Down here at the pawn shop

[Undertoad]

I was there yesterday, and here's one he didn't report.

A woman walks in with a ring, looking for a pawn. The ring has three diamonds on it. Only manager Alan inspects and prices diamonds, so new guy Steve takes the ring and starts to walk to the other room where Alan is working. The woman immediately objects and demands her ring back... suggesting that while the ring is in another room, we are going to remove the diamonds and replace them with something cheaper.

Alan hears this happening -- he knows what's going on in the shop at all times --and walks out and tells the woman we aren't going to pawn her ring at all. "If you don't trust us for the thirty seconds to evaluate the ring, how are you going to trust us when we have it here for months?"

He's right of course; and one thing the shop is relentlessly honest about is managing jewelry. The entire back-end process is built to make sure people get back exactly what they brought in.

But at the same time, honesty is one thing that's strange about the shop, because there are so many lies going on at all times. Being a relentlessly honest person was one thing that made it hard to work there. Half the customers are lying to us when they bring things in; people make up all kinds of stories about why they need money, or what their item really is. Half the time we give an explanation for something, we are lying just because it makes it easier to do the job.

After working there for two decades, Alan's spidey sense is remarkable, and he can tell what a customer is all about because he's seen so much history. He's seen this kind of woman before, and she always makes a terrible fuss when she gets her item back.

I asked him if her reaction was just racism, and he wouldn't say, but that's just another polite lie. A huge number of the shop's customers are racist (reverse racist, if you prefer), and resent the fact that they are so desperate they have to deal with whitey's pawn shop. Their first instinct is that we are so talented at being evil that we can swap out diamonds in thirty seconds, and every transaction with us is a ripoff. If it's not (reverse) racism, what is it?