> Another place I experience this phenomenon is bike shop

This is my personal favorite story about bike shops (from circa 2008).

At the time, I both lived and worked in Manhattan. I was lucky that biking was an option for commuting but the only bike I had was a 20 year old Giant Acapulco (not a fancy bike at all).

I worked down in Tribeca and one day on the way to work my shifters just broke. Thankfully, there was a bike shop near work so I dropped of the bike in the morning and said I would be back that afternoon.

Fast forward to the afternoon and I come in to pick up my bike (as I assumed it was an easy fix and they would just charge me). The repair counter guy looks at my ticket, checks something and says he has to go get the manager. This is somewhat confusing as this was a simple fix or repair.

The manager comes out and several of the staff are arrayed behind him. Now I'm a mixture of concerned and fascinated as to what could possibly have happened to my bike given this deployment of bike shop personnel.

Manager: "Sir, the repair for your shifters is going to cost $40"

Me: "Ok, is there an issue with that?"

Manager: "Well, a quality used bike would cost you about $60 so we weren't sure how you would want us to proceed"

(I should add that the staff behind him all seemed as though they were holding their breath here).

Me: "That's cool. I'm good with the repair"

Everyone visibly relaxed, the manager turned around, pointed at one guy, then turned back to me and said "Your bike will be ready tomorrow."

My only thought on this level of nervousness is due to the shop being near a lot of investment bank offices that had a very type A guys who were also into bike racing. I myself dealt with a lot of those folks so it's not hard to imagine the shop staff assuming I would be that way too.

I had in internship in San Francisco and had a ~$100 bike. My bike seat and post were stolen one day. I didn't know anything about the "levels" of bikes shops, so I just went to the nearest one. Turned out to be extremely high end, probably not a single bike under $5k. The guy I talked to was so helpful, rummaged around there storage room for 20 minutes, and found me a used seat & post they had down there and just charged me $10.