Horror tale

[Captain Video]

Went today with my father to a junk yard to sell an old, irreparable microwave oven. Not that we really NEED the money they paid ( US$ 2,50 ), but, since the junk yard was already in our way to other business...

When we arrived there, I got out of the car to take a look in the junk piles. All the junk was organized in specific piles: one pile was made, primarily, of dishwashers and other types of big kitchen appliances, other pile was made of electronics, and so on. I went to the electronic junk pile.

At first inspection, there was nothing there worth of my interest: only lots of commom, unatractive, not-valuable 1980's and 1990's TV sets ( ALL of them in HORRIBLE shape ) ans some VCRs and stereos, which were, also, in horrible shape.

I them decided to take a look in the other piles of junk. Since it was a small junk yard, and, really, with nothing that I found interesting in all those piles of junk, I returned to the electronics pile, decided to take another look.

A more careful examination brought to the surface a small gem: a portable, black and white, transistorized Hitachi TV, from the 70's, or early 80's AT MOST, and it was... an AMERICAN TV set!!! Or, better saying, a TV set made for the American market. Something quite unusual to find here, in this part of Brazil in which I live.

I instantly recognized the TV as being made to be sold in the USA because of a VERY distinctive little thing: it had two channel selector knobs, and it was something that was never mandatory here. In fact, I know of only one Brazilian TV with two channel selector knobs, a color Sharp made in 1975.

Looking behind the TV, my suspicions proved correct: there was written something like "made in Taiwan for the Hitachi sales division of America" .

Most likely, this TV could never be repaired again. But, to me, it didn't mattered. Despite being VERY dirty, cosmetically, it was in very good shape. All the knobs were there, and rotating correctly, all the emblems and etc were there, the CRT was intact. Everything was in good solid shape. It was a cute little ( some 14 inch ) and, at least here, rare TV set. Would made a cute display piece. Above the UHF knob, there was a window on which the channel numbers were changing when you rotate the knob.

Obviously, by this point, I decided to take the little thing home. I them proceed to buy the TV, and approached the junk yard employees to ask the price of the TV...

BIG MISTAKE

If there's a lesson I learned today with this affair is: NEVER deal with the "little people" if you can avoid it; try to ALWAYS go to the ones on the top of the line of command. I should have gone directly to the junk yard owners... but no, I thought that the junk yard was like any ordinary supermarket, where everyone can inform you the price of the goods.

I decided to talk to the guy that was closer, an ugly fellow with many teeth missing in his mouth. Here's what I ACTUALLY SAID to him:

" I want to TAKE this TV WITH ME. It can no longer be repaired. How much are you ASKING for it?"

But he reacted like he heard me saying:

"Do YOU WANT TO TAKE this TV? It can no longer be repaired. How much DO YOU PAY for it?"

Why do I say that he reacted like he heard me saying what I DIDN'T SAID? Well, because he them said:

"Can no longer be repaired? Give it to me, I will 'fix' it, right now."

He them took the TV out of my hands, and, before I could give any reaction, he walked a few steps, and THREW THE TV LIKE IT WAS A BASKETBALL back to the wrecked TVs pile!!!

I was horrified by seeing such a level of stupidity. I could not believe what had just happened. With some effort, I explained - AGAIN - that I wanted to BUY the set, not sell it. The idiots cannot not only understand what they heard, but they also cannot recognize something that ALREADY WAS in their junk pile!!!

I expected the CRT to be ruined, at this point. The TV landed on the top of the pile. Really, I had no intention at all of climbing that big, dangerous pile, just to see if the TV was still intact. But I didn't need to. The idiot climbed the pile, after I told him the b.... he had done, and went after the TV he threw. Amazingly, the CRT was STILL intact ( those CRTs are more strong than I thought ), but the impact had made bad damage to the plastic cabinet: a big hole, bigger than a grow man's fist, appeared on the left side of the cabinet.

It was finished, them. In that shape, the TV was no longer worth the effort of taking it home, and having a lot of work to clean it. I left it there, on the top of the junk pile.

When we left the junk yard, the guy's work mates were all laughing out loud; not of him, but of ME!!!

And my father tried to blame ME, for not being able to "communicate right with the guy" !!! What about THAT???

I have a college degree in Journalism. I have no doubt at all that I know just all to well, how to "communicate with people" . The guy who threw the TV is the ignorant fool, who is not able to understand even what he HEARS!!!

[Sandy G]

Some people are just Idiots...That's about all you can say.

[Arkay]

That is exactly why he is working at the junkyard. His value to society is limited to his ability to throw trash into piles. If he were a great communicator, he would be a successful journalist, author, TV presenter, politician, executive, etc... instead of sitting with his equally-stupid friends at the junkyard. [Not that everyone working at a junkyard has to be stupid, no; some may be good people, but his stupidity will keep him there and prevent him from doing anything else.]

I've seen similar situations, where stupid people have needlessly smashed things that were worth saving. Value that was created from many hours of skilled work by many talented and hard-working people, which then survived for many years (or in the case of Bamiyan statues, for centuries!) can be destroyed in just seconds, wherever stupidity gets a chance... Very sad, indeed.

