Walking Into A Brick & Mortar High End Audio Store

I haven't been in an audio store in at least 10 years. Am I missing anything?
After I don't know how many years of selling this stuff, I do not get the urge. The last audio show I attended I was an exhibitor and I think that was close to 20 years ago.
So, here's what I think about the topic. As a salesman you are, in essence, a servant. You gamble every time you take on a customer. Sometimes you get a customer who has done enough homework to know what he wants and just buys it. Easy! The next one will spend two hours having you switch between two nearly identical speakers trying to determine which one better meets the various parameter she's read about in the magazines but cannot identify even with help. Imaging is the biggest concern so that needs to be explained, demonstrated and re-explained. Eventually you learn that these speakers will not be on the same wall and will be placed at different heights. It doesn't matter what the hell he buys, which turns out to be nothing. Meanwhile, Elliott, the jerk they just hired who doesn't know a dome from a ribbon sold the first guy I mentioned a $4200 power amp. Where the hell are the aspirin?
So, there's two sides to this and nobody's right if everybody's wrong. You have to realize that the whole thing is a crapshoot. If that is not something about which you can feel comfortable, try selling insurance or real estate. I think you will find those fields have their own problems. Nonetheless, sales is the one place where a person with no real training or education can make a damn good living. Be grateful you have a job with regular hours that isn't dirty or dangerous. I don't think Mike Rowe ever took on selling audio on his show.

Adam18 - You've got it bad. The audiophile thing, that is. The bell sounds best live ........... and always will despite any pricey mods or upgrades to reproduction equipment.

Isn't it kinda simple? The barebones no frills cheap price can be had impersonally and at potential risk online or you can go to your friendly local hifi emporium to be catered to and demonstrated and educated. Either way you get the product. If you prefer the security and human interaction afforded by the latter, then you should expect to pay a premium.

As for those who abuse these outlines, well they have to live with their transgressions. The store who fails to honor the unwritten understanding I outlined above will learn soon enough the he has to earn his premium or he will soon be earning nothing. The hybrid walks a tightrope but there are many examples like the few mentioned in previous posts who appear to do so rather deftly. And then we have the schmuck who milks the goodwill out of the retail store for the rest of us by abusing the unspoken but widely understood dynamic of putting his money where his mouth is.

I think that our society has reached a dangerous point in its evolution. We have come to place more value on money than we allow for other things in life that are inestimably more important. Certain elements among the reporting fraternity have worked tirelessly to pit us against one another and to generate as much animosity and suspicion as the can engender. We need to understand that we are more different in our individual fears and desires than we are in any genetic or generic front. We need each other. Petty crap like the offense taken over the offhand use of a common catchphrase created a dispute here that never needed to happen. We all know what the reference means because it is a common catchphrase and it targeted no one in particular and no group at all. It was just a phrasing that could easily have been overlooked but some of us had to make a big deal out of it. For god's sake, isn't it likely that all of the stereotypical crap that lingers in our minds as cliche is actually based in some truth somewhere? I always liked Tom Waits line from one of his songs -"colder than a well digger's ass". Do you think he he heard from an attorney representing the well diggers local? Should he have been chastised, sanctioned, prosecuted? Of course not. Let's just relax and blow off the sensitivity remarks.
We have stores to save. Not that I'm any help. I have way too much gear as it is, and the next thing I'm apt to buy will have to be purchased online. There are no vendors within 200 miles. I'm going to be buying a pair of fairly expensive professional active studio monitors. Suggest you all consider whether that can work for you. Flat out destroys much audiophile folklore. Just imagine no more concerns whatsoever about choosing speaker cables. No more matching amps and speakers. Plus even the very affordable, home studio versions have room accommodation adjustments.
And don't forget about Kinky Friedman. I've heard him say several times he intended to christian the guy down on his price.

Madam,
This is the sort of pedantic nonsense up with which I shall not put.

After Winston Churchill's secretary corrected a sentence in a letter she was typing because he had ended a it with a preposition, he returned it to her to be retyped. The above quote was attached.

Maybe we are leaning a bit too hard on this triviality. This is the internet, after all. Everything is misspelled with bad grammar. The English language I was taught in school will be completely bastardized or obliterated in just 2 more generations. And what has rap and texting done to spelling already?