A middle-aged, Mid-Eastern man brought a damaged wheel to a local bike shop and asked for a repair. The bike mechanic judged the wheel to be beyond repair and advised him to get a new wheel instead, but the man was adamant about getting it repaired (highly unlikely that the wheel itself had any emotional or antique value), and prevailed upon the mechanic to "just do his best". The mechanic spent 2 hours to true the wheel as best as he could, so that wheel was at least not rubbing against the brake any more. But the man was not satisfied, and asked the mechanic whether this was the best he could do. The mechanic professionally answered him that it was, and asked for $15. [I don't know why the mechanic did not charge him > $100, but that is beside the point.] The man got upset and picked a fight with the mechanic about the workmanship and his "attitude", until the mechanic offered him $15 to just leave quietly. Considering that the mechanic does not even make $15/hour, one can guess how obnoxious the man was. The man insisted that it's not about the money, but in the end left without paying.
I was at first shocked that an asshole like that lived in my city in the heart of the Silicon Valley. I wondered whether the man was in high-tech, and maybe one of those people doing very well in the modern debt-fueled, tech-bubble economy. Let's give the man a benefit of the doubt and assume that he really was upset that the mechanic did not true the wheel better--that it really was NOT about the $15 he was being asked to pay for a wheel that was now at least ride-able, rather than forking out like $50 for a new wheel. In that case, he clearly has never worked on a bike--or any mechanical task for that matter, otherwise he would have known that truing a wheel is a difficult task. But wait, he did know; that's why he brought it for a repair. Then the only remaining possibility for the man's behavior is either:
- He expected the task to be more difficult than he could attempt, but not all that difficult for a professional. He further assumed that the mechanic was lying or whining about the wheel being beyond repair; that the task was in fact eminently doable; that is, he knew better than the professional.
- He expected the mechanic to be a god of repair: he can fix anything--even though he said the wheel is beyond repair. If so, he should have known that buying a new wheel would be cheaper than engaging a bike repair god's service. So this means that he tried to get an expensive service for an unreasonably cheap price; not paying a fair price, in other words.
I don't know which is more offensive, but I have seen both behaviors among managers and executives in my career. They fight their way up, and do not let common decency get in their way. The particularly bad ones did not even rationalize their behavior. Is this what it takes to succeed these days? Looking back at my youth, I recognize a bit of this man in myself, and my face reddens.
