Loud Guy

There's a guy at work, a couple of cubicles down from mine, that I call "Loud Guy."

Loud Guy has a massive and booming voice. His whispers sound like Pavarotti at full volume.

It's really kind of weird dealing with him, because in general, he's a really nice guy and is always bringing fresh tomatoes and other vegetables to give to us and stuff like that.

But he also listens to his phone messages on the phones speaker so that we all have to hear them instead of using the handset and being private with his noise. (Rude and insensitive to proper etiquette of life in a cubicle world.)

Instead of walking 10 steps around to another person's cubicle to speak with them about something, he just yells, "Hey! John! You over there?!" and if you're on the phone and ignore his yells he keeps yelling.

Lovely Wife and I have been on the phone any number of times when he walks by talking to someone and he drowns me out to the point that Lovely Wife asks, "Who is that?" and I have to say, "Loud Guy."

He acts as the authority and final word on almost any subject that comes up, and I truly think he's a misogynist. I've never really known a man that hates women, but I've never seen him speak with women at work with anything other than thinly covered contempt. His voice drips with superiority when talking to women, but then he will turn around and hand out fresh garden vegetables to every one, including the women, two days later.

But then he's also stated many times that he does not shop for groceries, that's a woman's job, and you can hear him several times a week calling his wife to get her to add such and such to the shopping list.

He's a true mix of a nice guy AND "a piece of work."

Two days ago, he came and started asking me about digital cameras, digital single lens reflexes like my Nikon D70s.

He said his wife wants him to buy one. She said get a Nikon because "all the pros use them."

I said, well, if you went to a pro sports game and took an inventory, you would almost certainly see more Canon cameras there than Nikon, so, I disagreed, but certainly lots of pros do use Nikon.

So we talked about the cameras that are on the market today and he ends up telling me he'd been looking hard at the Nikon D200.

I said that if he wanted to spend that kind of money, the D200 is about as good as you can buy without spending the money for the absolute top of the line.

But I warned him about unscrupulous camera stores, especially on the internet, that they will show an incredible price for a popular camera, but when you try to order it, they'll use hard-sell salesmanship tactics to talk you into buying something different or in buying a bunch of expensive accessories that you "have to have for the camera to work" when it's not true.

Honestly, many online camera shops make their profit from unsuspecting mugs that call wanting a great deal and then get sold $200 worth of trinkets that are not needed at all.

So yesterday, he sends me a link to an online camera store that is selling the Nikon D200 AND an expensive lens for less than I've ever seen the camera body alone sold for, much less the camera body AND a great Nikon lens.

I emailed him back, telling him that the price was great, but that in my opinion he should be very, very careful and research that camera shop (I hadn't ever heard of the shop), but if he could get that camera body and lens for that price then he's found a fantastic deal.

I haven't seen him today, maybe he's off, but I'm interested to find out if his huge ego has gotten the best of him and he tried to actually buy something from one of the legendary "bait and switch" camera supply stores.

See, in America you can buy what are called "grey market" camera items. These are the exact same camera bodies and lenses as the ones that also come with a USA warranty, but the grey market items were originally intended to be sold outside the USA. Somebody here imports them anyway at a lower cost, and then sell the items here, but they do not have a warranty that is valid in the US.

Canon honors it's warranty all over the world, so buying grey market Canon camera isn't much of an issue, but Nikon only does warranty repairs on Official USA Warranty items that were bought in the USA from an authorized Nikon dealer.

It is very easy to buy a great Nikon at a great price and find out that you don't have a valid warranty in the US. That's what you have to watch for in many American camera dealers, especially ones that only exist online.

We'll have to see if Loud Guy gets a deal, or gets snookered by someone smarter at selling grey market items than Loud Guy is.

He truly believes he's beyond anyone getting the best over him in any way, shape, form, or fashion.

I hope he keeps bringing us fresh 'maters and other things from time to time though.