[sampson159]

once, a few years ago,i was in a flea market looking for sets. a dealer there had a 19" sharp that was so-so. crt was kinda dim. he had some big price on it like 275.00. i asked him if he would take less. he told me to make an offer. i said 25.00. he became enraged and commented"i will smash it to pieces before i take 25.00". with that he produced a hammer and busted it up!!!talk about a bad day. i was stunned and told him "now you have nothing to sell.you could have had something-less than you asked but at least something. now you have nothing." we actually became friends over this incident.i still talk with him periodically and we laugh about that day.

[zenith2134]

Around here we get a flyer every spring inviting us to take all our 'old electronics' to the recycling center for disposal. At the bottom it says 'No scavenging or picking of any kind permitted at the event'

Kinda pissed me off; I can only dream about what was crushed there this year.

[onepixel]

Originally Posted by Sandy G

Some people are just Idiots...That's about all you can say.

yup.

[Lady Ayeka]

Originally Posted by Arkay

That is exactly why he is working at the junkyard. His value to society is limited to his ability to throw trash into piles. If he were a great communicator, he would be a successful journalist, author, TV presenter, politician, executive, etc... instead of sitting with his equally-stupid friends at the junkyard. [Not that everyone working at a junkyard has to be stupid, no; some may be good people, but his stupidity will keep him there and prevent him from doing anything else.]

I've seen similar situations, where stupid people have needlessly smashed things that were worth saving. Value that was created from many hours of skilled work by many talented and hard-working people, which then survived for many years (or in the case of Bamiyan statues, for centuries!) can be destroyed in just seconds, wherever stupidity gets a chance... Very sad, indeed.

AMEN TO THAT.

[Lady Ayeka]

Originally Posted by sampson159

once, a few years ago,i was in a flea market looking for sets. a dealer there had a 19" sharp that was so-so. crt was kinda dim. he had some big price on it like 275.00. i asked him if he would take less. he told me to make an offer. i said 25.00. he became enraged and commented"i will smash it to pieces before i take 25.00". with that he produced a hammer and busted it up!!!talk about a bad day. i was stunned and told him "now you have nothing to sell.you could have had something-less than you asked but at least something. now you have nothing." we actually became friends over this incident.i still talk with him periodically and we laugh about that day.

hey, that's pretty cool!!

[Captain Video]

Originally Posted by sampson159

once, a few years ago,i was in a flea market looking for sets. a dealer there had a 19" sharp that was so-so. crt was kinda dim. he had some big price on it like 275.00. i asked him if he would take less. he told me to make an offer. i said 25.00. he became enraged and commented"i will smash it to pieces before i take 25.00". with that he produced a hammer and busted it up!!!talk about a bad day. i was stunned and told him "now you have nothing to sell.you could have had something-less than you asked but at least something. now you have nothing." we actually became friends over this incident.i still talk with him periodically and we laugh about that day.

Now, that man must have had a VERY bad day...

Anyway, it is wise not to be enemy of a guy who got a big hammer!!!

[mr_fixer]

I have noticed that not every merchants' motivation is selling things. My favorite is the antique store who places prices on their items 3 times the true value, yet nothing ever sells. I could visit the same place a year later and almost every single item they had last year is still there. How do they pay their expenses? Booth rent?
I think some of those "dealers" use antique stores, booths, flea markets as storage when their collection becomes too large. or with some it is a Ego piece, like the dealers who have the entire store arranged like a Victorian parlor.
Logan

[radiotvnut]

I'm sure that guy at the junk yard understood what you said perfectly. He was just being a jack@$$ by destroying that TV because he knew you wanted it. It's people like him that think collectors of vintage electronics are just a bunch of dorks and that was his way of putting you in a bad mood. I'm sure he got off on it.

I've never actually seen a TV get busted by an irate seller; but, I've had sellers threaten such action when I wouldn't pay them ten fortunes for their non working TV's. I'll admit that I've also threatened a few buyers with such action; but, I never followed through. The ones I'd blow up at were the ones that acted like they were doing me a favor by offering me $20 for a 25" remote control TV that it took me a week and much hair loss to fix. I have been guilty of pitching a few beat up working BPC TV's that I got tired of stepping over.

[thunderroad]

Originally Posted by Sandy G

Some people are just Idiots...That's about all you can say.

Yep! You can't fix stupid!

[ggarcia]

In Portuguese: Um babaca...

[Kiwick]

Luckily, here in Italy (at least in my area) you can still pick everything you want for free at the council's bulky waste collection facility... actually, the only time there's someone in there is when the garbage truck moves in, the site is otherwise left unattended

[NowhereMan 1966]

It's a shame there are people "stuck on stupid." Shame you lose out on the American TV there. IIRC, Brazil uses the 525 line picture system, 30 frames a sec but the color was in PAL. Even so, that TV could still work, if it was color, you'd still get a black and white picture. Seeing these stories makes me ill, we waste so much. I know some people see us a packrats but a good friend of mine who had a degree in archeology told me, "history owes a lot of packrats." Unfortunately, he passed away at 35 a couple of years ago from lymphoma. I know with HDTV coming in less than a year here in the U.S., I think there will be a lot of dumping of TV's that is not needed, I got my two boxes so I just use them with my old TV's, well one is a Commodore 1702 monitor and the other a 1964 Sony B&W set but if I had to, I can shift them around. I might get a third box, my aunt doesn't need her second card. Looks like that junkyard guy needs a swift kick in the ...... um, butt.