago and Love Garden in Lawrence are wonderful.

NOT TO SAY THAT ALL PEOPLE WHO WORK IN RECORD STORES ARE TOTALLY PUT-UPON SAINTS DOING THE LORD'S WORK AND THAT SOME OF THEM AREN'T COMPLETE ASSHOLES. cuz there are plenty of assholes out there.

put-upon saints = my new all saints black metal tribute band

Once I was an asshole to this feminist, arguing with her when she demanded we take off the record playing in store -- "under my thumb" by the stones no less -- because it was offensive to women.

Ha.

"You're really more concerned about this 40 year old musical recording playing in a record store than the terrifying President we have in office?"

I've never found an attitude problem with any record shop employees either. I'm pretty much a head down and buy stuff person now, but when I was a teenager I used to chat to the guys in Selectadisc, and made a few friends out of it. They'd offer me money off if I could answer pop quiz questions (which I'd usually fail), and I'd laugh at them for thinking that Devo were Howard Devoto's band. Fun times.

I do think there's something in the fact that ILMers will be more likely to buy good records, and so will be less likely to be sneered at, though. Lots of people I know are afraid of the brothers who work in Ultima Thule, because they're insanely knowledgable about their specialism, but they're actually fairly approachable if you want to ask something. Plus, I like better music than they do, so nyah.

Sweet Jesus, I own a CD shop and I'm as grateful for the little old ladies looking for Jerry Vale CDs as I am for the ones in here looking for Absolute Funk 4 (which the bastards at the one-stop didn't ship me, damn it). Any of y'all who go to stores that have more customers than the staff needs to be nice to please tell me where they are so I can relocate. Holy crap, this is the ultimate customer service business at the moment, yo.

Three anecdotes—

The most randomly rude I can remember a record store clerk being was when I was popping into the Tower in Chicago to grab a Reader and saw a stack of free promos for Public Enemy's last album (or maybe two back— I haven't kept track). I grabbed one and the clerk said, "Oh my God." I said, "What?" And he replied, "I guess that's OK, but you should really go get It Takes a Nation of Millions." Like, I'm just takin' the free promo, man. I've already got all the PE I'm likely to ever buy.

Tadd Mullinix used to work in Encore Records in Ann Arbor, when I was writing about local music there. I kinda knew him through a friend, and I asked him about the music he made, since his album had just come out. "You wouldn't like it," he said. "It's different." Different than what? "It's really complex, experimental electronic music, with a lot of classical influences." I did like it, but it was kinda standard Autechre IDMish stuff, but throughout the conversation he just kinda assumed that I'd never heard anything like it and it would be far too mindblowing. Decent guy, aside from that one time.

I was at a record store outside of Tampa, near the shitty planned community that my gramma lived in. The record store was pretty sweet, on the whole, because it was totally unpicked-over, with things like random promos of Throbbing Gristle's 20 Jazz Funk Greats. The clerks there seemed cool, and I was trying to make some friends since I was down there for a couple of weeks. I asked the guy behind the counter what there was to do around there if you were under 21, and his simple reply was "Get a job and then die."

Aside from that, as I've gotten older, I find that I get impeccable service from the guys in the jazz departments, even if they do often try to steer me more toward Stan Getz than I want. I get the worst service from the 19-year-olds with asymetrical haircuts who don't understand why I want 10cc or weird Afropop or George "The Animal" Steel's albums.

http://ronanfitzgerald.net/houseisafeeling/2007/02/10/the-visible-tumor-of-the-dying-record-store/

sorry the photo is missing in that post, but here's my thoughts on this...I definitely believe in the attitude of the record store clerk, having been one. it's complicated though.

Once I was an asshole to this feminist, arguing with her when she demanded we take off the record playing in store

haha I remember a very similar exchange at a coffee shop in Santa Cruz where someone was playing Neil Young's "Down By the River" - lolz.

my video store clerks are a joy to be around, I love goin to Lost Weekend. Maybe they are special there tho.

oh yeah i forgot that the first time i went to kim's in nyc the clerk invited me to a party!! a chick clerk too!!

wait why didn't i go to that party??

U R Gay

Shakey i envision you just now sitting in your underpants, blasting "Down by the River" as you watch Rachel Ray.

i wanna give a shout out to the real real nice record store dudes at my main shop - roadrunner records in mpls...they are great guys and the owner john knows his shit when it comes to telling you that that byrds record is way underrated or talking out of getting a nillson record cuz it was a goofy soundtrack thing which most of the good songs are already on other albums....he DJ'd my wedding and did an awesome job too.

he's got some nice shit check out the used stuff on his website:

http://www.landspeedrecords.com/

also...BONUS POINTS FOR HAVING A GLASS CASE IN THE STORE THAT'S A SHRINE TO BLACK OAK ARKANSAS

nice writeup Ronan, what did the sign at Freebird say?

GO JIM DANDY GOOOOO

They're less 'tudinal now that they depend on you desperately or else their job will close down.

But, yes, I've received plenty of 'tude in my life from record store clerks. Not surprising, though. Just about everyone in the service industry seems to hate the customer these days.

it said something like "PLEASE DO NOT LISTEN TO MORE THAN 5 RECORDS AT A TIME. IF WE KNOW YOU WE MIGHT LET YOU DO THIS BUT LET'S FACE IT, ANYONE WHO NEEDS TO HEAR RECORDS OVER AND OVER OR DOESN'T KNOW WHAT THEY WANT IS EITHER DEAF OR A CRAP DJ."

except it was longer and much better than that!

I lived right by Roadrunner in the early 90s and they were always the bomb Matt. Their used selection was always ace...picked up some nice imports there as well.

I got a smirk and a scowl from some punk-ass kid a couple of years ago when I brought a used vinyl copy of Hall & Oates' Big Bam Boom.

i got a smile, a tickle, an irish jig and a thing of m&m's when i bought pop ambient 2003.

As a girl who's worked in two different record stores (a small independent chain- now defunct- and a big box entertainment purveyor,) I can easily say that I gave more 'tude in the big box than at the small store. Basically, people at the small store either knew what they wanted or were able to listen to a few cds to make their decision, so there wasn't much annoyance. I also didn't care what people bought, and approved of most people's choices when they asked because I really didn't care.

However, at the big box store, people were complete assholes. We played music over the intercom so people would hear it and buy it, and countless people asked me to turn the music off because it was interfering with their studying. These same people complained to my managers about me telling them it wasn't a fucking library. Also, listening to Celine Dion and Linda Eder for an 8 hour shift does not make me the most cheerful employee. So yeah, I had some 'tude when I was working at one record store.

the brief summer I worked at a major music retailer (Music Plus RIP) I was a major asshole. But then so were most of the customers and I hated all my coworkers too so it just felt natural.

"Do you have $RECENT_ALBUM by $POPULAR_ARTIST?"
"Pssh... I doubt it... Check the USED section."

^^^ I've gotten this several times.

Another MPLS shoutout to Roadrunner.

The only time I ever got tude was at Extreme Noise for not being punk enough.

I've only encountered jackass clerks at one record shop... P.D.Q. Records in Tucson. They've mellowed out somewhat but they would run out from behind the counter and pull records out of your hands if you even thought about looking at the condition of the vinyl.

London record store clerks universally tended to be pricks. People in the Bay Area seem cool enough though I sort of hate the emo kids at the union square rasputin (and the smell, and the fucking ELEVATOR). Alex is right, video store clerks are pretty rude but yeah maybe they have a reason to be I don't know.

I didn't know people actually bought records at the Union Square Rasputin's.

Yeah, tourists and people like me, people on their lunch breaks.

hi dere. on vacation two weeks ago. elevator dude was really annoyed and annoying but the clerks were almost all cool and i was running around like a headless chicken. weird: I picked up herbie hancock, burt bacharach, and bobby bare -- stan lee sez excelsior!

haha you bought Head Hunters because they were selling it cheap on a display, amirite?

no because they were playing it(and yeah it was cheap)! i'm an easy mark, don't know how i ever went without that album though.

I worked in a non-indie store and somehow got pegged as the Hip Hop expert, mostly because everyone else hated hip hop, so once a day or so a customer would be steered to me with this question: "I have a 16 year old child/grandchild/nephew/niece who only listens to rap music. I want to buy them a CD but not anything that contains profanity, or any violent or sexual content. And he/she already owns all of Will Smith's CDs."

I would explain that outside of Christian Rap and Kids Rap, there really weren't many options. (We didn't carry edited versions.) Invariably the customer would then say, "Can I talk to someone who knows more about this than you do?"

Oh, and this was around the turn of the century. I did suggest "positive" artists but when they picked up a copy of Black on Both Sides and read the words "Ms. Fat Booty" they gave me nasty looks.

At R0ckingh0rse in Brisbane, the guys are mostly indie knobs. Total knobs. I always make a point of being overly polite. But there are one or two nice dudepals..

In defense of Reckless on Broadway, they share some of the same employees as the one at WP. No one's ever been rude in my 15 years of shopping there. Fortunately for their business, they're too busy for idle chit chat, as there's usually a line. They ALWAYS offer to help look when you can't find something.

I just finished reading an entertaining book by Chicago writer Alan Goldsher called The Record Haus, about a mythic Rogers Park record store.

