File this under the truly bizarre and violent.
My wife and I visited Edmonton's Rocky Mountain Antique Mall earlier today.
There is a clerk who works there who, in my experience, is rather careless in handling antique bottles. Over the past several visits I've noticed she's in the habit of routinely slamming bottles, including on their corners, onto the cash register counter and rough handling them in such a way that her rings clink against bottle lips, surfaces and corners. This shows little respect to dealers at the mall, their items for sale and their potential customers. Moreover, let's just say that this clerk doesn't have the strongest sense of customer service. Her idea of it ranges from the indifferent to the abrupt to the curt.
Within a few minutes of exploring, I found a nice cobalt 3-ounce Beaver Flint Glass Co. irregular hexagon poison bottle. Knowing how the clerk handles bottles, I was reluctant to have her set it aside for me at the front counter while I continued to browse, as is the expected practice. Sure enough, she nonchalantly placed it onto the counter with her usual carelessness. I just gritted my teeth. My wife soon added an early typewriter to our reserved goods. Later, I noticed that the poison bottle was resting somewhat precariously on the typewriter's strikers. Hmmm, glass and metal are never a good combination, especially when one doesn't like flea bite chips on the bases of bottles.
My wife politely asked the clerk to put the bottle somewhere safer. My wife was met with an eye roll and unwilling compliance. At that point, I decided to pay for the bottle so I could get it away from the clerk and then finish my tour of the mall. The clerk didn't like this and gave me some attitude to which I gave some back. If you know me personally, then you know that I don't start crap but I certainly don't take it when it's thrown my way.
Anyhow, as the clerk and I debated her inappropriate handling of antique bottles, the mall owner became passively involved in the conversation. Given his dismissiveness of my claims and appeals to the need for his clerk to be more respectful, he clearly couldn't have cared less about matters. Perhaps he's the standard-setter of customer service at the mall? The clerk continued her verbal case that she was always quite gentle with bottles. Meanwhile, she was holding the poison bottle by the neck with the same hand in which she was holding her antique mall showcase keyset. You could hear the glass of the bottle lip grinding against the metal serrations of the keys. I pointed at the bottle in her key-laden hand, and inquired if that was an example of how well she handled bottles.
Her reply was to grab the poison bottle with her free hand and hold it out so I could clearly see it. Next, she raised her other hand, the one holding the keys, by about a foot above the poison bottle and then proceeded to smash her keys against the bottle three times. All the while, she glared at me. Un-frickin' believable! Dali couldn't have painted a more surreal scene!
Surprisingly, the bottle did not break, though I'm quite certain her violence either chipped the bottle or cracked it or bruised it. What I'm absolutely certain about, however, is that my wife and I are never going back to that house of strangeness and threatening behaviour. It's a shame, since I've scored a few good items there in the past. Oh well, that's life.
By the way, one of her co-workers blurted out that I was "too picky" as I walked out the front door. Nice! Such a keen understanding of advanced collecting standards! read more
