A Hostile Environment for Young People Who Wish to Try Out Violins Before Plunking Down the Better Part of $10,000 for One

a reasonable facsimile of a member of the local sales force at the musical instrument  store in my area

We're on our way to get a new violin. We just left the local store because they won't let "kids" play the floor models. I showed them my ID to prove that I'm nearly 21, and my uncle told them I have dual  degrees in violin and piano performance (he didn't even mention my biochemistry degree, as it wasn't particularly pertinent, and if the floor salesmen weren't going to be swayed by degrees in music performance, the chances of them being impressed by any sort of pre-med degree were somewhere between zero and negative ten), but that information wasn't good enough for them. My uncle asked for them to let me play a student rental model to show them my skill level, but they wouldn't even let me do that. (He even tried getting them to allow me to play one of their pianos, with the stretch in logic that if I'm as proficient in piano as my uncle says, chances are that I have at least minimal violin skill. The store rottweilers weren't buying that, either, even as a two-year-old was using his fists to bang away on the keyboard of one or the more expensive pianos on their showroom floor. 

So we're on our way to the city. My uncle told the store manager as we left that he was planning in spending 10K on a violin (I don't know if that is true or not), but even that didn't seem to sway her.

So we're off to the city, where we'll have a bigger selection of instruments and hopefully nicer salespeople. We stopped at my condo on the way out of town to pick up a photocopy of my diploma in violin performance  and transcripts just in case other salespeople are equally persnickety who might possibly be swayed by evidence of musical  degrees so that I might actually be allowed to touch a violin today.

a dead-ringer for the store manager who would not allow  me to touch any instruments: such a dead-ringer, in fact that in might actually be the store manager; I'm not saying; I've been taught to avoid litigation at most [though not all] costs