90 percent of my record store experiences have been neutral at the very worst. I've had my best experiences at the notoriously "nasty" places like Other Music and Mondo Kim's. For the other 10 percent, it's largely a matter of finding the token nice clerk who can help you. But I've never, ever had a Barry/High Fidelity type experience, and I'm someone who's spent plenty of time in record stores.

I find it helps, too, if you don't care what the record store clerk thinks of your choices.

Now that I think of it, most of my worst experiences have been in obscure old-hippie record shops where there are no prices and you're expected to barter.

maybe it's the inherently emotional & personal aspects of record-hunting that makes customers respond to any perceived failure-to-validate in a way that's out of proportion to any actual exchange with the clerk. Buying a record you really want feels like filling in part of your identity.

OTM

I think the clerks at the punk store Paradise Records in Madison, WI, in the early '80s were snobs, but I'm sure I was also looking for their approval.

As for a lot of the customer stories, that's retail. Nothing makes you more assertive and tolerant and Zen than living in a dorm for a couple years, then working retail for eight. I think cops and UN peacekeepers should all go into customer service first.

i think when a place has a bad reputation you end up in your mind exacerbating even the smallest of slights while giving little credit for friendly help. when i moved to NYC OM had a really bad reputation, but in all actuality the staff is quite nice if you don't go in with a preexisting chip on your shoulder.

two funny slights:
friend's dance recital is two hours away from starting and she doesn't have this folkways ethnomusicological CD she was supposed to bring. i offer to help and call OM asking if they could look it up for me. clerk makes fake tap tap keyboard noises and says "of course we do". when i get there it's a no go, but i was redirected to Tower across the street, which actually did have it in stock.

the other time was even better. i was selling a bunch of crap used CDs to them and this girl behind the counter is pricing them. when she gets to the anti-pop consortium one she rolls her eyes and gets huffy like "why would you ever consider selling this".

the truth is if you think about it you've probably had x5-x6 as many positive experiences in places like these.

otm, although they did apparently give nabisco some 'tude once.

the only comment i can recall receiving, in my 5-6 years frequenting the same record stores in austin texas, goes like this...

scene: cheapo records
date: 2004
record bought: air, 'talkie walkie'

myself: *sets talkie walkie onto counter*

clerk: "oh wow, i didn't think you had good taste in music, but this record is great..."

that record sucks btw

who's the tudey record store clerk now

"when she gets to the anti-pop consortium one she rolls her eyes and gets huffy like "why would you ever consider selling this"."

not that it really forgives that, but Beans used to work at OM when the APC was just starting, so maybe she was buddies with him or something...

i worked as a clerk for a little under a year while in college and never really threw the 'tude on anyone that wasn't rude to me to begin with. all the guys that worked there (who were there for several years or so, and yes, they were all guys) were pretty decent to customers as well. i don't really understand why anyone would be dickish about someone's tastes/purchases. it's super juvenile.

while i do have pretty specific tastes and a decent knowledge of 'THE CANON', i've never understood the arrogant High Fidelity type proselytizing.

At R0ckingh0rse in Brisbane, the guys are mostly indie knobs. Total knobs. I always make a point of being overly polite. But there are one or two nice dudepals..

This is not my experience.

Though the really short guy always seems sad. Probably because he is really short.

i remember once going into a record store and asking for the Fantastic Planet soundtrack and the dude snorted and laughed at me

There was a record store once who would sometimes confiscate stuff if he thought it was uncool. Like he would not let me buy this dollar bin Doctor Hook & the Medicine Show record. he hid it behind the counter and everything. OTOH, he would give me stuff that he thought I would like – a Fred Frith record, an A.R. Kane CD – so it all balanced out...

There was a record store CLERK once
y'all know what I mean

'tude

the first record store i ever went to that wasn't a Borders was OM in new york and i was terrified but nothing happened, even though i think what i bought was an architecture in helsinki album and if anybody was going to make fun of me that was probably the time

when i'd go to dance specialist record shops as a 15-19 year old to buy techno/electro records the guys would be absurdly moody. like i'd walk up to the counter and say "hi, have you got..." and they'd flat out ignore me and continue reading a magazine or w/e. even when i'd bring records up to the counter to pay, they'd spend ages faffing around before serving me (without smiling or making eye contact or saying anything other than the total to pay.)

and i'm not even a girl!

i remember going to buy the le car compilation "auto biography" and the guy was like "oh, you read about them in jockey slut?" i just shrugged and he had a look on his face like i'd pushed his mum down a flight of stairs.

http://www.ersatzaudio.com/disco/photos/400right/13-400.jpg

I've only encountered jackass clerks at one record shop... P.D.Q. Records in Tucson. They've mellowed out somewhat but they would run out from behind the counter and pull records out of your hands if you even thought about looking at the condition of the vinyl.

ha, this place is now under new ownership and they apparently got rid of all of their vinyl. so it goes.

I mostly find that record store clerks have some sort of "daria face" policy where they're not allowed to emote when in the presence of their clientele's taste. That said, I was met with frustration when looking for a Fennesz album and not being familiar with Mego records. I mean fuck, we're not talking Warp here.

During the two-plus years I spent in a record store ('85-'87), I had attitude issues. Mine was more directed towards co-workers than customers, though. Control of the turntable was minefield of egos.

In Toronto during the '80s, there were some legendary snotty record-store clerks. (Not me.) Brien Taylor of a band called Youth Youth Youth was the worst--he was at the Record Peddler. I got the full sneer in '84 or '85 when I asked him some question about Husker Du; I didn't look sufficiently Husker Du-ish to earn that privilege. Next worst was Don Pyle of Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, who worked at Driftwood on Queen. There was some guy at Records on Wheels who was pretty bad, but they had some good people, too.

Oh--none was a bad as Marc Glassman, owner of Pages book store.

The only bad experiences I've ever had have been with old dudes that don't want to put prices on their records and think what they have is hot shit. I'm thinking Rowe's Rare Records in San Jose (not sure if it's still there) and Record Collector, formerly next to Arons but now on Melrose I think? I think that guy was just a record collector with some money who didn't actually want to sell anything.

this has never happened to me, even when i buy, like, avril lavigne, but i might not be going to the right places.

I had a trial shift at the Dance and Soul section of the Notting Hill MVE last summer. It was hellish. I arrived, was met with near silence from the staff, politely asked what a normal day in the shop entails and was told by some tosser with a Stone's Throw t-shirt on that 'we sell records and buy records, what do you think?', was mocked for having only been into techno since 2005 (I'm 21 years old and grew up in rural Norfolk so I thought being into Villalobos whilst at school was pretty cool, but y'know) and then got told to go home because I placed an acid jazz CD in the jazz section. Guys, you earn less than £6 p/h, chill out.

Went back once, the dudes at the counter pretended not to recognise me. Twats.

Yeah, said upthread a few times but my experience has been that you often only get attitude from the clerks when you bring in your own and start putting it on display. Everyone bags on Rotate This as a bastion of attitude but I've never gotten it or seen it being used on anyone. But I suspect if someone went in there ACTING like they're expecting to be treated really badly that there might be a snide remark.

i've never really experienced any record store 'tude, and if i did, it went right over my head. either the clerk will be wholly indifferent to my purchases or we'll end up chatting about records for a minute or two. yesterday i found a hollywood squares comedy record from 1974 and the clerk was all "wow! i didn't know we had this!"

attytude definitely still matters to people cuz people complain to me all the time about different stores. i really do think that projection can play a part in people's ideas about stores. people who run stores and who i know are soft-spoken will be seen as aloof and snobby. its funny. i do spend time defending various places.

was totally flashing back when my friend john stopped by my store yesterday cuz he used to work at 3rd st. jazz in philly for years and seeing him there at 3rd st. became such a part of my experience of the store. you dig? he was one of the public faces of that great store.

The FYE in the mall I used to go to had horrible employees who wanted nothing but you to buy something and get out. I never cared for Saturday Matinee (The Laserdisc and VHS branch of FYE)either, they too had employees that didn't give a crap about movies, just of moving units.

I've never had a problem with any of the Bull Moose Music locations in Maine, everyone there is genuinely helpful and like to talk about whatever it is you're buying that day. They're probably grateful that anyone is coming in at all now.

In my experience, most people in record stores are just bored and tired of standing up all day, and nothing could be less interesting than talking about records AGAIN.

they should get another job then - talking about records was (is?) the fun part of working in a record store

the big problem when i did this (1978-80) was returned records, this was when the record companies had unlimited return policy (which contributed to the biz crash of'79).people would scam the system, buy an album and presumably tape it, bring it back the next day and say it was scratched. one boss would play the records to make sure they were actually damaged but for the most part we let people slide unless they were really obvious about it. i can still remember one dude who bought dozens of 12 inch disco singles - when they were a new format and very novel - and came back later the same day wanting to return. "so...they're all scratched?" things got ugly for a minute until the guy gave up and left.

The opposite side of that is records that jumped or wouldn't play on my moderately priced but perfectly decent turntable only to play flawlessly on the pricier system in the record shop, followed by a refusal to refund/exchange. Nothing did more to dissuade me from buying records.

i haven't lived in New York for some time but i just want to mention that i have never had a bad experience at Other Music. the clerks were either really chill (i.e. hung over) or super enthusiastic and recommending stuff that they thought was similar to what i was asking about.

