this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
514 points (98.5% liked)
Asklemmy
43958 readers
1519 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Rome, Italy. rent for a small store is 800/mo where this store is, and an average salary is about 1200/mo. This antique/junk store sells like 2 things a day(with average price being 5€) always takes unfavorable exchanges and generally isn't great business-wise, yet it's been here for 15 years, in a district where most - more reasonable - businesses fail within 2 years.
It doesn't take credits cards, only cash. There's a flight simulator controller from the 80s that didn't sell for a decade.
Maybe I'm just paranoid.
Edit: i still love that store, I'm addicted to collecting old junk (self promotion time: I founded a coin collecting community over at lemmy.ml,its called numismatics) and I go to that store every month or so, it helped me to get rid of some old vynil records from my grandfather in exchange for some cash (obv without receipt) but still, I think it either evades taxes (taking that from granted) or it's something bigger, like a front for a mafia or something else.
Had a similar one as well in a former neighbourhood I used to live. Turns out the guy is one of the biggest online sellers and keeps the shop for some legal reasons/for customers to come and see an object in real life/to keep him entertained while in reality he had tremendous trade volumes online.
The fact is that the store owner is a massive boomer, I need to write him via sms because he doesn't have WhatsApp (ubiquitous in Italy and all of Europe) and only owns a dumb phone, as an online seller myself, I think a smartphone is a must these days. He doesn't have a site, he thinks eBay is the devil (and as an ebay seller, that's true, but for other reasons) so I don't think he's an online seller, he's just not the type
Yeah, in that case he is very likely just living off inheritance or something. I know exactly what you mean, though - initially I thought the guy I described above is "your" type of guy. I know more than enough of these idiots but most now have a smartphone to read telegram channels it seems.
And the guy I mean still is a huge boomer and asshole, nevertheless. Both online and offline reviews are horrible.
BTW: Salutami il mio amore segreto, l'Italia. Ancora poche settimane e finalmente potrò tornare a trovarvi.
Beh, se passi a Roma non passare da "la lucerna" o passaci, se è il tuo tipo di negozio
(è il negozio di cui parlo nel post, se non si fosse capito) buona fortuna nella tua visita!