I even regretted one calling me back.
Be sure the phone has disconnected when you set it down…
And if you’re the giant doofus at Ye Olde Gun Shoppe, listening to other people’s conversations with their wives is eaves dropping!
You clown.
So, it really isn’t fun for me to shop rifles with my now ex-wife. Go figure, huh?
I call and get a message of their hours. Since I don’t want to go down there and stand around to listen to some shmuck talk up yet another bog standard, rack rifle, I comment the hours are weird and they probably aren’t even open now.
Well, it was an answering machine. You remember those? I don’t.
So it records me poofooing his shop to avoid going down there to shop at two in the afternoon on a Wednesday. Oh well, what ever, never even noticed.
So, I hurt his giant tough guy feelings so much, talking privately with my then wife, he calls back the next morning!
“Yeah. I got your blanky message.”
“And this is who?” As I am at work on top of a roof.
“This is Giant Doofus down at the Gun Shack, and I just got your blanky message from last night.”
“I didn’t leave any messages with anyone, but okay. I’m looking for a deer hunting caliber rifle for around four hundred. Doesn’t need to be nice but needs a scope.”
“Nope. Don’t have anything like that here.”
(Really? I just described every single brand new budget factory rifle in America.
)
“So you are calling for what reason?…”
“…”
“Well, thanks. Was hoping to get a savage through a local guy, not Dunhams. Have a good day.”
“Yeah, okay then.”
Honestly, he could have played the Hurt Heart Card and I would have went down there and paid $500 for a $400 rifle, after being caught a crappy husband.
Nope. He called up pissed. As if he could do a thing about it through a phone.
He could have said yes and just got me to drive down there for nothing. Or been closed.
He could have said no but I can find one.
He could have kludged a scope on a whomped out mil-surprise and passed it off as Golden and we would have had no idea. (Not my firearms forte.)
Anything to take this idiot’s (me) money away from him.
Decided to be a big tough guy instead. Without a sale.
So, when I finally put the call together in my head of what was actually going on, (that I cause, it was me, running my mouth, my fault, I got big shoulders I can take it.) and ask around about the shop, I find out I used to tend bar with the owner 20 years ago. He was giant and scary then, turns out he’s just as hot headed, still big, and has guns now.
And I haven’t darkened his door to find out if he really does sell firearms. But I have told this story more than twice…
Something for business owners to contemplate. I wasn’t even a customer yet!
It’s hard to make a paltry markup on a firearm, and all the associated merchandise that an active enthusiasts purchases, when you don’t even want them in your shop…