I wish I could post a YouTube link for the mother of all snotty record-stored clerks--not Jack Black, but a clerk in Don Shebib's Goin' Down the Road, a Canadian film from 1970. It's a scene inside Sam the Record Man's old flagship store on Yonge St. One of the main characters, a Newfoundlander, follows a beautiful woman upstairs to the classical section. ("Beautiful"'s an understatement.) She puts on a Satie record, he pathetically tries to chat her up, she leaves, he accidentally knocks the tone arm on the turntable, drawing the clerk over. Pete (embarassed, trying to cover for his clumsiness): "Um, what is that?" Clerk, dripping contempt: "Satie--beautiful, isn't it?"

Bull Moose Music locations in Maine

That's the ONLY place I've found in New England where I can bring in a bag of 50-100 CDs and sell the entire thing in one go. No place in Boston will take them all. (Not that I blame them, selling indie-shmindie/britpop/post-punk castoffs).

I once had a poperly snooty clerk in Other Music when I tried to engage him in actual conversation as I paid for records ...
He was talking to one of his colleagues about Neil Hannon while I paid, and asking if there was anything in a similar vein but obscure. I piped up about the mid-80s Èl catalogue. "You really think I don't now all about Èl?" he said, with an audible sigh and a visible sneer. "You really don't need to tell me about that."

look of course we have attitude, you people have appalling taste, elevate your game if you want less attitude

Can't embed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MeJWRIpi4A

"they should get another job then - talking about records was (is?) the fun part of working in a record store"

yeahhhhhh, but it can be tricky and one reason why people who work in stores like this are thought of as "snobby" is a complete fear and paranoia on the part of the worker that if they engage too much with someone they don't know that they will be cornered FOREVER by someone who never ever stops talking about whatever they are obsessed with. it happens. you have to be eternally vigilent unless you are someone who just loves being talked at by freaks for hours.

Yeah, but that happens in any shop selling specialist things that attracts a geek audience. So why were camera shops never known for arsehole clerks? Or bookshops? Or countless other specialist shops?

unlike most retail stores, record stores - especially used record stores and used book stores and even video stores when they existed - seem to exist in another world entirely where people feel like they can say whatever they want to say to you for as long as they want to say it and there is apparently nothing you can do about it.

i've been followed around record stores by other customers who want to talk about records. it's terrible getting cornered by one of those guys!

desperate need for validation...CREEPY

when i go into a store i want to just dig around and get out and hopefully if someone talks to me they're mellow and not one of the weird dudes. sometimes they smell like vinyl that's been sitting in floodwater.

not everyone buys cameras in specialty camera shops. i'm sure there are asshole camera clerks aplenty, but most people don't come in contact with them. music is something that lots of people buy. and for some reason music and art and books or whatever intimidates people in some way. they are afraid of feeling dumb or uncool as soon as they walk in the door. one of the ways a store can combat this feeling is to be friendly from the start. "Hi, how are you? let me know if you need anything. i'll just be over here on ilx if you need me." but a lot of stores don't do this because they are staffed by young people who don't want to be bothered by people. but that is true of a lot of places.

the baby boomers who feel a need to tell me how cool their record collections used to be can be really bad. they haven't listened to a record in 30 years but they still need to engage and they want me to tell them how cool they are.

and at the same time look at me like i'm a complete idiot for choosing to sell records.

During a brief visit to NYC I was in Downtown Music Gallery and Other Music, good conversation and enthusiasm at both places.

Back when Uncle Buck's was open in Oxford, M1tch Ulr1ch and everybody he hired were always A+ cool.

Young people and baby boomers are a scourge.

basically all the people who go on forever about how much they love "the vinyls" but who don't actually buy records or own a record player are a chore, but they are my cross to bear.

its just weird to me cuz i know for a fact that NOBODY goes into the crafty bead store down the street and badgers the woman there with questions like: WHO BUYS BEADS? DO YOU REALLY SELL A LOT OF BEADS? DON'T PEOPLE JUST BUY JEWELRY THAT'S ALREADY MADE? YOU REALLY GET FIVE BUCKS FOR THAT KIND OF BEAD? WHY IS THAT BEAD FIVE BUCKS AND WHY IS THAT ONE TWO BUCKS? DO YOU SELL YOUR BEADS ONLINE? IS THIS YOUR PERSONAL COLLECTION OF BEADS? WHERE DO YOU EVEN GET BEADS NOWADAYS?

xpost I used to sell cameras and there were plenty of people who felt they could say whatever they wanted to me for as long as they wanted to say it. I just never behaved like an arsehole to them because I would have been sacked. So why doesn't being an arsehole get you sacked from record stores? On Sat I was talking to a guy who used to work at Rhythm Records in Camden. He said the owner was proud of his reputation as the rudest shop owner in London - so proud the employees (who had their own reputation for dickishness) used to keep him away from working behind the counter, because he took it too far.

Also, 'not everyone buys cameras in specialty camera shops' is a red herring here, because the difference we're talking about isn't between buying records from any record store and a supermarket, but between an independent store - where you're more likely to encounter attitude, and where someone who wants the new J-Lo won't be shopping - and the big chains.

most people are great though. and polite and/or completely intimidated by me. works for me either way.

i just think that for the most part most people working in independent record stores AREN'T rude. i think they can be perceived as rude cuzza what i've been saying. they might not be the most helpful people in the world though. cuz they are hungover, etc. but they are usually okay as far as i can see.

i've definitely been bugged before in record stores when the people working there were having really loud inane conversations. but that's a personal thing. sometimes i get the feeling that people are putting on a show a bit. and ignoring me at the same time. which can feel rude to me.

there was someone in philly who shall remain nameless and who worked with friends of mine who used to drive me up a fucking wall cuz when he was working i had to listen to his endless pontificating in the store and i just kinda hated the guy. but maybe other people didn't care. he was rude too. and one of the owners. but what are you gonna do? i lived with it. i think i actually knew his schedule at one point so that i would know when not to go there.

they should get another job then - talking about records was (is?) the fun part of working in a record store

Maybe they just talked about records for an hour and want to talk about something else.

But also I disagree with this. There are lots of fun things about working in a record store or any "cool" retail job (book store, etc.) that have little to do with the specifics of what's being sold. And also it's nice to have a job that you don't hate.

i prob posted upthread already but the people talking to you thing is interesting too. i worked in a store for about 2 and a half years and some people would come in for a sort of musical counselling session, like telling you about their djing probs, their dislike of whatever music, their struggles to start a clubnight or whatever, it was sort of painful. sometimes i'd see someone coming in and just mentally groan. i was always polite but it was a bit annoying.

on the other hand i became quite good friends with other regulars. it's nice how you can get to know people just by selling them records every week, and it was always nice to get to know people's tastes and be able to give them something really good that had come in.

i knew some of the regulars really well, i was really ill and depressed towards the end and the constant talk of going out and clubs was a bit stressful, and i remember one guy who bought a lot of stuff got to telling me he'd had some major op on his back and couldn't go out, it was funny to have this major point of agreement and common ground with somebody in that context, made me feel better.

i also remember, bearing in mind it was a store with an emphasis on house/techno, being at concerts or clubs and lots of the time somebody would come up to you really high and be all "you guys are the only record store that aren't dicks!" etc etc...which was nice.

i really agree with the idea that it's juvenile to lord it over people. i just find it really runs against the spirit of liking music to not want to share it with others.

scott, I have definitely watched bead vendors have that conversation. Not all of it but most of it.

its just weird to me cuz i know for a fact that NOBODY goes into the crafty bead store down the street and badgers the woman there with questions like: WHO BUYS BEADS? DO YOU REALLY SELL A LOT OF BEADS? DON'T PEOPLE JUST BUY JEWELRY THAT'S ALREADY MADE? YOU REALLY GET FIVE BUCKS FOR THAT KIND OF BEAD? WHY IS THAT BEAD FIVE BUCKS AND WHY IS THAT ONE TWO BUCKS? DO YOU SELL YOUR BEADS ONLINE? IS THIS YOUR PERSONAL COLLECTION OF BEADS? WHERE DO YOU EVEN GET BEADS NOWADAYS?

try touring Germany during the Napster heyday. "Nice merch table but why I should buy when everything is free?"

There was one guy in my local record store who basically just ignored me whenever I came up to the counter; one of his underlings would have to serve me instead. And I was a club DJ buying on a pre-approved discount.

When I was working one day, Andrea Martin of SCTV came in our store. I went over to her and made a pest out of myself. (She was after some aerobics cassette.)

lol @ there being snotty record store clerks in toronto! i kinda had the impression that the stores all went of their way to hire totally uncool ppl as some kind of ~politeness~ thing!

Common misconception about us. We're vicious to the core.

when I was 12 or 13, the guys at my local record store were mean to me. now, about 20 years later, they're super nice. I even got a 40 percent discount the last time I showed up, for basically no reason. it's weird.

I've definitely heard tales of dickishness from camera shop employees. Not as outright as "'tude" perhaps but "oh, well, if you want to be taking holiday snaps forever it's fine to buy the £250 lens instead of the £1000 lens, but a real pro wouldn't accept anything less" bla bla.

