B&M Down the Street - Last Night
So I thought I would share a somewhat humorous experience from last night. My wife and I were on our way to an Irish pub to celebrate a friend's birthday and we, well I, decided to stop in and check out a tobacco place near where we live. Most of you know that we recently moved, so there are new places for us to check out now. Anyway, I saw this place last week when I picked up a pizza in the same plaza and noticed two guys smoking a cigar. Nice. My usual place is 20 minutes away and this place is like 3 minutes, so needing a last minute stick would be no problem. As we enter the parking lot to find a spot, my wife remarks about the only person in the store, "That guy looks like a tool." How prophetic she was.
We enter the store and he's leaning back in one of only two chairs with his feet up, in a dress shirt and slacks, smoking, and utters a welcome. Only two chairs is a bit odd, no lounge area, but we introduce ourselves and I explain that I wanted to check out the store for the reasons above and wanted to peruse his inventory. I start looking in the humidors and he has almost every single Drew Estate product known to man. And boxes of them. More than any other brand that he carries. This is starting to go downhill. Then I see the shelves of glass pipes and hookhas. Now, I don't care about that stuff, but in my limited experience, that product line does attract a different clientele than a cigar/pipe only store/lounge.
He asks what I like and I start listing some brands. He asks how long I have been smoking and I tell him that I've been smoking cigars steadily for about year now and mention that I have a coolerdor. He has never heard of a coolerdor and asks how I'm keeping my sticks properly maintained. After discussing my setup, he proceeded to tell me that he doesn't think cigars should be kept at an RH of 65 and has never heard of beads and doesn't think it's a good idea. I'm not one to really argue with idiots and I'm starting to think him an idiot, so I attempt to change the topic and ask him what he's smoking. I figured he asked me what I like to smoke, I would return the favor. He tells me that he doesn't know what he's smoking. I give him a questioning look and he's like, "Seriously, I don't know. Plus proper etiquette is to remove the band so that I don't know what you're smoking and you don't know what I'm smoking and we're all equal." Fine, I can see some people maybe getting bent out of shape over "Look what I'm smoking", but I must be pretty lucky because everyone I've smoked with has been a pretty cool guy, or gal, and not hung up on status. But come on man. Then he follows up with, "Don't take this the wrong way, but you're a novice and I've been doing this for ten years. I own four of these stores and will be opening up two more very soon." His phone then rings and he's like, "That's my wife. She's a chiropractor and we own that business as well." Conceited ass.
He then proceeds to say, "I'm sorry, that must have sounded a bit conceited, but I honestly don't know which one I'm smoking right now. I smoke 3 or 4 throughout the day and just take the bands off of them and keep coming back to them throughout the day, so it's one of these here" and sure enough, there are 3 partially smoked cigars in the ashtray with bands off to the side. The only two I remember were a JdN Antano (I like) and a Java (wtf). Seriously man, you don't know what you're smoking when the sticks are that different? How do you ever know what you like and don't like? And you relight them constantly throughout the day? At this point, I know beyond a doubt that I am never, ever going to give this man a single penny of mine so we exit the store to continue onward where a couple of pints of Guinness were awaiting me. What a moron.
