2003-02-11 - 11:48 p.m.

Choad, part 2

Oh yeah, I never finished the story of the flaky guy who made a big deal about putting a deposit on an expensive comic, then said he didn't want the comic, then he wanted his deposit back.

Like I said, this guy is a flake.

The day after his irksome phone call, I was at home, getting ready to go out and get myself some lunch. The phone rang, and I thought it was Lily, so I picked it up. Big, big mistake. It was the Choad.

Like I've said before, I don't like being bothered at home by this stuff, especially when I'm hungry and on my way out the door.

I told him my point of view - he'd kept the store open a full two and a half hours after closing, and he'd left a deposit on a book, and now he wanted it back even after he'd agreed that the deposit was non-refundable. Earlier I'd said that $40 would hold the book, and I was willing to give him back the rest of the $75 he'd given me. I thought that was fair.

Basically what followed was a long argument where he tried to grind me down, and partially succeeded.

First, he gave me some sort of convoluted explanation why he needed the money back involving a bar his wife had just inherited, etc, etc. However behind this wall of bullshit I detected the real reason he backed out - his wife went ballistic when she found out he'd spent $75 on a comic book.

He admitted that the Manager may have told him that the deposit was non-refundable and he may have even agreed with him when he said it, but he was calling on the phone from work and someone was talking to him, therefore he wasn't really listening. This was one of my favorite points of the whole discussion, and it essentially told me that there was no use in telling him anything because he wouldn't be listening. What a chucklehead.

He then made an appeal to friendship, saying how we'd always been such good friends. Actually, I'd sort of considered him a friend for a while, but in the mid-1990s he'd publicly accused me of juggling the pairings of a tournament to favor myself. Frankly, calling me a liar and a cheat kind of sours me on the whole friendship idea.

His line of bullshit was starting to make me angry, but I managed to keep my temper in check. While it would be temporarily satisfying to tell this dummy what I really thought of him, the long-term consequences would be annoying. I finally agreed to only keep $25 of his deposit, just to put an end to it. So, essentially this was a break-even proposition for me, but I suppose that's better than losing money. However, this is a lesson learned - we are not going to keep the store open past closing for him, or let him buy a book on time again.

I realize that this guy has some sort of bipolar problem that causes him to run around from pillar to post, talking about one thing or another like it's the holy grail, and then tomorrow it's something else. I realize that he probably has a lot of problems in his life, I just wish he wouldn't add to mine.