The wife and I have expe­ri­enced an inor­di­nate amount of bad cus­tomer ser­vice in Portland lately.

The most glar­ing and recent exam­ple occurred at the REI store in Clackamas a cou­ple weeks ago.

The skinny: I went to REI (a store I’m not ter­ri­bly fond of to begin with; it’s mostly over­priced, urban backpacker/adventure-wear for well-to-do kayak­ing dullards).

Anyway, the only rea­son I went was to replace my stolen bike with one autho­rized by my home insur­ance adjuster. My intent was to get in and get the hell out so I could rest my aching head, as I was suf­fer­ing from an awful cold.

Enter REI Bike Store Guy to “help” me with my purchase!

“Do you need some help?” he labored to ask.

“Yeah, I need to look at a bike. Is there a bike guy around?”

“Yeah,” he said, not both­er­ing to elab­o­rate that he was “the bike guy.”

“Umm…is that you then?” I said for clarification.

“Yeah.”

Bike Store Guy was in many ways a typ­i­cal Portland ser­vice indus­try per­son — zero social skills; totally aloof; monosyllabic…too cool to help. I should be thank­ful that I had the oppor­tu­nity to buy a $600 bike from him.

What fol­lows is a short list of his trangressions:

• When my wife asked Bike Store Guy if the bike came in any dif­fer­ent col­ors, he defin­i­tively said “no.”

• When I requested to take the bike for a ride, his body lan­guage made it clear that I had crossed the line.

• I told Bike Store Guy the han­dle­bars on my old bike were slightly longer than the ones on the replace­ment bike. His response? “No, they’re the same.”

• When it became obvi­ous that I was going to pur­chase the bike, he asked…

“Are you an REI mem­ber?”

“Yes,” I said. “I think I became one when I bought the last bike. I don’t have my ID num­ber or any­thing though.”

His response?

“Well, if you go over to the cus­tomer ser­vice desk, they can help you.”

Even though I was aston­ished by the idiocy of this remark, I was deep in a Robitussin haze and didn’t really give a damn. Plus, I’ve come to expect so lit­tle from Portland ser­vice indus­try peo­ple that when they act like retards, it barely registers.

But finally, the goon daw­dled back to the repair room with my bike to do some final tune-up work or what­ever. When he re-emerged — maybe 3 sec­onds later — mirac­u­lously he had checked off the 10 or so items on the “pre-sale” checklist.

More Robitussin-tinged aston­ish­ment on my part.

“You did all of this?” I politely asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

Lastly, Bike Store Guy attempted to rush me through the sales paper­work. Since he was obvi­ously in a hurry to do some­thing — eat lunch, mas­tur­bate, take a piss — I pored over the paper­work like I was read­ing the Magna Carta.  I asked a clar­i­fy­ing ques­tion about the war­ranty, which ran­kled him.

He then spurted out the incred­i­ble line: “Just sign right there.”

Finally, when Bike Store Guy saw that I was dot­ting the last “i” on my John Hancock, he rapidly said some­thing inde­ci­pher­able and then raced upstairs to the bath­room or lunch room (or hope­fully, near­est noose).

I stood motion­less, per­plexed. My wife, usu­ally one to hold back her anger with cus­tomer ser­vice peo­ple, demanded we leave. My 5-year-old started crying.

Later that evening, as my cold improved, I expe­ri­enced “retro-rage,” and I tweeted inces­santly about the stu­pid ordeal.

As bad as it was, though, I’ve seen worse, namely Belmont Computers in Southeast Portland. Worst, most moronic ser­vice ever.

But that’s a tale for another day.

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