Da teeves!

pstake · Mar 5, 2014

I'm in the DFW area for work this week. Had some time to kill and decided via Google to visit a used photo store. Got there, had a good conversation with the proprietor, I thought, about his trips to my part of the country. There were a few darkroom items I could use, some mercury thermometers, a vc filter set but I didn't want to pay what he was asking so I put them back. I did end up buying some paper.

The reason for my post is this: the proprietor left for a minute and his elderly father was there. He was plainly hard of hearing. When the proprietor came back, he pulled his dad aside and asked loudly if I had stolen anything and if he had been keeping an eye on me.

This left me feeling like kind of small and a little dirty even though I had done nothing wrong.

Are there so many knowledgable cons who also double as old photo gear thieves, to warrant that behavior.

I'm still a little upset about it. I mean. I was wearing khakis and my hair is cut short. I don't smell like meth as far as I know.

Anything similar ever happened to anyone else?

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AgX · Mar 5, 2014

Even worse thinks happened to me.

Put that shop on your ignore list.

snapguy · Mar 5, 2014

scruffy

If I had to hazard a guess I would suggest the shop owner had a problem with a scruffy lowlife that looked something like you at the time. I doubt scam artists are going around to shops like you describe to make a big score. I doubt if they would know what to steal. But who knows. Wear your tuxedo next time.

Pioneer · Mar 5, 2014

Did you ask him? May have made for an interesting story.

gone · Mar 5, 2014

It's not about you. It's about him. This little bit of truth has led to a lot less suffering in my life. Easy to let it go.

David Brown · Mar 5, 2014

I know the shop and the two men you refer to. I'm there often. There has to be another side to this story.

benjiboy · Mar 5, 2014

I once met a guy at a photographic trade show when I worked in the industry who was the manager of a camera store in the centre of Liverpool, he told me he was demonstrating a Nikon to a man in his shop one day who as soon as he put the camera in the customers hands turned round a ran out of the shop with it, the manager said he ran after him shouting "stop thief ", and the whole of central Liverpool stopped

pstake · Mar 5, 2014

Ask him, David. Maybe I misheard. I told him i'd come see him at the camera show in Omaha March 30.

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pstake · Mar 5, 2014

David Brown said:
I know the shop and the two men you refer to. I'm there often. There has to be another side to this story.

I should add that I liked the shop. It was full of neat old stuff. And the proprietor was knowledgable; his dad very kind.

I just don't know what I could have done to give him the impression that I would pocket something. I mean, I spent more than $100 while I was in there.

I really hope I don't ooze slimeball when I go into camera stores. Or anywhere else for that matter.

Mainecoonmaniac · Mar 5, 2014

Don't worry about how others perceive you when you're an honest customer. Remember, the biggest thief of all Bernie Madof seemed legit and had all his investors fooled. The store is pre-judging you and you're probably not coming back. Too bad for them.

markbarendt · Mar 5, 2014

Every time I buy gas the cameras at the station watch me, grocery stores, the rec center, ....

You just ran into the analog version.

So you mad at WalMart for doing essentially the same thing, just being sneakier?

pstake · Mar 5, 2014

markbarendt said:
Every time I buy gas the cameras at the station watch me, grocery stores, the rec center, ....

You just ran into the analog version.

So you mad at WalMart for doing essentially the same thing, just being sneakier?

Good points...

And for the record, I'm mad at Wal-Mart for taking over the world and not selling film (not for watching me shop).

markbarendt · Mar 5, 2014

pstake said:
Good points...

And for the record, I'm mad at Wal-Mart for taking over the world and not selling film (not for watching me shop).

I'm doing my best not to help them.

Pioneer · Mar 5, 2014

Walmart will die off when the consumerist environment we currently live in dies off. Outfits like Walmart and other similar large retailers are only possible when HUGE volumes of goods are purchased. When, or perhaps if, purchasers begin to slow down buying their purchases, learning they can make do with a bit less, these retailers will shrink in volume. Maybe it will never happen, but I suspect it will since things tend to go in cycles. And I doubt it will take a huge decrease in purchases for this to begin to happen. Their profit margin is very slim. For awhile they may be able to pinch the worker's purse a bit more but that only goes so far before Unions begin to make sense.

I think we are probably at a tipping point right now. Walmart grew completely unstopped for quite awhile but they have really struggled the last couple of years. Once retailers like Walmart quit growing they start shrinking. Slowly at first, then a lot quicker. K-Mart, and before them Sears, are great lessons in how this happens.

Of course the unspoken problem with all of this for you and I is that prices will begin to climb. The Walmarts of the world keep prices low, even for a lot of goods that aren't even sold in Walmarts. And volume drops. That means that your cousin who works for the potato farmer down the road no longer has a job because the farmer is not selling as many potatoes as he used to. He starts laying people off. Our personal lives are so linked together with others, and other corporations, that what happens to one effects everyone. Especially if that one is a big retailer...or a big employer...or a big lender.

pdeeh · Mar 6, 2014

By extension, low prices have to be paid for by someone. In the UK for instance, the price of milk has steadily fallen over the past 20 years and is incredibly low - but the price is that small dairy farms (appropriate in size to the UK landscape) have been driven almost to the point of extinction. The price pressure has come of course from the large supermarkets.

