The Serious Rider

Mondo took the call. It was from a guy who wanted to know if we allow test rides.

"What do you want to ride?"

The guy was a Serious Rider. He had a list. The Serious Rider told Mondo he was preparing for the Ironbutt Rally, 11,000 miles of two wheeled intensity in 11 days, and wanted to evaluate the Honda ST1300, the Yamaha FJR1300 and the new Kawasaki Concours. He asked if we had the bikes in stock, and said he wanted to take them each out for about 100 miles, to put them through their paces. Mondo asked him to read off his list again, then said he'd go check. Mondo put the Serious Rider on hold and went back to feeding Bandit cookies covered in margarine.

After twenty minutes, the Serious Rider called back. Some idiot had left him on hold while they were checking inventory, and he wanted to complain to a supervisor. Mondo put him on hold and then got back on, pretending to be a slow talking West Virginia hillbilly with the IQ of a stick/manager. The Serious Rider went through his speech again about the Iron Butt Rally, and how important he is in the world of long distance riding, and asked again if we have the bikes in stock, because he lives far away and no dealer around him has them, especially the new Concours, and will let him ride, and somehow or another Honda has the Lazy K listed as a testride center on their website.

"I'm looking at 'em all right now," said Billy Ray, the friendly but simple minded manager, "Come on in and I'll make sure you get to ride them as long as it takes for you to make up your mind. When are you going to be buying a bike?"

"Right now I just want to ride everything, and if I think one is better than the BMW, I'll buy it from whomever gives me the best price. I will give you a chance to earn my business, but there's a local dealer I do business with, and you'd have to beat his price by a substantial sum to justify making a second trip out."

"Sounds pretty good. Why don't y'all ride them at that there place then?" asked Billy Ray, Mondo's hillbilly alter-ego.

"My local dealer doesn't have floor these models. In fact, you're the only dealership I've found that has the new Concours in stock."

That should have been a clue.

"Yep, we just got six of them. Both colors. Come on in and do y'all some ridin'."

The Serious Rider was coming from four states over, and couldn't make it in until Wednesday. Wednesday is Paco's day off.

"Y'all make sure you ask for Paco," said Billy Ray, "We'll get y'all hooked up with some test rides."

"That's not the guy who hung up on me, is he? I don't want to deal with that guy again. He's a jerk."

Wednesday morning rolls around and there's the Serious Rider waiting in the parking lot for the Lazy K to open. He has been there since 8 AM, because that's when he's sure the manager told him the Lazy K opens. So he's had two hours to peek through the windows and not see any of the bikes he's ridden his gadget laden BMW across four states to spend the entire day evaluating.

We don't stock them because they don't sell and when they do, it's to know it alls who will fly across country to save $100, because of the principal of the thing.

The Serious Rider walked through the Lazy K, purposeful, looking for the bikes he's come to ride. When he didn't see them, he approached Mondo, who was busy feeding Bandit bones and skin from a chicken he'd bought on Monday.

"Is Paco here?"

"Day off."

"I made an appointment to evaluate some models, and I don't see them here. Is there somewhere else they might be?"

"We don't do test rides."

The Serious Rider explained what an important person he is, how far he'd come, and became quite antagonistic. He told Mondo that he is the moderator of a group of very important BMW riders and that he's pretty sure the Lazy K doesn't want to get a bad reputation on the internet, especially amongst a group of riders who don't ride what we sell and are a pain in the ass to deal with when they order the wrong parts for something old they bought off a neighbor.

"You can talk to the manager. He's over there."

Mondo pointed at Star then went back to reading a Weekly World News story about Bat Boy.

The Serious Rider told Star he was pretty upset with the level of service he'd received at the Lazy K. He wanted us to pay for his gasoline and trip expenses because he'd ridden a long way after the manager told him we have the bikes in stock and he could take them out and ride the piss out of them.

"I'm the manager, and I don't know what you are talking about. We don't allow test rides, especially to people who tell us they have no intention of buying a bike from us. That would be stupid on our part, wouldn't it?"

The Serious Rider explained how serious a rider he is, and that he was going to send emails to Honda, Yamaha and Kawasaki and the Better Business Bureau. He was going to post bad things about the Lazy K on the Internet. He demanded to talk to the other manager, the one with the Hillbilly accent named Paco.

Star said there was no other manager, so the Serious Rider wanted to talk to the owner.

The CSB evaluated the Serious Rider as a possible sperm donor while he rambled on about the low quality of customer service he'd received up to that point, but decided his dick was probably too small to be of much use to her. And he whines. The CSB told the Serious Rider that the test ride manager is the Poodle.

"The Poodle says that if you sign a release and wear a helmet, you can ride an ATV in the parking lot."

On his way out, the Serious Rider threatened to sue the Lazy K for the cost of his trip.

"It's good practice for the Iron Butt Rally," said Mondo.

Star said that if he figures out who told the Serious Rider he could test ride a lot of bikes, he will fire that person. He made us all sign a memo that we know the Lazy K does not allow test rides, even though the CSB let a fat guy in shorts and sandals ride a VTX1800 in the rain yesterday.