(not a photographer so this is second hand)

consider yourself lucky: you still have camera shops! i wish we still had them--i used to do a lot of black and white (film) photography, and there used to be great shops for that, but these days i'd have to order everything online

i think that wine store employees are the new record store clerks

truth bomb

i think wine store employees pre-date record store employees

well, i have no idea when the wine store became a going concern, but i'm assuming guys who ran vineyards were dickholes long before the invention of recorded sound

definitely get snob vibes from wine store guys. i try not to even go into those places to buy booze, i'd rather walk the extra two blocks to go to the store with the bulletproof glass run by the two polish dudes.

one reason i love living in pennsylvania is that liquor stores are horrible overlit government-run soviety-country-during-rationing concerns where the employees just want you to pay for your bottom-shelf rocket fuel and get the fuck out

truth fruit bomb

yeah i never go to booze places where the people working even know what the hell they are selling.

man I feel sorry for you guys

all the wine store dudes down here are down to earth stand-up dudes who are fun to jaw with and will steer you toward the wine you like, zero 'tude

i find good wine through trial and error. same with records.

well it's not like i even buy wine it's more about getting both myself and the clerk through a 9 a.m. purchase of grain alcohol with as little shame as possible for both parties

The local wine shop staff seem pretty helpful even though I never buy wine there, just spirits. Have encountered snooty ones elsewhere, though.

My main problem with wine shops is that everything costs twice as much as I feel I ought to spend on any consumable, which is sort of my problem with vinyl in record shops too.

£25 for a spirit I last bought for £14 at the supermarket, when I lived somewhere where the supermarket stocked interesting booze? £15 for a beat-up LP from the uncool period of a not very sought-after band? Uh, I guess I'll stick to dollar bin CDs and supermarket cider.

i have a friend in town who sells great italian wine for a living. and this being western mass he also naturally runs a small excellent avant garde record label. anyway all i drink now is italian wine. yum yum yum. i love tart dry wines that are fruity without being huge smothering bores like cali wines. italy is flavor country. i'm never going back.

conversely one of the best things about living in baltimore was that you could buy vodka at the rite aid, which when you combined it with a frozen pizza and bottle of ibuprofen took care of "before drinking," "drinking," and "after drinking."

With wine, I feel like I suspect most casual music listeners do: I know what I like, I don't know how to find more like it, I forget major details about it (name, region), and I'm too intimidated by wine experts' knowledge to ask.

i'm assuming guys who ran vineyards were dickholes long before the invention of recorded sound

nick hornby - call yr agent

well it's not like i even buy wine it's more about getting both myself and the clerk through a 9 a.m. purchase of grain alcohol with as little shame as possible for both parties

the shit we get down here would straight blow your mind

http://www.thedrinkshop.com/images/products/main/3587/3587.jpg

warning, do not drink it, it will make you insane.

i have drunken that

mixed it with kool-aid iirc

I made my own peach vodka this year, bottle of vodka + mason jar + 2 peaches >>>> let it sit a few days >>> daaaaammmmnnnnn

I did this in honor of the Russian and Polish writers I was reading, who never cease discussing the excellence of vodka

mixed it with kool-aid iirc

you're a mensch for this btw

i had snake wine one time, from vietnam.

it was like yr idea. except with wine instead of vodka and a dead cobra instead of pears.

thunderbird + kool-aid is where the muse hides iirc

XP: I've always suspected this thing about record store clerk 'tude was a thing put about by insecure music journalists. I've had two features pitched to me in the last three years about why people who work in record shops are virgins and smell bad and pick their noses and stuff like that. They were both rejected without reply.

People who work in record stores just tend to be more knowledgeable about music imo, it just stands to reason. I'm mates with loads of people who work in record shops but that kind of reveals what a fucking anti-social gimp with bad habits I am more than anything else. They all probably think I have weird/bad taste in music, but then none of them go on about it to me.

My gf nearly went into labour in my favourite record store (it was just a gnarly Braxton Higgs contraction - she gave birth the next day) and I took my son in to visit within two or three weeks. I see about half the people who work in the shop socially, which is more than I can say for the writers on any given magazine I work for. (Though the two things aren't that comparable though, the more I think about it - I haven't met most of them.)

There's a big cross over of course. The current reviews editor of The WIRE worked in a good second hand record store in Notting Hill. It's a good grounding.

Someone in the flagship HMV on Oxford Street refused to serve me once when I was buying Motown Chartbusters 1, 2, 3 and 4, South Of Heaven and Seasons In The Abyss but then I'm mates with other staff who work there as well. In fact one of my best nights out in London full stop was doing Bill Drummond's 17 choir with the HMV Oxford Street staff and then on to a David Bowie night in a pub.

It's hard to get most music writers out of their poorly decorated angst garrets to do much, even the ones I'm really good friends with.

This obviously doesn't apply to most of the writers I know on here. Lex, for example, is one of the most sociable people I've met in recent years. I can't imagine him working in a second hand record shop for some reason.

scott i had great italian red last night - negroamaro. i have a radar for pretentious wine stores, in nyc they're pretty easy to spot. one place in my neighborhood has a theme - wine for food - and they recommend dishes to serve with what wine you're buying...insistently.

sounds like record store customers are most stalker-ish or just annoying than I remember. not that there was any shortage of damaged weirdos in ann arbor during the late 70s. the only regular nuisances at my old record store were these classical geeks who were tolerated - if not encouraged - by the clerks because they spent tons of money every week.

the wine snobbery adds a classism thing too tho that the record store lacks; one dude was trying to push some stuff on this yuppie-ish couple while my roomate & i were trying to get some attention & he was passing some subpar shit at us when he had a free moment ... i dont have money but my roomate worked at motorola as a software engineer & was doing pretty well for himself, he just doesnt come across like a moneyed person / is black, so the store owner basically ignored us

we bought wine at the supermarket instead

all y'all need to move to my neighborhood because I assure you that you will get zero 'tude/class discomfort at wine authorities

I'm wondering who in this thread I wanna kick it with drinking a good cab and listening to a mid seventies Haggard record.

If there is correct wine to go with certain foods, then there should be correct wines to go with certain styles of music, right?

wine ----> jazz
beer ----> rock
liquor ---> rap
the purified blood of the lower classes ---> classical

got that from food & wine so ymmv

huge xp but:
I once had a poperly snooty clerk in Other Music when I tried to engage him in actual conversation as I paid for records ...

so intrigued bout who this was, there was a guy there who used to drive me crazy with the same air of omniscience. assume maybe best not done on ilx because, you really don't need to tell those guys about ILX. everyone else there was awesome & knew where the reiko kudo records were & turned me onto manuel gottsching and all so it's all fine but i just wondered.

i went to mississippi in portland once & chatted to the guy for five minutes about the label, & they had a stool in front of the counter, i guess because it's a bit of a community hub and people are swinging by to hang awhile. i thought that was the best.

also poperly seems like a phonically apposite term for aloof, superior clerk behaviour

I opened a cab to drink with my leftover Szechuan food and accompany the new Junior Boys record :/

liquor ---> rap

only when blended with corn syrup these days iirc

Vineyard owners are not, by and large, dickholes, at least not globally. They tend to be extremely hard-working farmers whose families have worked their very small plots of land for centuries, and they're some of the least pretentious people you'll encounter. Granted, most of the people in, say, Napa or Sonoma who make wine are billionaires looking for a hobby that strikes them as appropriately glamorous, rugged, and idyllic, and you'll certainly experience dickhole culture there. (Come to think of it, though, even the term "vineyard owner" is so Napa; a subsistence vigneron in southern France is not gonna ever refer to himself a "vineyard owner"...) It's funny but kind of disheartening to see people on this board whose tastes in, breadth of knowledge about, and depth of engagement with music I'm in immense admiration of be so kneejerk anti-wine-intellectualizing.

There are definitely connections in my mind between certain styles of music / groups / whatever and certain wines... And I don't mean this to be dick-ish, but a nice California cab is pretty much the vinous equivalent of a Coldplay record. Do you remember that feeling when you started exploring music that there's just SO much more out there than you ever even began to imagine? It happens with wine, and it's just as magical and life-rattling of an experience. The wine shop clerks that come across as snobby or ridiculous to the casual dabbler in wine are the very same as the record store clerks who intimidate the guy coming in to look for the latest National record or whatever; they're geeks who spend an inordinate amount of time thinking and talking about their passion. Come at them with an open mind and let them recommend something off-the-map, and you might be really surprised.

Full disclosure: I work for a small NYC-based French and Italian wine importer, and it's the only other area of interest besides music that's ever completely taken me over.

I meant to add: there are definitely and certainly wine store employees who are total condescending dicks, and there's as little excuse for that as there is for similar behavior in a record shop. D-40, the employee in your experience was a profiling tool and he deserved you guys to desert him; the thing that drives me up the wall is that his store probably had vastly more interesting stuff than the supermarket, and he blew his chance to get some of that into your hands. And you don't have to spend a shit-ton of money on a decent bottle of wine that tastes like it comes from somewhere and isn't over-produced / over-manipulated / cynically marketed BS.

i got no beef with wine people. i dig geekdom in general. most people here do. i like wine. honestly, i would go to a wine shop where someone wanted to turn me on to great wine. definitely. but i kinda just go to the most convenient place most of the time. its called the wine rack. its very small. some decent italian stuff in there though.

i have no beef with wine. i just can't afford it. plus i've spent like 10-plus years taste-testing weirdo art-beers. that's the kind of financial/emotional investment that makes a man wary of jumping into a whole new booze geek realm.

