The Victims

We get some characters. One guy FG, smelled like urine on the stove and was checking out a bag, saying, "I know what some of these pockets are for, but this is must be where you put your crack pipe". I agreed with him. There is a group who MO is to spend your time asking baited questions until you either lose time with no sale or ignore them or kick them out. One guy pulled the infinite questions while on his cell phone and due to his odor was overheard saying, "I can't believe this guy is spraying me with lysol", to the person he was on the phone with as I am kicking him out.
Our typical customer varies from the "INNERTUBE!" guy, that's his greeting, to those pulling out bikes from the past to find out how close to the price of a replacement bicycle a full repair cost will get. Others are browsing for a gift, the second most popular purchase is a lock. Rental customers have many categories. Follow this - Go to a different city, walk in to a bike shop, ask to rent a bike, and then ask them if there are any nice places to ride around here. Kind of like renting a car and asking if there are any nice places to drive or going to a pharmacy, buy some condoms and asking the cashier if they know of anyone who might like to have sex. My favorite customers are trained that we won't wantonly take advantage of them and generally trust us to spend their money wisely. I don't mind skepticism, but negativity and cynicism get old really quickly.
So who are the victims. Well some victims come in and want as much as they can get for nothing. Others want a realy nice, light, fast bike that costs less than $300. Wow, me too. The best victims are the ones with a bike that's on life support who want some minor repair affected and it can't be performed without some liability issue. Catch-22. No work, no money, or lots of work, still bad bike, still no money. The lesser experienced are sometimes taken in by what seems like an easy job. If we could screen out those with less than $10 on them when thay came in... You don't have to buy anything, just have the $10.
More than 85% of our customers are fun, freindly people who know how business works and easily do commerce. But it sometimes seems that 85% of our time is spent on the 15% pain in the butt, no money having, stinky bums and otherwise uncivilized children and adult children.
A few of them can be fun and I even like some of them. I always hope that one day, they'll wake up and begin contributing something to the community, like commerce or polite behavior.