The BBB, Honda, Yamaha and Kawasaki forwarded us emails from the Serious Rider stating that because of how we'd treated him at the Lazy K, the Serious Rider had bought a 2007 BMW R1200 RT-P, with a link to a website showing that he'd managed to attach every bright and shiny doodad and geegaw in all the BMW accessory catalogs combined to the damn bike. He further stated that he would never do business with the Lazy K again and was going to post negative things about the Lazy K on every website he could. And he asked Honda, Yamaha and Kawasaki to reimburse him for his gas and travel expenses.

We were quite amused to learn that the final drive of the Serious Rider's perfect BMW exploded in Canada, leaving him looking at all his bright and shiny accessories twinkling cheerily in the twilight, telling him where he was and that he'd stopped moving.

We hope Bat Boy gets him.

Don't Piss Off the Trolls

At the mother ship, where the bikes are shipped and assembled before making their ways to the respective Lazy Ks, Fearless Leader runs a tight ship. He finds trolls, little tatooed people with an assortment of facial and other piercings, unfit to be seen by the public, who can't get a job anywhere else and think working with motorcycles is cool, and pays them $7 an hour to hide in the back and unpack the motorcycles, put the wheels on, and ship them to the various Lazy Ks.

Fearless Leader is an asshole and nobody likes working for him. He is such a dick that the CSB got rid of him, the Lazy K went completely to shit, and they still won't ask him to step in and save the place again by restoring verbal beatdowns and giving the CSB another 28 day vacation.

One little troll finally had enough of Fearless Leader, so he jumped over the fence and drove the forklift into 67 crated motorcycles after work Saturday. Then he knocked over two rows of assembled bikes that were left to age in the sun and rain since last fall. The Crusty Clan spent Monday trying to figure out which little troll hates the Lazy K the most and who left the key in the forklift, so the GOB, (Greedy Old Bitch) can fire him from his $7 an hour job and make sure he never works in this industry again, and have narrowed it down to everyone who works with Fearless Leader. There are a lot of suspects, and Fearless Leader is interrogating all of them.

Old Crusty is shocked and hurt that anyone would want to harm his beloved Lazy K.

All the little trolls and most of the employees at the Mother Ship think it's pretty funny. And it's going to be a while before we get bikes again at any of the stores.

Doggie Beatdown

The CSB has been stumbling around a lot lately, on the rare day she shows up for work. When she gets to work, she has a lot of trouble coming through the double doors with both dogs barking and yapping on leashes and her 5 gallon low carb lunch bucket tucked under one arm.

This morning she tripped over Bandit, and fell on her ass.

The CSB got up, set her lunch on Paco's desk, turned the Poodle loose and dragged Bandit, dangling on her back legs, by the leash into the passout room.

There was a thud as something heavy hit a wall, then Bandit started to yelp. There was another couple of thuds, and more yelping.

Oblivious to the imaginary pain in her knee, whichever one it was, the CSB was kicking Bandit and screaming at the fucking dog to stay the fuck out of her way. She didn't want to hit Bandit with her fists, because if she does, Bandit will shy away when the CSB uses hand signals to get her to do dog agility.

Meanwhile, Friar Tuck had a loser come in and try to buy a Suzuki Bergman 400. The scooter retails for $5799, but the guy's credit was so bad he couldn't finance extra cheese on a pizza. So the loser dragged his 84 year old grandmother in, and she got approved for $12,000. After adding lots of freight, prep, and a $250 documentation fee, the scooter came to $11,997 out the door. But Gramma did get a free helmet.

Then we fed Bandit a couple soft tacos from Taco Bell somebody bought last Saturday, and she took a nice big crap back by the waverunners.

Money Saving Ideas

At a time when everything seems to be going up, it's nice to see that something is going down. No, I'm not talking about the CSB after a long lunch with the cute new radio rep. I'm talking about the new pay program.

In the last year, the GOB, or Greedy Old Bitch, formerly the Old Battleax, has implemented several key changes to turn this company around. All of them involve taking back, mostly from the employees or the customers

Let's take a nostalgic look back, shall we?

The first thing to go was a decent healthcare plan. In the last year, it has been changed three times. Each time, it has covered less and cost more, until it cost the Buddha $800 a month for health insurance.

The second thing to go was a third week of paid vacation for the six inmates who have stuck it out for more than 5 years at the Lazy K. This must have saved the Lazy K a small fortune.

The CSB and the GOB got together and decided to raise the doc fee, what we charge for a $8 an hour employee to prepare the customer's paperwork, to $250, even though every other shop around charges about $100. So we lost a few dozen sales a month. But the Lazy K was able to save $27 in commissions on the sales we did make.

There is a charge, called a Pack, that the Lazy K pads the invoice figures with, so commissions are paid on all profit left after the pack. The GOB decided to increase the pack to $395, hoping nobody would notice. This saved up to $30 in commissions per unit, and even more when a lot of the better salespeople quit.

You would think that with all this clever cost cutting, and the $5 minimum commission we've paid since the CSB was getting radio rep's pubes stuck in her braces, the Lazy K would be swimming in money. All the other dealers in the area are doing very well.

But we're not.

So the GOB has decided to cut what's left of the commissions in half. Effective with all new hires, the Lazy K pays 8% instead of 15% and Star is going to close all the sales. He got a big book that tells him how. Star was going to let Mondo read the book, but it costs $20, and that seems like a lot for a book to Star, so he's going to make a photocopy.

Part of the plan was for Paco to close sales too, but he quit.

All the current salespeople will stay on the old pay program, and the new ones will be fucked over by the new one. Should make for an interesting workplace.