I don't mean this to be dick-ish, but a nice California cab is pretty much the vinous equivalent of a Coldplay record

ha, i'd say Coldplay is more like cheap Australian shiraz, unsubtle without much going on beneath the surface

nice California cabernets are actually quite nice, if someone else is paying

At least a Coldplay album and a U2 album or whatever are basically the same price, and I can be pretty sure that the record store employee could tell the two apart in a blind test. I wouldn't ever trust what a wine store employee tells me.

I do my best to be conversational and treat every customer like a human being. I also work at a store that tries not to alienate any demographic, so being a snob about indie etc. wouldn't make much sense when the next person to ask me something could be looking for children's soundtracks or 60s Billboard compilations. Working there has really helped me in my ability to be comfortably social with all kinds of strangers, and I pride myself on being the most willingly helpful employee at the store.

"This is just a pop psychology answer I know, but maybe it's the inherently emotional & personal aspects of record-hunting that makes customers respond to any perceived failure-to-validate in a way that's out of proportion to any actual exchange with the clerk. Buying a record you really want feels like filling in part of your identity. Especially because the core market for the music industry is teens and preteens whose picks dominate the hit parade, and who are in the middle of those identity formation years when any slight is felt most strongly. So people are more likely to feel insulted when record store clerks are indifferent to their choices, or just busy with other aspects of their low wage work, or having a bad day and not particularly trying to hide it."

this is a nice explanation of the "percieved snootyness of your avereage record store employee phenomenon" and makes me want to be more sympathetic, but:

almost every big city record store i went into (i'm thinking of living in san fran for 4 years and visiting london for a weekend of intensive record shopping, mostly) people were either busy but trying to be friendly and helpful if you caught them when they weren't in the middle of lugging crates around or helping someone else (i'm thinking amoeba here) or just super helpful, blatantly friendly, and happy to talk about music and make some suggestions if i asked (these would be little boutique specialty shops, mostly in lower haight) the london dj shops were all sort of a combination of the above 2 mindsets, but firmly in the friendly/helpful camp.

however, in small town hipster shops, i tended to get 'tude. i think it was a combination of being a big fish in a small hipsterpond, and being a college grad making minimum wage and taking it out on the rest of the world. did anyone ever insult my purchaces out loud? no. did anyone ever refuse to tell me where the dance section got moved to? no. but, i mean, i can read body language, facial expressions, and short, unhelpful answers to simple questions when the store clearly isn't busy as well as anyone, and the way those douchebags acted was just a million miles from their counterparts in places that were obviously a way cooler (and where, ironically, you'd maybe *expect* to get bad attitude)

look, i know service jobs suck and all, but ) a record store is the kind of place where having some guidance from the knowledgeable employees is really helpful (is the new record from $random band$ as good as the last one? i like $bandX$, can you recommend something like it?) and b) if you're working in a record store, you might be reasonably expected to be somewhat knowledgeable, and maybe even a little excited, about music, and therefore ready to at least TRY to be helpful.

fwiw i've never worked in a record store but i've worked retail. i'd get a pretty frustrated with customers who were blatantly dicks to me, and maybe a little flustered with stupid, hard-to-answer or ridiculously obvious questions in the middle of the 5:30 rush. but generally i made an effort to be friendly and helpful - it was just part of my job. why is this so hard for college town record clerks?

doesn't matter any more i guess, collegetown douchebag hipster place is out of business now.

(Wanted to add from my post) In my opinion, obviously. I feel like other employees kind spout back answers without making an attempt to imagine the customer's perspective. Anyway, heres to combating the myth, is all.

btw i'd like to add to the wine convo btw but when i lived in cali my girlfriend hosted at a boutique wine-oriented restaurant, so i usually just let her pick the wine. the only thing i really managed to learn from her was, when you're going for a california wine and dont know what you're doing, go for the sonoma wines over the napa ones as a general rule - wines a huge industry in napa so the local wines can be hit or miss. whereas sonoma has an equally good climate for grapes, but there's less wineries around, and they tend to be small and boutiquey rather than corporate. so sonoma county wines were generally more awesome when compared to their napa counterparts

I wouldn't ever trust what a wine store employee tells me.

I used to work for a big winery doing design and such--for some wines they had this multi-part spinner wheel which you'd turn each circle of randomly and then put together a complicated description at random, ie "fruity" + "barnyard odours" + "hints of X" + "aftertaste Y", etc

My weirdest (esp in retrospect) and worst record store snob experience was being belittled by Al Jourgensen (not yet then of Ministry) at a record store on Clark in Chicago. I bought that Slits bootleggish LP on Rough Trade and an early Cabaret Voltaire album (I think "Mix-Up") and as he rang me up, he rather snobbishly turned to his colleague and said to him, "Oh look, someone's actually buying this shit!" I paid for the records and as I left - being an exceedingly young 'punk' - spit in Al's face. A few years later he was famous, and had abandoned the effete New Romantic sound of "With Sympathy" for something which could easily be said to have stolen quite a lot from Cabaret Voltaire.

When I worked in a record store, I was quite gracious to everyone who displayed basic etiquette; I thought it was a joy to make someone happy by facilitating the acquisition of the music which made them happy. And I still feel that that should be an obvious thing to do.

In Austin, the worst record store is Cheapos. They have a weird collection of awful CDs, and they rarely have anything you might actually be looking for (even within the genres they stock most heavily.) The employees all seem vaguely moronic and it may just be my imagination, but I get the feeling that they are bitter somewhat because their relatively shallow knowledge of music disallowed them from getting a job at the more desirable Waterloo or End Of An Ear. I've purchased maybe 20 CDs there in three years, despite my best efforts. I've never had a problem, but I've seen Cheapos employees just absolutely ridicule people behind their backs. Pathetic.

Waterloo has the best employees, especially after a culling a few months back where some of the less helpful were let go. I was there when a kind older (75?) gentleman came in, a few weeks after Susan Boyle's debut was released. Not my thing - give me This Heat or Roy Shirley or Swamp Dogg or something else. But it was the number one record, a huge success, and Boyle had been all over television and on the cover of magazines. This gentleman couldn't remember her name - and obviously hadn't been in a record store in years - and so he approached the counter to find help. He explained that he was looking for a CD by a new British singer who'd been on a television show and had become quite popular . . . "Susan" something. The girl behind the counter replied that she didn't own a television or read magazines and had no idea to whom he was referring. He looked disappointed and moved away from the counter, looking despairingly at the large store and calculating the slim odds of his stumbling across this one release amongst the thousands of choices. I picked up a Susan Boyle CD and brought it to him, and he was delighted. Later, I bought a couple of things which were apparently "cool" enough for the counter girl to confide to me that there was no way she was going to help anyone buy a Susan Boyle CD. She knew exactly who Boyle was. I mentioned this to the owner of Waterloo, whom I know in a sort of "hey, how's it going?" kind of way, and the girl was gone within a week. (Don't know if it was my doing, but I'm happy to think it was!)

^^ concur re: Cheapo, it really sucks. the employees are all paid absolutely shit wages, long hours, the owner's a huge asshole to everyone who walks in, the selection is shit, the prices are laughable - $8.99 across the board for any used CD that comes in the door? brilliant! count me out.

end of an ear is fantastic. waterloo worth a trip to the used bins as well. pretty much my go-to austin shops when i have spare $$ these days to spend on records.

@Crustaceanrebel, so basically you suggest banned the Waterloo girl. "Don't know if it was my doing, but I'm happy to think it was!"

I cringe when I see customers in record shops seeking approval for purchases or even brag about their musical tastes and knowledge. I haven't had any 'tude from record shop staff, or say, more than other shops. I'm unlikely to try to start a conversation with staff except to ask them what they are playing or for help finding stuff. If I'm excited about some music I've just heard I wouldn't expect a stranger to have the same feeling, especially when they work with music all day everyday.

This thread has become fantastic!

i have no beef with wine

http://www.nebeef.org/CMImages/NebraskaBC/wine%20and%20steak.jpg

At one point in my life I realized that no matter how insecure I was about choosing *this* record or *that* bottle of wine and bringing it to the counter, they were the ones selling the fucking thing, not me.

By the way - http://celebraterickysargulesh.tumblr.com/post/7234656132/the-rock-band-train-is-hoping-to-captures-the

"some decent italian stuff in there though."
Scott, based on what you said above, you should check out some red wines from the Val d'Aosta up in the Italian Alps. Bright, tart, not without fruit, refreshing, earthy, strange. Also: Sicilian reds from the volcanic soils of Mt. Etna.

"plus i've spent like 10-plus years taste-testing weirdo art-beers. that's the kind of financial/emotional investment that makes a man wary of jumping into a whole new booze geek realm."
Ha, and I often find myself saying the same thing in relation to beer or Scotch... That's a sentiment I can relate to for sure. A big difference between fringe beers and wines is that the hand of the maker is present in every step of the beer-brewing procedure, whereas wine should ideally taste like where the grapes are grown and reflect that climate, plain and simple, and the hand of the maker is often felt as an awkward intrusion when it's so blatantly present.

"At least a Coldplay album and a U2 album or whatever are basically the same price, and I can be pretty sure that the record store employee could tell the two apart in a blind test. I wouldn't ever trust what a wine store employee tells me."
You'd be surprised what people who have trained their palates can do. Not that every wine shop employee can do this, but telling apart, say, an Australian Shiraz and a Piedmontese Nebbiolo (which are divergent on pretty much every possible spectrum) in a blind tasting isn't a stretch of even a basic taster's facilities, once they form those mental reference points. Finding a wine store employee you actually can trust will immediately make your drinking tons and tons more pleasurable... Just like with records, you can shop by the importer as well once you find one you click with.

