Time for cigar shop horror stories part 4. Thanks again everyone for reading. And I mean it. Share your stories. As much as I love writing these, reading them is much better for my sanity.
This could just as easily pass for a general complaint about retail, but I’ll tell it anyway. Our shop closes at 8 PM. I want to get out of there at 8 PM. I don’t get paid to be there after 8 PM. So if you’re keeping me there after 8 PM, you’re either a great customer that I know well, or a customer who just ambled in right before closing time. I’ll be polite, but I’ve been working all day and I want to get home, you know?
About one minute before closing time last week, some dude pulls in. On cue, he asks if we have any Cubans. Blood starts leaking out of my ears.
He then asks if we have a cigar called “Diablo”. I’ve both never heard of them and heard of millions of them. I ask if they’re a maduro, Connecticut. He has no idea. Strong, mild? His jaw goes slack and he’s mouth-breathing now. What size is the cigar? No idea. Has he ever smoked a different cigar? No. Of course not. I ask him to give me something, anything to go on, so that I can help him. He says he smoked these Diablo’s five (“or was it six..?”) years ago, at his friend Kevin’s bachelor party, as if that’s gonna help me.
I just want to get him out of my hair, so I drag him into the humidor (he leaves the door open behind him) and halfheartedly show him the Punch Diabolus, but naturally that’s not it. Something else catches his eye. He reads the label on a box.
“Maker’s Mark-infused cigars” he says, “What do these taste like?”. Dude. They’re gonna taste like Maker’s Mark.
He says he’s going to “look around” for awhile. It’s well past closing time and he doesn’t have any idea what he’s looking at. Look, you want to come in any other time of the day, I’d be happy to let you browse or answer your questions. But I tell him I’ve gotta get going. So he buys one of those Makers Mark sticks.
“I’m gonna smoke half of this tonight, and save the rest,” he tells me “How long is the cigar gonna last if I put it out halfway?”
“When are you planning on smoking the rest of it?” I ask.
“I’m saving it for a bachelor party in June,” he answers. It’s April.
Ask stupid questions, get stupid answers. I tell him he's gonna need a travel humidor.
"I'm just gonna keep it in the freezer," he says, "Does the same thing."
What’s the point? It’s a quarter to nine I’m wasting my time with this guy. I tell him to stick his half smoked cigar in the freezer, and then I close up.
We sell our empty boxes for a buck apiece. All sorts of people buy them, for school art projects, for holding random stuff around the house or the garage. It’s an easy way to make coffee money. We used to have this one guy who would come once a week, religiously, who would buy all our wooden boxes in one fell swoop. One day I asked what he did with them. “Gotta get ready for winter,” he answered.
I had no idea what that was supposed to mean, so I asked him to specify the next time he dropped by. He explained that he would cram the boxes full of newspaper and nail them to the walls of his mobile home. They supposedly insulated his place during the winter months. “Saves on heating costs,” he told me. A while later, there was a big fire in the mobile home neighborhood on the outskirts of town. No casualties, thankfully, but I haven’t seen that guy since.
Let’s end on a funny note. A gentleman comes in saying he is looking for a “Motherfucker” cigar.
“Whaaaaat are those?” I ask.
He explains that he’s talking about a cigar company with an M and an F on their band, “You know, the motherfucker cigars!”. I laugh and say he’s talking about My Father cigars.
“That’s awesome!” he says, “Like, your dad owns the company?”
I explain the confusion to him and bring him into the humidor to show him the My Father’s, but a different stick catches his eye. He’s reading the band with a big smile on his face.
“These are my favorite”, he says, and holds up the band; “The Hecho a Mano, always great flavor in these bad boys!”
Submitted April 20, 2019 at 09:46PM by SolumDon http://bit.ly/2PkxNTP
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