I believe there was some research done which suggested that the the apparent strong increase in personal incomes seen in Europe and NA in the past 10 or 15 years has not been driven by increased wages and salaries, but by the extraordinary cheapness of goods coming from China (and Taiwan, Malaysia and so on); the falling price of consumer goods of all sorts has masked what has actually been a continual and net fall in income from wages and salaries. To me, it sounds pretty plausible an analysis, but no doubt there are counter-arguments to be made.

oh dear, this is wildly off topic. Apologies to the OP.

benjiboy · Mar 6, 2014

I spent more than 25 years working in camera stores and statistically most of the significant thefts are by the staff.

pmargolis · Mar 6, 2014

Is it possible that the proprietor was joking, although admittedly in poor taste?

Byclops · Mar 6, 2014

benjiboy said:
I spent more than 25 years working in camera stores and statistically most of the significant thefts are by the staff.

True of all retail studied so far.

benjiboy · Mar 6, 2014

You would be surprised at how much "stock Shrinkage" that shops experience a year, the chief executive of a large chain of pound shops ( where everything is £1 ) was saying on TV recently that they loose £5,000,000 a year through theft.

analoguey · Mar 6, 2014

Shrinkage is a significant 5-10% at retailers. I was shocked to know the numbers.
Then again, large retailers have many other bad behaviors.

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pentaxuser · Mar 6, 2014

If the owner exhibited no signs of being suspicious when he was initially dealing with you it seem strange he should do what he did on his return.

Given his father was as you describe him could it be that he was in fact making a joke using his father as the "foil" . Maybe you were meant to laugh.

Some people can do this kind of thing with "deadpan" faces like Jack Benny. My father knew a man who had a glass eye and whenever a person the man didn't know but was known to the others in the group was invited to sit-in on a game of cards he'd suddenly pluck out his glass eye, put it on the table pointing it directly at the stranger and say to the "eye" "Watch him closely!

pentaxuser

winger · Mar 6, 2014

pstake said:
Ask him, David. Maybe I misheard. I told him i'd come see him at the camera show in Omaha March 30.

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I do have to thank you for mentioning this in the thread. I hadn't looked around here much for things like this and this reminded me to do so. I hope to go and if you're there when I am, maybe we'll meet.

pstake · Mar 6, 2014

pentaxuser said:
If the owner exhibited no signs of being suspicious when he was initially dealing with you it seem strange he should do what he did on his return.

Given his father was as you describe him could it be that he was in fact making a joke using his father as the "foil" . Maybe you were meant to laugh.

Some people can do this kind of thing with "deadpan" faces like Jack Benny. My father knew a man who had a glass eye and whenever a person the man didn't know but was known to the others in the group was invited to sit-in on a game of cards he'd suddenly pluck out his glass eye, put it on the table pointing it directly at the stranger and say to the "eye" "Watch him closely!

pentaxuser

That would be hilarious to see!

I tend to be one of those deadpan-type jokers. In fact, I had a photography teacher once tell me that he didn't think even I myself could tell whether or not I was joking.

Took me a minute to grasp what he was saying and even less time to completely dismiss it. That was one of many truths he imparted that I mostly ignored at the time. But I digest. (said with a straight face)

I don't think he was joking, Pentax, based on the proximity. I think he said it loudly because his dad is hard of hearing. I don't know why he wanted me kept an eye on, if it was a general distrust, a distrust of people who don't like his prices on thermometers, a distrust of people in their early 30s who know how to use equipment twice as old, or maybe it was just something about my face or my posture. I have a bad shoulder that's been acting up lately. Maybe it's because I am from out of state, have no drawl. Who knows.

Most likely, it's as Momus suggested, and it's something about him and his experience and not about me doing something wrong. Growing up with a Catholic mother and a Jewish father, I've inherited a fair amount of irrational guilt.

I still like the shop and I don't think he's a bad person. If anything, I think he's just looking out for his business interests. Maybe he's had unpleasant experiences. Something about me reminded him of that. Maybe he's naturally suspicious. Maybe it was, as you suggested, an ill-executed attempt at humor.

I am glad that there is apparently not some kind of underground, analog-gear theft ring plaguing our few, precious good used shops, which was what I initially thought.

That might be a good plot for a movie though ... maybe bring the Ocean's 11 gang back together?

pstake · Mar 6, 2014

winger said:
I do have to thank you for mentioning this in the thread. I hadn't looked around here much for things like this and this reminded me to do so. I hope to go and if you're there when I am, maybe we'll meet.

Cool! I do plan to go. Not sure if you use facebook but here is the page on there: https://www.facebook.com/OmahaCameraShow

Mike Té · Mar 7, 2014

Khakis, though.... like Dockers or Hanes? That explains a lot; no way I'd trust you.

Da teeves!

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