Regarding albums all basically costing the same and wines being wildly divergent in terms of price, that's a good point and a fair potential point of angst for the consumer. Wines cost wildly different prices for a lot of different reasons, but a lot of it comes down to the costs behind the operation (as I said earlier, there aren't a lot of people--and I stress, in the Old World and in traditional viticultural areas--getting filthily rich from being grape-growers and winemakers). Can you imagine if albums had the same in-built reflection of production costs? "Um, excuse me, why is this new Coldplay record $129?"... "Well, you should see the studio they recorded it in. Plus, have you driven out on the bypass yet? Those billboards don't pay for themselves. And Chris's haircuts are EXPENSIVE."

So why were camera shops never known for arsehole clerks?

My wife is a photographer, and has definitely gotten 'tude from camera dudes. Upon inquiring about ordering film for an old twin-lens reflex, she was met with a "so you're trying to be like Diane Arbus, hunh?"

End of an Ear is great! I spent way more than I intended to when I was there for work.

As I mentioned on this very thread four years ago, Record Breakers (not even gonna googleproof them anymore) in the Chicago suburbs had the worst clerks ever when it came to attitude, but the kicker was how shit their tastes were. One time a clerk openly rolled his eyes and mocked the Modern Lovers I was buying, but continued his tirade to a coworker about how "awesome" and "underrated" Thursday was.

i asked a clerk at the princeton record exchange this weekend what section sam cooke would be in, since i was like, rock? soul? r & b? blues? she walked me over to r & b and helped me look, and then when we couldn't find the record i wanted, we went over to blues. great record store experience

yeah the p-rex people were always really nice to me, even when i was a high school asshole

you know what though, dont try to shoplift there, because they will catch you, and then they are not nice, and you are banned forever

This thread is kind of funny for me. Most of the 'tude examples are merely snooty or sarcastic or under their breath that these record store clerks come off as harmless passive agressive wusses that wouldn't phase me in the slightest. Maybe I'm just immune to weakass nerdy versions of insults.

From my limited experience in a record store or two, I can say that my worst experience (that I can remember) was nothing more than listening to entirely unmemorable, unwarranted opinions. More often I've heard supportive opinions though.

I went to a record store to buy a Jurassic 5 CD and left with a broken arm. Now I know better.

I don't believe you. J5 is great even to record store clerks

dont try to shoplift there

In which case, you deserve an extra helping of 'tude. Shoplift CDs?! How 20th century!

Never really had much of a problem as I've always been a "head down" type of shopper myself, until...

The only nearby indie is owned by a guy who I started buying from in 1987. About 6 years ago I was inquiring about finding a copy of that glorious Gospel boxset (Goodbye Babylon) and without trying anything himself, ended up giving me some contact info from a few of his suppliers -- this, after spending half my life and thousands upon thousands of dollars with him. I've not since returned.

Does he not special order any items?

I used to think if he couldn't get it, it wasn't gettable. Hack accompli.

Selling used records was one of the most annoying things in the world, and I'm glad I'll never do that again. The minute eBay became useful, never looked back. I basically stopped shopping at Other Music due to the dickishness of their record buyer.

Along those lines, have vivid memories of the astoundingly asshole clerks at Kim's Underground being snotty to Patti Smith (not recognizing her) and then, after someone recognized her, running over to try to kiss up.

Honestly, with a tiny few exceptions, I'm thrilled that record stores aren't a part of my life anymore. And I drink gin, so fuck the wine stores as well...

I have bought tons of records/cds in my life at a lot of stores and have only had two bad experiences. One was when I was 15 or 16 and I was buying a Jasmine Minks record. I remember the two guys at the counter telling me it was hit and that I should buy something else. They recommended me something, but I forget what it was. This was at Leopold's in Berkeley. That record store had the best Uk indie vinyl of any store, better than any store in the UK. Second time was at Rough Trade Records in San Francisco when it was still on 6th Street. It was pretty bad of an area and I remember for some reason being buzzed into the store. This was before it moved to Haight Street. I must have been under 16 because I remember my mom drove me there, like 30 miles, to pick up The Fall's Palace Of Swords Reversed. The guy there was a total asshole and told me he had no idea what it was, even though the label/store was one in the same. There wasn't even any one else in the store. I think the fucktard got a job at Reckless on Haight a few years later, but I am not sure if it was him, looked like him.

guy at Volcanic Tongue in Glasgow is a great dude.

i went to mississippi in portland once & chatted to the guy for five minutes about the label, & they had a stool in front of the counter, i guess because it's a bit of a community hub and people are swinging by to hang awhile. i thought that was the best.

that place is the best. i was just there recently. they don't have a cash register--the person at the counter just adds up the purchases in his head. if you ask him for a receipt he will draw something out for you with a pencil.

like a picture of a cat or what?

i would have to look at the receipt to remember if it was a cat or not

(hi jess!!!!!!)

hello!

this week i went back to the record store i used to work at and it was kind of depressing. it had shrunk to approximately 1/6th of its former size. the kid behind the counter didn't even look up, but i guess you get what you pay for at this stage of the game.

jess i just found a mix cd you sent me in the mail ten years ago! it has britney spears on the cover and it is great

that is sad about the record store :(

Sad is it when even the small shop lacks skill.

I live in NYC and shop mostly at Other and the Academy locations... My experiences there range from pleasantly indifferent to actively nice and engaged. Do you NYC dwellers know of other hidden-gem places (besides Kim's, which is okay but doesn't seem to offer much that the other two don't), especially for vinyl (used or new)?

i like permanent in greenpoint a lot, for selection/price/breeziness.
there's that block on east 5th, btw like 3rd & 2nd maybe?, that's stacked with good places, especially for older kinda folkways-y stuff. tropicalia in furs; the place that gives you neat black paper bags (which might be called good records or something??); a couple others.

Oh yeah, Permanent! I never seem to remember them, but I found a Comsat Angels EP there last time I went... Thanks.

I feel pretty lucky, we have great record stores here in mpls, nice folks work at them

Going record shopping is one of my favorites things to do when I visit other cities and towns; by and large, I can't say that NYC record store employees are any ruder or less helpful than anywhere else, from my experience. I sure do miss Plan 9 in Richmond, Virginia, where I spent 80%+ of my discretionary income between the ages of 15 and 22... I think back on what I paid for certain LPs back then, and how high vinyl prices in NYC tend to be, and I can't believe it.

I've never sensed any serious contempt from clerks that I've noticed, aside from some good-natured mock-scorn from some who knew me as a regular. And one time, while ringing up my purchases, a clerk gave a noticeable pause and double-take when he spotted "Frampton Comes Alive!" amongst a bunch of albums he considered more acceptable. That was kinda funny.

saw the article and thought of this thread:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/nation-in-love-with-girl-from-record-store,309/

xp: re: NYC record stores. Dope Jams is probably my favorite record store in the city. Mostly house/dance music, but eccentric collection of 70/80s stuff and just about the weirdest bootleg 12" series ever -- like homemade Kate Bush and Pharaoh Sanders 12"s?? Plus they sell magick books and the place smells like incense. great parties. http://www.dopejams.net

yeah minneapolis is a good record-store town, even now (cue people saying how much better it was in 1980s–90s)

vintage vinyl in evanston, ill is the worst. since we've mentioned it many times on this site, i'll just add one wrinkle: he asks for a deposit if you want to special-order anything. a deposit of 50% of the item. no matter what the cost of the item. even if it's $10 (ha! if it's $10 then owner will mark it up to $25, no joke).

those onion articles about record stores seem so dated now :(

i teach 20-22-year-olds and i guarantee that 90% of them have almost no experience with record stores form the last 5 or 10 years.

on the 'tude tip, here are "The Rules" at Dope Jams:
https://dopejams.pinnaclecart.com/therules

They sound like dicks, or the person who wrote that sounds like a dick. Some good rules of thumb for record shopping. I think the "speak less say more" rule put them over the dick line.

That Vintage Vinyl place just makes my blood boil. I'm amazed that, of all the record stores in and around Chicago that have folded over the last decade, that place is still going strong.

1 dude yelled at my friend once back in the day for daring to touch ajosefus record proved at an lol-worthy $400

2 I met billy corgan shopping there once

A josefus record priced at $400

That Vintage Vinyl place just makes my blood boil. I'm amazed that, of all the record stores in and around Chicago that have folded over the last decade, that place is still going strong.

― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Monday, July 11, 2011 4:50 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

reigning theory is that dude is independently wealthy.

friend saw him on talk show once. supposedly his ex-wife abducted their daughter and he hasn't seen them since. which is very sad if true. i don't think that explains away his horrible business practices though.

i can think of 10+ times i saw a record at vintage vinyl then saw it the same week at reckless (in excellent condition) for literally 1/10 the cost.

maybe he's just reached a level of collector-nerdom that i can't approach, but i find the reasons he uses to justify exorbitant prices absurd. he uses any distinguishing feature of a record to motivate jacking up its price. "this one has a rare green label." "this one has the rare 'F' logo on the back." etc. sometimes it'll just be "original pressing"--of a record that only ever had one pressing and is not highly sought after in the first place!

the sad thing is that one day, he'll die, or he won't be able to run the business anymore, and the collection will be sold off for a fraction of what he's asking for it. meanwhile he just sits on all this stuff, priced to ensure that very few people will bother stepping inside much less buying anything.

also he is one of those few, reprehensible record stores that still prices "imports" at like 200%+ list price just because they're "imports." as if the world hasn't gotten smaller b/c of the internet. a cd i could buy on amazon.co.uk (or even amazon.com) for $15, he'll slap an "import" sticker on and charge $35. i dunno if he just hasn't adjusted to today's market or if he doesn't care of if there are just enough people who are unaware of how much things are worth to actually pony up the extra dollars. i doubt it's the latter because the same damn "import" CDs (not to mention bootlegs priced at $40+/CD) have been sitting, unmolested, on his shelves for over a decade--maybe even two decades at this point.

