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Have you ever been out of place? Stranger in a strange land? What do you do? As the saying goes, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”

So why do some folks from other cultures still try to haggle with you when they’re in America? If I go to their homeland, I’m going to try my hand at haggling cuz I know that if I just pay the price on the tag, they won’t respect me. They’ll think that I’m some self-important American who thinks that he can just buy his way through life and get whatever he wants. Besides, if you’re in another country, why not try to get a taste of what their culture has to offer. But guess what? We don’t haggle in America. We have price tags. Our form of haggling is the internet search, where you find what you’re looking for at the price you wanna pay. If you’re a dummy, you’ll get the wrong size part, and you’ll pay full price, or worse – you won’t be able to return the item and you’ll have to buy another one. At full price.
Okay, whatever.

Some older gentleman from India comes into the bike shop the other day, and his front tire is flat. He’s been in our shop before, and I always try my best to accomodate him in whatever fashion I can. The problem is that his accent is so thick I can barely figure what the hell he’s saying, and let me tell you that this guy is worse than Darrien – if he’s drawing breath, then he is most certainly talking. Most conversations with him end up with me just guessing what he might be saying based on whatever he’s pointing at, because the only thing I can actually understand from him is “it’s no problem….no problem…”.

So there I am, trying to find out what exactly is wrong with his tire. I don’t want to just put a new tube in, because that will fix the symptom, but maybe not the actual problem. So I pull the tube out, pump it up and run it under water in the sink. No bubbles. I put more air in the tube and get more no bubbles. Oh shit…well, I’ll just put it back in and explain to him that I can’t find a hole and let’s see what happens. 10 minutes of half-sentences trying to explain what is up, and he’s smiling and waving and he’s out the door. Talking to himself.

The next morning? There he is. Flat tire. Smiling. TALKING.

So I then tell him that I will put a new tube in there, but that it’s $5 for a tube and $7 for labor. He says, “NO! $10. The other guy, MY FRIEND, tells me ten dollars.” (…oh shit, here we go…) Well sir, I run the place and the tubes are 5 dollars and for me to put it in the tire for you, that will be 7 dollars. After tax (gotta add EVERYTHING up front, or he’s gonna think that I’m just running the price up), I repeat AFTER TAX, it’s going to be 13 dollars even.

He looks right at me and says, “Ten!” Now I know that this guy runs a restaurant in the neighborhood, so I say to him, “What if I go into your restaurant and I don’t want to pay the price on the menu, can I just give you less money?” At which point he gets very sincere and says, slowly, “Oh noooooo, it is the price!”

After more debating, where I have to explain to him what taxes are (he knows full well), he finally seems to get the idea that whatever the receipt says, well that’s the amount of money I expect him to give me. So he finally starts digging into his wallet.

And he lays a single $10 bill on the counter. That’s it. OH NO HE DINT!!! Okay, I’m actually starting to have fun at this point, and there’s NO way in hell he’s going to beat me, so I step back one step, clasp my hands behind my back, and I wait. I just smile and wait. And sure as shit, he starts digging into the wallet again. This time though, I help him count. 1…2…3, there you go, that’s 13 dollars. Thank you sir, would you like a receipt!!?!?

“…no problem…it’s no problem…” And that’s when it got weird. There, at the last fukn moment possible before leaving, he turns and asks me “Do you know where the nearest police station is?” So I told him, to the best of my knowledge, where the nearest one was. But…are you shitting me? Is that a form of intimidation or some shit? Whatever…

That was a few days ago and apparently I’m not in the slammer, so there you have it.

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