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Hippie Chick Working At Home Depot Garden Center.


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Me: I'm looking for herbicide.

 

Her: What kind?

 

Me: The kind that kills everything. I'm clearing a homesite, dealing with some intense native vegitation.

 

Her: Well, there's this (leds me over to other aisle, picks up bottle that has rainbows and smiling sunshines and unicorns on it). It's enviromently friendly, organic...

 

(cuts her off)

 

Me: I'm looking for the opposite of that. I want enviromentally unfriendly, since the goal is to kill everything in the enviroment. What do you have in terms of chemicals?

 

Her: (looks disgusted) You relize that kind of stuff is pretty harmful?

 

Me: That's what I'm hoping for. I intend to mix it with diesel fuel to make even worse. Can you point me to the industrial stuff, please?

 

Her: Hold on (storms off, walks over to 'manager' looking guy, emotes some sort of moral dillema, manager guy comes over)

 

Him: What can I help you with?

 

Me: I need the most viciuous herbicide you have.

 

Him: Well, I think that's Killzall...

 

Me: I don't know what that is but going on its name, I think its precisely what I'm looking for.

 

 

The moral of the story is that it works very well in slightly higher than suggested concentraions, and mixed in with diesel.

Had some heavy gauge hypodermic needles sitting around from the old days. Used them to inject straight Killzall concentrte right into the stumps or rootstock of heavy vegitation. Works. Didn't even have to tie off.

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I'm just saying, if you're an ardent environmentalist, maybe home depot's garden center isn't right for you. She's probably helping her green anarchist friends steal that place blind

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I think that's a decent enough place for that kind of person. you just have to accept that not everyone is there for the same reasons. a person who has come in to buy vegetables is more likely to be poor and retarded, for example.

 

Nonsense. The only reason for a garden centre is herbicide.

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I think the story is bullshit. I go to Home Depots and Lowes all the time and if there is anything that is patently obvious is that the old knowledgeable about hardware tools white guy is becoming a thing of myth. It's 99% probability that if it was a young chick she was unknowledgable as hell and blatantly an overly tatooed lesbian who got the job from her network of friends. And also not a chick that gave a damn about the environment or helping you. And she would have been all into anything that with a title like Killzitall.

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I go to Home Depots and Lowes all the time and if there is anything that is patently obvious is that the old knowledgeable about hardware tools white guy is becoming a thing of myth.

 

Very sadly, he has become a thing of myth. He's out there, though. You're not going to find him in Home Depot, Lowes, Tractor Supply, Wal Mart or the like, but you will find him at locally owned and operated franchises like Aces, True Valus, Hardware Hank, occasionally Menards.

 

Sometimes I go to Matty Ks, which is a locally owned Hardware Hank affiliate, they're pretty good. Small independants are the best, though. I have a friend who lives way the **** down on the SE side of Chicago in a neighborhood called Hegwisch. It's a blue-collar enclave right in the IN border, mostly Polish and Serbian, but changing, now mostly Hispanic but with holdouts. They have a little local hardware store there that's just gold. The 90+ year old mother at the cash register, the 60+ year old son in the back fixing stuff, who does indeed know every single thing about hardware.

 

No doubt, though, that if yuo started a hardware store called "Old White Guy Hardware" and hired only old white guys, after the initial shock and protests died down, it would probably make a ton of money. I'm pretty sure the closest thing I can imagine to a perfectly contented life would be running a little hardware store.

 

You can judge all hardware stores by this one sign: If you cannot buy a single screw, a single bolt or a single sheet of sandpaper, they are no good.

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You can judge all hardware stores by this one sign: If you cannot buy a single screw, a single bolt or a single sheet of sandpaper, they are no good.

 

You can do all that at Home Depot. It's just when you go into Ace with that weird shaped bolt, or odd piece of metal you need to replace. You can find that old guy, tell him what you are fixing or building, and if they don't have the piece you are looking for, he will help you figure out a way to fix/build it with what they have.

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If you ever have the misfortune of having a hardware need in Lincoln, Nebraska, there is exactly one place to go if you need advice or some obscure part, and that's Wolfe Ace Hardware. Nominally an Ace Chain, it's been owned by the same family since 82. It's in a tiny building. I've never been in a commercial business that has more narrow aisles (outside of maybe a crazy paperback used bookstore or something). And they stuff is piled to the ceiling in an almost haphazard way. I'm sure it's breaking firecodes. You basically have to ask for help to find anything, because it's so tightly packed and crazy. But it's the tits. The people there know their hardware. If I know what I want, I go big box like Home Depot. If I don't know what I want, I go there.

