Lowrider57,
I'm in retail, and my fellow sales associates have a lot of unflattering names for people like you; but the one YOU should remember is "timewaster". Don't think that the salespeople you are doing this to don't know (and resent) you. All stores that sell luxury goods have regular non-customers who make a habit of coming in and pretending that they are going to purchase something. They do it for different reasons. Sometimes, it's to pass the time. With others, it's just a case of dreaming about things they can't afford. There are also those who want to try on or hear in this case, things that they actually want, but have no intention of buying new. They are going to buy online used, and they have already resolved to do that.
Of course there is nothing wrong with browsing in a store that you have stumbled upon, or even deliberately looked for. The problem is that people like yourself are wasting the valuable time of the commissioned sales associate who is there trying to make a living. While he is doing a fruitless demo, or just shooting the breeze with you, he is missing his next turn to wait on a client who may actually want to buy something from him/her.
I live in the Phoenix area, and there is one very large, and one small high end audio store near where I work in the city. I was in the small store once with a friend who needed service on his turntable. I was interested to look around while he was doing his business, but I made it clear that I was not a customer. The other store (US Tube Audio in Scottsdale) has a lot of things that I would love to see and hear, but for the reasons stated above, I will not go into that store and pretend to be a customer. The fact is that for many years now, I have bought my equipment online, whether new or used, mostly here on Audiogon, or from manufacturers that sell direct to consumer. I readily admit that I do so because I can't afford to buy most of these items new, even though doing so comes with certain advantages.
So Lowrider, I don't know what you do to earn a living, but I will make a guess that you don't appreciate having people interrupt you while you are trying to do it. Maybe you have never looked at it from the point of view of the salesperson before. If not, then you should. If you have, and you still continue to do it, then you should consider changing your screen name from Lowrider to Lowlife.
