There were two things I had to go into town for this weekend. One was looking for tires (mine are bald) and a printer, as mine is not in the best shape, and at work there is a really nice one that is cheap and has individual refills for the colors (so if you run out of red you can just replace red, not all the colors).
Wierd Happening #1
So first task. Hit random tire store in Abbotsford. I drive over one of those “bing-bong” hoses as I park. Dude comes out, looks at my tires and says “ok, you’re looking for the [tire type]”, I say yes, and explain that I’m just pricing things out, am looking for something that’s middle of the road, not going to die in a year, but not something that’s going to be $300 a tire that can do 400km/h.
He took me inside, went through some catalogs, picking out some tires, discarding others (“too expensive”, “you won’t want those”) and eventually went through two or three different types.
He explained the terms and what they mean (tread rating, h,v,x rated).
He understood and respected my price range and what I was looking for.
He had a chart with final prices after taxes, balancing/etc random charges.
He gave an overview of the service they offer (all balancing, flats, etc fixed free of charge).
He didn’t pressure me to buy then and there.
Ok, that was just strange. But it gets worse…
Wierd Happening #2
Next step, looking for a printer. First stop, the dreaded and evil Future Shop. We stopped to randomly ooh and ahh at the LCD monitors they have there and yon random salesperson stopped to ask if we were looking for a new monitor. “No, new printer” I said. He said “come over this way then, I’ll show you what we have.” I said I was looking for the Canon i850, as there was one at work that had good reviews from the boss.
So random salesguy, Asif, tells us that there aren’t any in now, but the Canon i550 was basically the same printer, with the same features except a slightly slower output (18ppm in black and white as opposed to 22 on the i850), and was $50 cheaper.
He gave us some more information about the printer and the information he spouted out was correct (at least according to what I had researched).
He showed us the ink selection they had in store, and pointed out the individual color cartridges at $20/each and the black at $24 (and slightly larger than a competing black at $28).
I asked if he could make us a deal on the display model of the i850 (oooh… shiny silver top), and he spent the next 10 minutes running around looking for the various bits and pieces for it. In the end he couldn’t find any of the stuff for it other than the disk and manual (ie: no ink cartridges) though. In the end we just went with the i550.
He went through his speal about the extended warranty (hehehe, I think not).
He rung the printer through and carried it out to the car.
He was polite and knowledgable.
Where the hell are these people coming from??
Yohimbe figures that the universe has detected how jaded I am and has switched things for me, and as soon as I get used to this things will go back to normal. I don’t know about that, I’m pretty jaded.