Originally Posted by
InTheTrenches
See that is the thing(I know there are shops that have poor help) all of the shop people I know, and it is a bunch, want to help the customer, no matter their level of knowledge. We want to make you bike as good as possible. We want you to be able to do repairs on your own. We want to be able to be honest with the customer about their problems without them thinking we are trying to screw them. BikeForums is one of the places that makes this hard to do. There is a pretty steady bias against the bikeshop. This is interesting because there is also a steady call for industry people to help out(As well as LBS fans but they almost never post). The industry guys pretty much decided that it was not worth it to work all day and then get called a crook while trying to help people for free. I know that is how it worked for me. I just have not managed to quit the forum completely. So every couple of days I look and if there is an anti shop thread I troll on it.
Personally I wish you had recieved a great shop experince, but it is my obligation to be a jerk in retaliation for all the jerk customers(Jerk customers far outway crappy shop employees, altho it would be interesting to see it as a percentage. That might be more telling)
Imma tell you what. This is the first serious interest I've taken in riding. "Go to a bike shop? What the hell for? These things last forever, right?" AND I was a messenger at that time. I abused bikes before; didn't respect them (How I would love to have my Univega back) and as such I am totally bike shop ignorant. I didn't know what to expect, but I did get the idea from the forums that people aren't necessarily pleased with their LBS experience.
There are some great shops here in Chicago, so I was shocked and disappointed with this guy. I didn't feel respected or worthy of his attention. FWIW, I wasn't being anti-shop. At all. I need them. They're the best source of information. So imagine this: I teach. 8th grade. Imagine if a student asks me a question and I look at them and say, "what they f* are you talkin about. Figure that sh* out". He'd feel dejected and jaded and defeated. And that's
not cool. And that's exactly how I walked outta there.
The thing is you can't let your biases influence the way you view each new LBS or customer. Keep doin you and working towards advocating cycling self sufficiency. Those who can, will listen. There's not much to say about those who won't. If we continue to pigeon-hole each other nobody well every have a pleasant anything.