I understand leaving it on or leaving the fuel off or leaving the side stand down or leaving a spark plug cap off from time to time and thinking you just ruined somebody's wonderful new ride...ehem, but what I'm saying is how could they not bother to know how to use the choke after they find it? No need to get the manual to find out which way is "run" or ask an old knuckle-dragger what it is at all?
And what's with this bragging about a bike running so well it "never needs choke"? Buddy if your bike never needs choke you have some chubby idle mix and more often than not a HIGH idle.
I can't count the number of bikes I get with an extremely high idle, such as Goldwings always idling at an indicated 2,000rpm to compensate for bad tuning because it was either so bad it wouldn't idle any lower or it was dying with the engine cold and they never adjusted it once hot. FYI, GL clocks are bad at the low end, so indicated 2,000 is even higher! They sound like an HU1 helicopter lifting off at that high of an idle!
Then when they get their bike back and it idles correctly, they say "nah, sounds like it's bout ta die" or on CB750's, XS-triples and Goldwings, the clutch starts rattling and banging at low RPM and even after you reassure them by pulling in the clutch lever to make the sound disappear, they take it home and raise the damn idle.
Then you try and explain to a guy NOT to touch ANYTHING after you just spent hours setting his carbs, only to get this call: "it died as soon as I started it this morning, so I turned that idle stop until it ran and it was great until I was riding and came to a stop. Suddenly it's really loud and won't go back to idle".
Hey, it was running great until YOU violated it.
And no matter how you reassure somebody that starting a bike with the choke is entirely normal, they kinda grunt and act as if you're making excuses for doing crap work because they simply won't grasp the concept. Even after you explain it, they feel that using the choke is a sort of bandaid to a buggered engine and feel ashamed to need it. Once they get the thing home, they know more than you do and they're going to show you so. Then I get that call...
I know I'm venting. I don't expect everybody to share MY interests in mechanics, just as I wouldn't know what to do with a painters palette. But when a mechanic bothers to take the time to tell ya something and I say "gizza ring if you have any questions" and you toss it all out the damn window, you're setting your self up.