It is a rainy Friday in the Washington D.C. Metropolitan area and I’m not in all that great a mood. It is raining to start, my allergies have had me floored for the last week or so, and I’m positive that I will have to spend the better part of an hour fighting Friday evening traffic to make it home from my office which is only 13 miles away. On top of that I can expect to add 25% to that commute time because it seems as though when roads get wet in this area everyone and their moms suddenly forget how to drive.

Well I’m bored and in a bad mood so your humble presenter just thought it would be a fine time to recollect upon a time where he was so gruesomely violated (watch-wise) by rude salespeople who thought they could so accurately judge me.

For a brief background, my lady and I live in a beautiful condo in affluent Montgomery County, Maryland. Both of us are young, college-educated, and while we are not millionaires, we like to treat ourselves to nice things every so often. For my job I dress to impress and look presentable and polished most of the time. On the weekends, however, I like to relax. It is unfortunate, but my idea of relaxing also happens to include dressing like a hobo who looks as though he has just, “wandered into civilization from the mountains,” as my girl likes to put it.

Should my lousy dressing abilities, however, limit me to a life of poor customer service?

Here’s the skinny:

On a cool Sunday morning after my lady and I had some breakfast at an upscale shopping center we just so happened to stop by a small watch store. From what I can sum up this store was a small independent watch store with a collection of watches that ranged from cheap everyday Seiko and Citizen watches to a small but very prominently displayed collection of Montblanc watches.

Being a lover of all types of watches encompassing a wide range of colors, sizes, shapes, and prices, I spent a considerable amount of time looking at the various Seiko and Hamilton models they had on display. Being a HUGE fan of Hamilton I spent most of my time looking at the various Hamilton watch models on display that ranged from price from about $300-$500. For the most part the salesman was friendly and courteous, but when it came to handing over the watches for my viewing and handling, his huffing and puffing had started to work on my nerves. It was as though he had the mentality that my hands were covered in bat guano.

The big clincher for me was that when I asked to see if he had an automatic GMT watches (basically mechanical watches with a fourth “24 hour” hand that can be used to track day/night and/or second time zones) he pointed to this behind the display case:

Montblanc Timewalker GMT Automatic – 36065 Gents Watch

Montblanc, for all not in the know, are the Rolex of the luxury pen world, and their German overpriced pen-ly goodness can be found protruding from shirt pockets of doctors and lawyers worldwide.

In the last few years they have branched out to the luxury watch market and starting pumping out a bunch of watches that for the most part are well-liked and warmly received.

To be honest though I have no opinion of them because I don’t know anything about them. I was hoping to change that by looking at this watch that very day but was shocked when the salesman declined my request.

His exact words were, I believe, “I’m sorry sir but I don’t think this piece is within your price range.”

The fact is that your humble presenter has walked into much finer watch stores and handled $75,000 Patek Philippe watches without a single look of scrutiny. Throughout the years your humble presenter has owned Tag Heuer, Rolex, Omega, Movado, Hamilton, and many other fine brands and never throughout the buying process was told that they were not within my price range.

Well my lady would not have it and immediately responded by so sternly saying, “Excuse me, but I don’t believe we told you our price range.” In which the salesman stated the price of the watch (which was somewhere around $2,000) as though it were the GDP of a small nation.

Did my weekend attire subject me to such harsh treatment, or was I treaty so unjustly perhaps because of my age or perhaps the color of my skin? Did the fact that I was previously looking at cheaper watches project a presumed price range in the salesman’s mind?

I don’t don’t know what it was, and frankly I don’t care, but it is a sad state of affairs that whenever I should happen to look at a Montblanc watch I am constantly reminded of the snobbery and elitism that can sometimes come with the luxury watch industry.