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Most of them live and breathe biking. They choose to make close to minimum wage to "do what they love", they don't own the store. I think it's genuine excitemen
by sottol 2mo ago
Most of them live and breathe biking. They choose to make close to minimum wage to "do what they love", they don't own the store. I think it's genuine excitement and enthusiasm that you take as elitism. Often, it's a big part of their identity... "how could anyone else _not_ care as much"?
I used to bike with a few bike shop employees and they were only in it to eke out a living doing something adjacent to the thing they love, selling bikes was not their passion, riding them and talking about the tech was.
At least 10 years ago, wages in the whole sector were pretty low, so you'd only work there if you really wanted to and valued perks like buying bikes at wholesale (hey, that's half off) and having access to tools or a mechanic buddy.
- IAmBroom 2mo agoNonsense. Genuine excitement and enthusiasm does not mimic bad manners.
- RankingMember 2mo agoI'm very familiar with the type of people you're talking about and they're not the elitists I'm talking about. There's a separate segment that, while they may also live and breathe biking, use their specialist knowledge to gate-keep and make people not on their level (customers) feel "less than". It's very shortsighted, because independent bike shops can't afford to be turning off customers- these kind of experiences push people to corporate shops (e.g. Trek), which at least have formalized oversight/training in how to treat customers.
- pandaman 2mo agoWhat do you actually mean? Bikes have parts with names that are not common knowledge, do they use these names instead of showing you pictures or something? It's same with every trade: a car mechanic, a carpenter, a plumber etc will use the proper names for the things they work with. If you don't know what these names mean - just ask.
- IAmBroom 2mo agoMy auto mechanic doesn't expect me to know what a catalytic spanner housing is. I say "it's going WUMP WUMP WUMP when I turn left at highway speeds", and he diagnoses it. This is not that.
- pandaman 2mo agoSure, but if you ask him what he has done to the car is he going to say "There was a boo-boo on the thingie in your wheel and I fixed it!"?
- RankingMember 2mo agoI'm not sure what you mean. My comment isn't about people using proper terminology- that's not gatekeeping. By gatekeeping in this context I mean things like being dismissive to people because they have a lower-end bicycle or treating them like they're stupid because they didn't know not to use WD-40 on a bike chain. Experts that use their narrow field of authority to demean rather than to educate/assist.
- pandaman 2mo agoI see. It's how they stay in business - even if they pay minimum wage to the mechanics they are still not going to make rent servicing Walmart/Amazon specials. And even if the owners agreed to pay the labor/parts, which are more expensive on these than on bikes from reputable manufacturers and definitely more than the bike itself costs, they are still going to be priced out of their insurance in the long run (especially on Amazon e-bikes).