Distrust and Lies and Cornering the Market on the Rare

I don’t know if she was lying to me or not. The only way to find out is to go back.

Because of a request to my low-margin, low-volume side business, I headed downtown to my favorite local  pen shop/ink source to pick up some bottles of ink for customer in New Zealand. When was there I discovered a hard to find ink flavor and quickly pulled it off the shelf.

I asked the clerk if she had more–what makes this my favorite pen shop is they don’t limit the amount you can buy to one bottle of each flavor per person–and the clerk searched the secret drawer to see if they had more. (Note to self: Next time, create a distraction and search the drawer yourself.)

After an oddly long search, the clerk informed me they had no more bottles of that ink available.

I’m not sure if I believe her.

When I showed a couple pen addicts/visitors around Tokyo not so long ago, one of the guests bought the “The last bottle (of OMAS ink) in Japan, if not the world””. However, when I visited the same shop again a couple weeks later, a different clerk produced a bottle of the same color which I quickly bought before the other clerk showed up and started lying (allegedly) again.

That’s why I was suspicious of the clerk today. I suspected the other clerk was lying because of a pause she gave after she moved a couple boxes in the drawer. Today’s clerk seemed spend too much time looking. Granted, I may have gotten too cynical (a by product of being a member of the so-called Generation X) but since I’ve been lied to once already (allegedly), I don’t consider the distrust to be cynical.

I’ll go back again another day and see if a bottle is available.

If they have it I’ll buy it because I know I can sell it quickly. The bottle I got today has already been sold.

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