I remember back when I sold TVs in a department store on base plus commission. A guy came in in raggedy old work jeans, scuffed work boots and a faded flannel, with actual mud on him. The other salesperson kinda ignored him as he watched some of our TVs, but I was bored off my ears anyway, so I went over and struck up a conversation with him because it beat cleaning or doing more damn plan-o-grams.
Turns out he was all muddy and gross because he supervises his own team of contractors whenever one of his businesses builds an expansion and he doesn't believe in dressing up to go shopping. Reckons workers will be more honest if he shows up in his 'working clothes,' and I don't know but he isn't dead right on that. He asked me which TV was the best and I told him it worked like shoes; it mattered where he wanted to put it, what he wanted to watch on it and how much light there would be in the room. My job was to help him find the right one, and though the store and the manufacturers could try and give me spiffs to say this one is better or that one is awesome, fact is, if the TV doesn't fit like good boots, what the hell am I doing here?
And he lets out this big belly laugh and slaps me on the back like my old gym teacher from Texas used to, says "now here's somebody I can do business with!" and starts drawing me a diagram of this room he's got, where the lights are, how he wants the TVs and "don't worry, it's all gonna be sports, coming in live over satellite. I need something good for sports, don't got to worry about movies or nothing else."
So the man bought twelve flat-screen TVs from me for the sports bar he owned in town (and this was when high-definition flat-screens were new and cost easily a good month's wages minimum,) saved my business card because he, and I quote, "liked my moxie," and came back to buy TVs, computers, even sound systems and presents for his staff from me for his other businesses. With installations and delivery attached.
Best customer ever. I special-ordered stuff for him, sent him to competitors if they had a better product we didn't carry, whatever it took, and he liked that I was honest, I guess. The man just kept coming back for anything electronic he needed, which was a lot, for someone with that many small businesses, and he wanted no truck with any of my colleagues at the store.
Sometimes, even though I haven't worked that job in coming on ten years, he calls me up to get my advice on what to buy for this or that in the electronics or computer line, stuff like "do they make a cable that can connect an X to a Y," or "I need a nice gift for a [description of a person,] they like gadgets," or "what's a good projector that can fit in X space and do an image on a screen Y by Z big or so?" and I'll make him up a nice little list of suggestions with places he can showroom the prospects, three price quotes for each, that sort of thing, email it right over, and he mails me out a check I never asked for with 'purchase consulting' in the memo field. It's like the Hotel California of retail, but in a weirdly good way.