Following on from the thread on the Cwedit Cwunch where MH asked how it was affecting us all, here is a good example of how people don't help themselves.
On Saturday, I was doing a job in my kitchen that I am refitting, and needed a bit of bog standard planed 2x2. About a metre was enough. We have a hardware store / mini builder's yard in the village, that has always been owned from 'within' the village - until a few weeks ago. It has now been taken over by an 'outsider' ...
So I trot off down there and ask the spotty faced yoof in there for a metre of 2x2. He leads me towards the back (where you used to get led to go out the side door to the timber store, where a suitable sized piece of wood for your needs, would be found and priced up by holding a finger in the wind). Instead, he stops by a small rack containing at most, thirty 2.4m lengths of assorted sizes. I asked him if that was all they had got now, and he told me that he thought so. I found a length of 2x2 and asked if I could have just a metre, as the whole length was priced at an eye-watering £5.50. At this point the new owner sidles up and asks if he can help. I told him that he could, by cutting me off a metre of the wood. "Oh no", he sez, "I can't do that because it will leave me with an offcut that nobody wants, and I will lose money on it." "What, no one like me will want it ?" sez I. "I only need a metre." "Well, have the whole piece", he sez, "and then you'll have some left over for the next time." "What, at £5.50 ? I don't think so. I'll leave it, thanks."
Now being in business myself, I know all about dead stock, and losing money on it, but sometimes, it has to be considered as 'good will' stock. It was the third time I had been in the shop in as many weeks, so he should have recognised me as a 'regular' customer - we're only talking a village here, remember. That length of timber cannot have cost him more than about £1.50 wholesale, even in the relatively small quantities that he is buying it in, otherwise, he's being ripped off by his supplier. He could have said to me that he would cut me a piece off, but he would have to charge me a couple of quid for it, in case he got left with the other 1.4m on his hands. Chances are I would have taken him on that offer for the convenience. Instead, by adopting the attitude that he did, he has now lost a customer, as I wouldn't now give him my money, if he begged me into his shop. If he carries on like this, especially in a village, he won't last long, and doubtless, he will then be bleating that the reason his business failed, was that he didn't have enough customers, due to the credit crunch.
I made the 8 mile round trip to B&Q and got a 2.4m length of planed studding that they had on offer for £1.98 (the actual size was not important as it was only to be used as corner bracing for a plinth I was building). At the end of the day, I don't care that it probably cost me the £5.50 in lost time and petrol, and that I put out enough CO2 to kill off a species of Bolivian tree frog, it's the principle of the thing.
Arfa