Re-Afirmation

Whoa! My mind is racing and my thoughts are careening in 20 different directions as I type so forgive me.  This is how I gather my thoughts...incessant rambling (a personality quirk akin to that of a chihuahua). Today was wild, mad busy! I'd like to thank all the wonderful folks who came by the store today!  Thanks Jerry for printing out those really cool business cards.  He knew I ran out of the old ones and whipped out some real sweet ones on his home computer.  Hes a cool guy folks.  Brings his granddaughter bike in for re-pairs and no sooner does he leave with it but he's back in an hour with another granddaughters bike to fix up!  Thank you so much to our new bestest buddy Chip.  Not only has he been bringing us goodies from his private stash of bike parts but he came up with (from a brief concept of ours)  a cool new logo and shirt design for our shop!  Soon as I can figure out how I'll post it here.  And "GOOD LUCK Chip" on your most re-cent book tour!  We hope you sell a million copies! A tip of the hat to our "bike Junkies" for their daily visit to see whats new.  Don't worry eventually your hubby Will be ridding right along side of you! And to the wonderful young couple with the two sweet children.  The dad was so sweet when he had to leave his young sons bike for re-pairs and had to re-assure him that the bike would be ok and that I was going to make it feel better! SO damn cute!
I am talking to you amongst about a dozen or so re-pairs that had come in in the span of three hours, as well as two rather large trade/purchases which quite frankly I have no freakin' clue where I'm gonna put.  But hey, that's OK I am blessed to be busy and welcome more! Actually the re-pairs are done but most people don't realize they'll be done that quick.  They usually plan on having to leave them at a bike shop for a couple of days and are quite shocked (and unprepared) when you call them 2 or 3 hours later and tell them they're ready, so here they sit.
But, anyway I told you that story to tell you this one.
Let me tell two things; 1) I usually try and put a positive spin on every day (even the bad ones) but here now you will hear a very uncustomary gripe session from me so I'll understand if you stop reading now. 2) I have to say that, in part I screwed up.  I took someone (or more accurately another company, our whole seller for their word)
OK.
So a couple of weeks ago a young man came into our store looking for a nice Mountain bike, something a little higher end.  I just happened to have one of the later Gary Fisher's in the back about 85% done. I was waiting in a rear wheel with a six lug disc brake set-up. Not something we usually see here, so I was debating whether or not to buy a new one (new..evil word).  This bike was a wreck when we got it.  It looked like someone rolled it down a mountain rather then ride it.  But torn down cleaned up and re-painted looked rather SWEEEEET!  He loved it dropped a deposit on it and with my assurances that it would be done in a couple of days left happy.  Then the trouble started.  After two weeks of promises from my whole seller that they would first ship spokes to me, then giving me the wrong price, then saying they were out of stock, an aborted attempted to re-string the wheel (no fault of the fine gentleman Bullet, who tried valiantly to help me) And in the end deciding to just order another whole new wheel (eating the cost of course for all the customers troubles) which I should have done in the first place, only then to find out on Thursday that they never shipped the darn thing and I was going to have to RE-ORDER and wait until next Tuesday (I hope) t get it!
WHEW!  Well needless to say our customer was NOT happy and gave me a well deserved tongue lashing. Although all things considered he was rather conservative and understanding given the circumstances.  He had had plans for the weekend for the bike and this whole debacle screwed him up (sorry) and was offering to pick up the bike as is (with a price break) and get a wheel from another shop, and mount it himself.  He asked if I would mind checking around to see if another shop in town had the wheel he needed.  Not that I want to loose the business, but wanting to help solve his dilemma I started calling.  Well out of four shops I called I found one that had it, I won't say which one of course because here's where the story takes a sickening turn...
With part number, dimensions and description in hand I asked for the wheel.  The service department at "blank" told me they had several in stock, no problem and they were only $119.99...ONLY $119.99....!!!
"Back the truck up!"  This store orders their parts from the SAME whole seller as we do.   Its the same EXACT wheel that we ordered from the same exact catalog from the same exact place that we both pay the same exact price...(actually these folks are much bigger then us so they probably get a little better price break) but the wheel only costs...$25.00!!!!
I'll give you a moment.
How...what...who... I mean I can understand making a profit, that's what keeps us going but seriously, we charge $45.00 for this wheel and feel a twinge of guilt for that!  Maybe I'm just naive but this just seems wrong. Yes businesses have overhead, but if you have to charge that much to cover it maybe you have to eliminate some overhead!  I kid the big guys sometimes and lord knows I can be full of sarcasm (my therapist says that's anger, and anger is bad) But all jokes aside this is just plain wrong!  Look times are tough, lord knows we all know it but don't you think that corporate greed and outright highway robbery should just become a thing of the past.  We all gotta help each other outta this mess not just help ourselves.
Love ya'll and goodnight.