Play it cool, Postman..............

Working at a game store can teach you many lessons about life in general. Here's a runthrough of one transaction and the practical nuggets you can walk away with:

1) Try before you buy.
I had a customer who brought in a Playstation wanting to sell it. This is the old grey system (I can't even call it a PS One due to the remake), which some of you younger kids reading this might not even know about. Youngster history lesson: Sony made a console before the PS2 which was just called a Playstation, think of what you play currently but will no textures and all polygon-like. I knew these systems are old, so I was very careful to check out the condition. When trying the "open" button for the lid, it got stuck, and I couldn't pop the button back out.

2) Take a step back from your situation, you might see things in a different perspective.
I told the guy I couldn't buy it since it has to be fully working. So he took it back, and said "wait a minute, let me try something......" He whips out a knife and starts poking away at the button. At first I thought nothing of it, but this was a good size knife, a little larger than those pocket knives (nothing you could clean a fish with though.) Here's where I started the back-steppin'. I quickly realized there's a guy standing here with a knife, and it's possible things could turn real ugly real fast.

3) Play it cool.........
That goes for just about any situation, from hostage negotiations to talking to women to selling iceboxes. I figured that I could either tell him to put the knife away right away, no weapons allowed here except the kind that could frag an online opponent, or just let things play out. Based on the fact that he wasn't making any threating comments or gestures, I kept it cool. After fiddling with the Playstation for about 3 minutes he couldn't fix the button either, so he said "oh well" and left. Now if someone tries to unjam the drive door to a 360 with a shotgun, that's a whole nother story...........