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Ha, this obviously touched a nerve with me. I mean, fck me, I am the guy always taking up for the gays and lesbos and whoever, but goddam, if you don't know a thing about say, "hardware" don't ****ing work there. I will say for the most part the employees are trained to tell you where stuff is, just not what to do with it or anything about it. Hell, I stopped by the garden center needing to quickly grab a couple plants the old lady requested and asked a young lesbo if they had them and where they were, "impatiens" are probably one of the most common annuals in the store. She didn't have a clue and took me to some trees. I swear she must have just smoked a bong and snorted a line as she was all herky jerky and weird acting. I was just staring at her in confusion and in midstream she simply walked away and started doing something else. wtf?

 

I love the haphazard old hardware stores and old guys who know everything you guys describe. Loved the analogy about the old bookstore. Perfect. Now just stick Tim the Toolman in there and I"d be in heaven!

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The public deserves what they've gotten.

In exchange for saving sixty cents on a box of screws, they're willing to accept zero vocational compotence in the salespeople.

I can live with it on some stuff... I don't need anyone to tell me what shirt to buy or what milk I prefer with my cereal, but for ****s sake if you're tasked with managing the nut and bolt aisle, please at least know how to use a thread pitch gauge... or even just know what one is?

 

Small scale home hardware isn't something well served by the boxmart model.

You need men who understand the shit they're selling, since it can be tricky.

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I went to that store today, to find a magnetic stud finder ( that finds the carpenter nails , so in theory they find right in the center of the stud.) Old man wolfe ( who had to be closer to 90 than 80), talked about how you can't trust that, and to make sure you drill a tiny hole first, to make sure you've got the stud. Great advice.

 

His dipshit grandson didn't know anything, but he was about 16 so you can't expect him to. Can't hate on bringing a kid along in the family biz, tho. I swear to god this place sells as much shit as menards, but in 1-100th of the space.

 

I also bought a single piece of sand paper, to sand my beloved Dewit Diamond Hoe handle with.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm not sure when they did it, but Ace changed it's jingle from Ace is the place with the helpful hardware men" to "ace is the place with the helpful hardware folks". As if I've ever had even seen a woman at an ace hardware store do more than work the register. Maybe work the season garden center. Maybe. I've certainly never had one help me find a bolt or tool

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Aces can be spotty since I don't think they're really hard-core about franchise operator standards like, say, a Hampton Inn or a Subway sandwiches- I've been in shity Aces (Coastal Maryland, 2006)- but generally speaking, a lot of the indies have gone Ace as their wholesaler but still maintain a small shop ethic in expertise and product lines. I'll certainlly try any Ace before I go into a Home Depot.

 

The Ace I patronize has the best nut and bolt section ever, the guy who is designated with that part of the store is actually a retired machinst, so it's pretty awesome that he can not only recognize standard thread pitches and bolt diameters from casual glance, but also has a rockstar-like knowledge of applications.

 

You don't get this sort of thing in box stores. I went into a Harbor Freight recently because I needed a line level and they had them for like 2 cents (or whatever)- the employees appeared to be high school kids and sympathy-hires from the nearby home for mental retards.

 

Personally, I view my hardware man the same as my physician or my art dealer. My physician has seen my balls, my art dealer would like to and my hardware proprieter has a pair. It's an intimate relationship that ultimately, boils down to testicles.

 

Another rule for good hardware stores: A hardware store cannot be good unless somewhere, near the checkout, there is a display case of expensive American made pocket knives. If they instead have a plastic candy bucket full of cheap Oriental knives, it cannot be a good store.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I work for Lowe's and this makes me happy that my main competition is that dumb.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Scorched the front few threads on my Dremel head when the flex shaft bound up.

My place has a decent Dremel accessories selection, so I went in on the hail mary that they may actually have rebuild components.

My usual guy (retired machinist) looks it over, says it's perfectly good, just needs to have the head recrowned on lathe. Bring it back disassembled from the motor body so he can chuck it up, he'll do it for me at no cost. Took it apart in the back seat of my car, brought it back in, he put in his lathe, cutd off the bad part leaving me with a perfectly functional head. I tried to tip him 10, he wouldn't take it. Guess I'll just send him a pizza tomorrow.

 

If you can find this in any Home Depot on planet earth, I'll lick your ass.

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