I was on the road for the past 8 hours hitting comic shops on my way home from the beach. Stopped by a shop in Bethany Beach Delaware called Comics and Gaming. Didn’t get in their past week’s comics. Wasted trip.
Stopped by another shop called Ogre’s Grove in Milton Delaware. Drove out of my way there. Owner was bsing with a customer when I came in. Never bothered to address me or talk to me. In fact talked to him the whole 20 minutes i was poking around and barely noticed me. I was looking for new comics from this past week. Couldn’t find them. Poked around and after about ten minutes he asked me what I was looking for. Told him this week’s books. Gave a very flippant answer about them being on the shelf. I said I guess I needed to pull up midtown’s new comic list to identify which books came out due to his disorganized shelves. He didn’t care just continued to talk. I went to his back issue room that the lights were turned off. Didn’t bother to turn them on. After five minutes of searching by the flashlight app on my iPhone I just got tired of crap customer service and walked out. He clearly saw I was pissed off because I was muttering to myself about shitty customer service. He said loudly “have a good day”. I laughed. Well hope you have a good day Ogre’s Grove in Milton Delaware because I am sharing my bad experience.
Disorganized shops drive me nuts…and yet they are the ones you can find some gold in.
I usually only have a few minutes to look around if I hit a new shop or am far from home, so I can relate to the frustration of feeling like they’re wasting your time with a disorganized shop.
Had the same Experience with Ogres in Delaware. When we drive down to my brother in laws i like to hit all the shops along the way and i intentionally skip this place.
on the flip side, if your ever in Raleigh NC look around for Foundation’s Edge. Great comic shop and the owner was super nice. He has a ton of back stock and dosnt use Ebay to price stuff when you go to buy the comics.
Lol. Sadly it was everything. I was away for Wednesday and the books I normally pick up but don’t subscribe to will not be there. Was hoping to pick them up while i was driving. Left a message on the stores Facebook page and the owner got flippant “sorry you didn’t enjoy your drive” said the drive was nice. The service was lousy. Ended up ordering online. Also said if the lights were off I should have turned them on. Responded I don’t know where the switch is and as an owner who sees someone shopping by flashlight you should think to turn them on as a courtesy
To be honest I find that a large number of comic shops and their owners are completely rude and arrogant and don’t deserve the business many are greedy and Jack up prices and some of them are just plain disorganised and rude into the bargain however I go to a comic shop and if they are that rude to me I take great pleasure in ripping out all of their valuable first Appearances that they have no knowledge of
Sorry you had a bad experience! I honestly think some shop owners just have their places as a means of showinging off stuff/socializing & have no interest/need to make money (which to me is crazy.)
The first comic shop I ever went to and also the same one Liefeld worked at had the crabbiest worker behind the register. Just not a friendly fellow. From what I was told way back when he was the friend of the owner or something like that and the owner would never reprimand him for acting out. He would yell at my friend and myself for only buying “big comics” during their half price sale. I kept telling him we were in high school and didn’t make much money at all with our little fast food jobs so of course we would wait for the sales to buy stuff. Didn’t matter, he would just constantly eye roll customers for asking questions and just about every time someone asked for something in the back/storage room he would say no. Wouldn’t even look at the person. He would just read whatever comic he had out and say “no”.
I will say he had good taste in music. Love and Rockets. Echo and the Bunnymen, The Church… Really good, now classic alternative rock from the day. That’s about the only nice thing I have to say about him though LOL. Good times!
I will say sometime the employees who are too nice bug me more than rude ones. You think they are just friendly, but before you know it that casual question about what comics you like has them recommending all this other stuff they think you should buy. You don’t need to up-sell me, friend, I know what I’m here to pick-up today.
It isn’t as bad as stores like Gamestop, but yeah.
When I go in a shop, if I need something I let them know. Most times I don’t want to be bothered because having to talk to some oblivious mouth breather takes away from me actually shopping. I’d rather sit at home and do my hunting online. Lots of money to be made if you have time to do it. I also would’ve probably asked if there was a light in that room or if they had torches to browse by. I’ve only got one local shop and it’s Cramped but that only means more books to go through.
My crappy experience of late is a store that had some amazing books that I really wanted, but with every book (they weren’t priced), I’d not only get the “ebay price” but also the whole…this would likely grade a 9.6 or 9.8 so the price was also repeatedly inflated even higher based on what a graded book would get pricewise. Needless to say I grew tired of digging and just left. Really frustrating.
Unpriced books are a huge pet peeve of mine. If they’re going to be that picky about pricing, make them wall books (or glass case books, whatever) with Post-It note price tags and re-check eBay as frequently as you want.
You probably would have really liked that comic shop…if you avoided the guy behind the register. Unfortunately, years back it was gutted by a fire. That was probably one of my first life lessons that childhood doesn’t last forever and things we grew up with that we enjoyed don’t always stay the same or stick around. .