I wouldn't be surprised. The very first time I went in there, this would have been around 2007 when I first moved to Evanston, I was flipping through the Neil Young bootlegs and had to blow dust off a couple of them. I was shocked that they were priced $10-$15 higher than the bootlegs Record Service in Champaign used to sell, and that was back in 1994!

I went in there once and looked around and laughed at the high prices and then just bought a single 45 record adapter - he charged me $1.45 - no lie - whadda douche

Some selected VV comments from other ILM threads (I didn't include any of my own comments):

So today I found myself running an errand just down the street from the Vintage Vinyl store I moaned about earlier in the thread and thought I'd duck in to see if anything has changed. Of course not, in fact, I think the prices have gone up! They were selling some of the latter day Amon Duul II reissues on CD for $29.99 and $39.99 each! One of which I had just bought at another store in town for $18.99. Ridiculous. I flipped through the Neil Young section and saw they had the audacity to be asking $109.99 for a three-disc bootleg compilation of International Harvester Tour stuff. I mean, who the fuck pays for this stuff??
But the icing on the cake was the new vinyl section. Copies of fairly new and easy to find stuff for insane, insane prices. New Ariel Pink record on vinyl? $24.99. The one that pushed me over the edge and caused me to actually laugh out loud at the prices, however, was the $39.99 for a Wilco vinyl.

clemenza OTM. I've bitched before on this board about a place called Vintage Vinyl just north of Chicago. Ridiculous, ridiculous prices. A beat up copy of Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town? $15. What is even more disappointing is that the store does carry a fantastic selection of kraut and psych releases, but at even more astounding prices. Want used Can vinyl? They start at $55 and go up from there.
Also, they sell CDs. But only sloppily assembled CD-Rs of live boots. You know the kind, the Dylan shows on two discs for $45.
I hate that place with a passion.

If you are willing to get completely ripped off, you can always try Vintage Vinyl in Evanston.

Vintage Vinyl is nice to look at but don't waste your time unless you want to drop some serious loot and feel like an asshole at the same time for patronizing a shop with such ridiculous pricing. The last time I was in there, they were charging 22$ for the NEU! reissues on CD. Bullshit.

In Chicago, Vintage Vinyl in Evanston is ridiculous. I hate that place. More personal museum than record store.

ahh good I'm not the only one who thinks Vintage Vinyl is a nightmare. It's one of those stores where you probably couldn't find a STeely Dan LP for less than 10 bucks.

Vintage Vinyl is still there, and still sucks./q]

Is that Vintage Vinyl place up in Evanston still there? All I remember is that they had seriously overpriced LPs

I just thought "overpriced" left the impression that everything cost a few dollars more than usual, whereas with Vintage Vinyl it's much weirder than that.

This has been discussed here before, so you can check the archives for a full explanation, but: watch out for Vintage Vinyl. I'm not saying don't go there, or anything -- just be careful and make sure you know what you're buying and what it's worth. Just because he's selling something for $50 doesn't mean it's not in the 99 cent bin of several other stores.

I stopped going into Vintage Vinyl in 1990. When I saw the $70 price tag for Chelsea Girl, which I had just bought at 2nd Hand Tunes on Morse (a real shithole) for $5 (a great price back then, by the way) - I haven't set foot in there since... I was wondering if anyone had ever bought anything there. I've always wondered how that guy stays in business..

The Vintage Vinyl guy is a complete fucking prick. I've had many discussions with Chicago record collector friends on pulling some pranks and/or mass theft against that fucker, but we never got around to doing anything. (Record collectors, y'know?)

Vintage Vinyl in Evanston has some nice stuff occasionally (albeit at sky-high prices), but the older guy who works there is a total jerk.

etc.

Haha...started going to VV 20+ years ago, mainly because it was the only place I knew to find Who bootlegs. Also, I was twelve. I don't think I've spent more than $20 in there over the last 15 years; last thing I bought was the issue of Creem where Lester Bangs reviewed The Who By Numbers for $3. I always wondered how that place stayed in business, but as someone told me, "He probably only needs to sell two or three of those insanely overpriced records a week to cover his costs." But the last time I was there, in late 2010, I swear he still had some of the same stock he had in 1985.

From the Dope Jams "About" page:

Dope Jams opened its doors in 2006 after two years of tireless planning and construction---coinciding with the tragic closing of many of New York City's finest dance music establishments. The timing was no coincidence. From the beginning, the shop, sandwiched between the historic Brooklyn neighborhoods of Bed-Sty and Ft. Green, sought more than a simple profit. Opening at the peak of the so-called "digital revolution" never faired well for vinyl sales, and it would be a fallacy to describe the journey from the store's infancy to its present status as anything but trying. But Dope Jams' mission to maintain and disseminate underground culture in the midst of an uncertain era in dance music's history testifies to the institution's true calling: a haven for anything and anyone that doesn't fit into the rigid and commodified categories of the new New York, a stark contrast to the mythologized promised land of all things playfully subversive and utterly foward-looking.

I love self-aggrandizing "mission statements" with glaring typos and misspellings. This sounds like the most pretentious record store in the world.

that dope jams mission statement is ridiculous. especially for a store called "dope jams."

Saw this:

saw the article and thought of this thread:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/nation-in-love-with-girl-from-record-store,309/

― messiahwannabe, Monday, 11 July 2011 07:42 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

and, obv, thought of:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_uB-0D-gV8mY/RwkTynuam_I/AAAAAAAAEcE/j1BXE3t7TPI/s400/freshies

dope jams is in a nice spot but it's not a great store iirc.

"I wanted to get the first Modern Lovers album, but I didn't want her to know I didn't already own it," said Jody Osbourne of San Diego. "To cover up, I told her some big, long story about how my friend is such a jerk because he borrowed it a long time ago and never gave it back. When I was done with this four-minute spiel, she just said, 'I hate Jonathan Richman.' I wanted to curl up in a ball and die."

roffle

Is fiction: Nobody hates Jonathan Richman.

Unless they know him personally, or something...

A few years back I was in Jackpot records in Portland, and they were playing something nice over the PA. I asked the clerk what it was, and he told me it was the new Phish album. "Really?" I asked. "Really," he affirmed. I'm pretty sure he was fucking with me, but damned if I'm going to listen to the new Phish album.

ha ha, Josh in Chicago likes Phish, Josh in Chicago likes Phish!

(Addendum: the story was better without this, but when I got home from my trip I had the record label send me the new Phish album, but honestly I couldn't recall if that's what the clerk was playing or not. Regardless, I sold it the next day to my fave local shop, ha ha).

You can't fool us, you ripped it and listen to it every day on your iPod, which is now engraved with "I SECRETLY LOVE PHISH"

Not that secret if it's engraved on his iPod!

This thread is a hilarious A+ read from start to finish.

Ironically, tonight, I am going for dinner with one of my oldest friends, who is in the UK on holiday* - who I met, 25 years ago when I was an angsty Bauhaus record-buying teenager and she was a (completely non-Tude-y, though I can't say the same for her bosses) record shop clerk!

*Visiting the inlaws - so, classic record shop girl cliche, she was so much more into British dudes she married one

I've worked in a couple of record shops. Any tude given is totally proportional to the tude of the customers. I gave so much tude back I eventually got sacked from the big chain record shop. But working in the little tiny indie shop was much more fun because the customers were nicer, even despite occasionally getting buttonholed by weirdoes who want to talk to you for hours about random music shit you don't care about. TrueLifeStory, though: one of the dudes who got very chatty, and I thought was going to buttonhole me to talk about random music shit... turned out to be a much respected dronerock producer and occasional Stereolab member. And that was an amazing conversation. </suzy>

i can imagine record store clerks get a lot of "youve never heard of ______ and you work in a record store!" a lot of the time from uber-nerds

only nasty record store clerk was from kim's in NY...ridiculously snotty to the point of parody

...cant think of one.. (Even Kim's was OK, then again I was buying Black Monk Time, which is top trumps in any pile..)

Actually, one time I was doing a pick-up for a DJ in Turkey, from a 'cutting edge' dance tracks supply shop in Paddington, except the albums he wanted were Dire Straits, Heart, Queen, PinkFloyd, etc. He bought often from this supplier the more trendy stuff and the pre-release 12" normally, but wanted these for himself.

Anyway, I'd left it to the very last day to go get them, and the shop staff member was quite agitated that these records were even present in his shop. Not exactly giving me 'tude', more that he seemed visibly healed once the box had left his environment.

Local record store owner here is a giant dick about parking. He threatens to tow you on a very smug, dickish handwritten sign on his door if you park in the spaces outside his store but aren't shopping there.

This, despite the fact that it is a small parking lot, there is never more than one person in his store at any given time, and he's next to a restaurant which has way more patrons, which could use the extra patrons during overflow.

He also sometimes locks the door behind you, though I hear he doesn't do that anymore. Dude's collection is pretty awful, though if you want KISS dolls he has em.

Instead of playing music in the store, he watches television, usually old police procedural reruns.

I've been in there about ten times, only made one purchase before giving up on it. No idea how he stays afloat.

I can't remember the name of the place, but there used to be this little tiny basement shop on, I want to say, Division near Western that was a fairly typical used vinyl hole in the wall with exaggerated prices that never seemed to align with any sense of reality. Anyway, after browsing for a few minutes and deciding I didn't want to pay $25 for a Dylan record that was pretty common, I headed for the door and the dude actually yelled at me for not buying anything.

Man screw that. I for one rarely leave a record shop empty handed, so if someone is to be a dick and call me on it I just tell em I'm sorry their inventory and/or prices suck.

Yeah, just say "You ain't got NUTHIN, man!"

He ended his screed with something about not wanting me to come back in his store and I told him that with his prices, that wouldn't be a problem.

Youre not talking about kstarke right? Idk another record store in that area...

There was a place in Peascod Street, place looked great, had loads of albums, ephemera, scooter, wicker hanging chairs, dark walls, sixties posters everywhere..

I went in with Alice, "You know what I'd like?" she said, looking around. "No?" I replied. "This room"

Anyway, no attitude from the staff at all, just everything was at least three times the price. (Neu 75 UA Orig? £70)

How did they stay in business? Um, they didn't.

I assume it was a case of "take all yr stuff home" one day...

Peascod Street is in Windsor, btw.

I really don't remember the name of it, I don't remember it even having much of a sign beyond something that said "records". This was about 6 or 7 years ago though, so my memory isn't the sharpest about the details.

(xpost)

It was, in fact, a Burger King...

Okay, no, my memory isn't failing that much just yet!

I remember that place on Peascod St! It was on the first floor, through a doorway. I couldn't believe an independent had opened up after Revolution shut only briefly before. I didn't buy anything as it was all mind-bogglingly expensive. Can't recall the name. No attitude, I think the guy working there just gave me a look 'you can browse all you like but I know you can't afford anything here'/

Yeah, that's it. It's a tat parlor now.

It was expensive, but also there was so much in the racks, tightly packed, difficult to browse.

This belongs more in the things-that-bug-you-about-record-stores thread, but since this one's been been so active lately I'll put it here. I was at this flea-market booth on the weekend I've been going to for about 10 years. It was never great--most of the countless records there were junk, and, ditto, they were an ordeal to browse--but everything was $2, and I bought a number of records there over the years. The original owner died a few years ago, I think his son or grandson took it over for a while, and now he seems to have passed it on to someone else. When I took a quick look on the weekend, all the prices had gone up drastically--everything I saw was $20, including a Leroy Gomez disco record.

Good luck with that. There's nothing sadder than a guy selling junky used records who's got a price guide and the fantasyland belief that he's holding onto something valuable.

^^It's not just those guys. I was at a Salvation Army last week and everything vinyl--be it a scratchy Joe Tex, Manilow, or Dylan--started at $4.99.

Yeah, I kinda feel like some of these thrift store/used book store type places have been reading too many articles about "kids love vinyl again!" and have started to jack up their prices. When I first started digging through the vinyl bins at the local Half Price Books chain, the average price per record was like $2.99. Now, any "popular" artist automatically gets tagged with $7.99 or $9.99 and its getting increasingly harder to find things cheaper than that.

the vinyl bubble is putting the real estate bubble to shame IMO

I have no problem with the prices at the half price books nearby.

Neanderthal, I know the store you're talking about. It's not a very good store, but those guys really aren't dicks. They're socially maladjusted, maybe. They also have never locked the door behind me.

I have no problem with the prices at the half price books nearby.

I didn't until my most recent visit a few weeks ago, it seemed like all the vinyl had been repriced since last time I was there.

This has long been my problem with the internet and used/vintage stores. Every used bookstore that used to sell you things at 1/2 off cover price or lower now thinks every ratty-ass paperback they have is "1st edition" and worth $$$$. Why would I even buy used books if not for the bargain?

i do think lots of places who have little experience with vinyl just assume that because it's "old" it's worth money. i actually dropped into the new pawnamerica megastore here (out of morbid curiosity--it was next door to a home depot i was heading to) and their tiny vinyl section was filled with led zep albums in fair condition for $14.99. i suppose a few clueless yokels will actually buy those because they get a lot of traffic.

i also remember the old guy running the record store on division st. in chicago, and it's killing me that i can't recall the name of the store. i went in there maybe three times and they never had anything decent -- though i was never yelled out on my way out.

makes me wonder how much pawnamerica pays for your records if they turn them around for $15. i mean i could probably get a few 100 shitty led-zep-esque records for nothing and make a profit selling them for $4 each. not that it would be worth my time.

I guess "yelled" may have been a strong descriptor, more like angry muttering at me but he definitely made it clear he wasn't happy that I didn't buy anything and didn't want me coming back.

well, the store's gone now. so um "ha ha" i guess?

i had this conversation on facebook a while ago:

<threadstarter on support your local record store day or something>
my friend: i remember going into ***** records back in the day. memories etc
me: fuck ***** records, those guys were dicks. i'm glad they're closed
random friend of friend: dude, i used to work at ***** records. now i'm unemployed.
<awkward silence>
me: well fuck it, i'll just ask then: why did you guys always have such over the top 'tude? honestly it was really hard not to notice - what was up with that?
rfof: we never had 'tude, we always treated our customers nice
me: um, ok
rfof: unless you're talking about the main branch in Xtown - everyone knew those guys were completely pretentious. we used to make jokes about them.
me: oh, which ***** records were you in?
rfof: Ytown.
me: oh, shit, yeah actually you guys *were* nice! i used to drive half an hour to shop in your shop instead. no 'tude, plus you guys actually had techno and drum and bass and stuff! plus there was this really cute girl who worked there, she even complimented my purchase choices once.
rfof: yeah, i know who you're talking about - she was hott, and really nice, bought all our dance stuff.
me: that would explain it then. whatever happened to her anyway?
rfof: she married this british guy and moved to the uk

^^^ true story

they have an "awkward silence" button on facebook now?

ha ha, no, that's why it's in brackets. i just sat there in front of the screen for a minute, wondering how i was gonna get my foot out of my mouth. after a while i decided fuck it, here's my chance to parse this strange phenomenon once and for all with someone i assumed was a prime offender

maybe if they didhave an "awkward silence" button on facebook i wouldn't be so hyped to move over to google+

I have no problem with the prices at the half price books nearby.

I didn't until my most recent visit a few weeks ago, it seemed like all the vinyl had been repriced since last time I was there.

Half-Price is like this on a case by case basis, generally I think due to management or the buying departments at any given store. The following example is more of a CD thing but worth sharing. The one nearest to me (there are like 12 in my metro area) is a great store. I've had much good luck scoring 50s-70s rock stuff on disc, including many imports and OOP titles, all priced to move from $3.99-$8.99--and their vinyl when I look is reasonable, usually in the $1.99 to $5.99 range used, with "collectables" running higher. However that stuff they grade and always have @ half off based on a price guide (a $50 Beatle or Elvis lp will set you back $25).

A good example of a cd "find" I made there is the long OOP The History of The Dave Clark Five, a used two-disc set I found there for $6.98.

Now OTOH, about 30 minutes away is a bad Half-Price store. They have an awesome selection of cds; when I was last in there it was obvious they'd just scored an enormous collection of oldies including imports, box sets, and numerous OOP titles. The problem is, whomever was in charge of pricing looked at amazon or whatever as guide, and priced aaccordingly. So you get these old Rhino and Ace comps going for anywhere between 14.99 & $39.99 (they had all the OOP Monkees albums w/the bonus tracks and most of them were at this price point--if you have no problem dropping this much for Changes you truly have more money than brains). They even had an OOP VHS bin with stuff not on DVD in the $10-$30 range. Since these are "Collectables" they've decided they don't have to be half-price anything. I glanced @ their vinyl and it looked like they started around $4.99.

This location also had a used copy of The History of The Dave Clark Five. They wanted $39.99 for it.

People who order on Amazon will actually pay those prices, if they are the only ones available. Those high priced OOP titles aren't always priced highly due to delusional hope. But in my opinion storefront prices shouldn't necessarily reflect Amazon marketplace prices, where you and your competition are listed conveniently. Sort of a reward to find the rarer item in a store, but if you are in front of a computer you have to buy it within the price range that is decided by world-wide demand.

This is books not CDs, but Amazon marketplace prices are often wildly delusional. I publish a series of books through Lulu for between $9 and $15, and there's some loon trying to sell copies of them on Amazon for upwards of $140 each.

is it any_book? I think they upload two listings to almost every book and CD UPC at outrageously high prices, waiting for demand to go way higher than availability. When that happens and someone buys an item through them, I think they order a copy from some other source and send that, making a huge profit. But if that were true, the person ordering from them in the first place would likely not have to resort to their prices, because I'm not sure where any_book would go that a shopper wouldn't.

Not any_book, but someone called 'origin', probably working the same weird scam, which I'd not heard of before.