Frustrations and the Big Box

Once I was looking for some (any) kind of sheet material to use as shims to level some casters. I didn’t have a planer at the time, so I was hoping I could find something close to the right thickness.

Me: I’m looking for plastic sheets, somewhere around a quarter to 3/8” thick.
Clerk: What do you want it for?
Me: Shims. I’m shimming the casters on a rolling cabinet.
Clerk: We don’t have anything like that.

Or:

Me: Where’s the glue?
Clerk: What kind?
Me: Yellow wood glue.
Clerk: All the glues are on aisle 5.

Then there was the time I bought 6’ of chain. The flooring was 12” tiles, so they had conveniently marked out 1 foot increments right on the seams. Fine. Except the clerk put the start of the chain on the 1 instead of the 0. Just for fun, I let him cut it, then said it was only 5 feet. He disagreed, put the chain back on the floor, end on 1, and said, “See? 6 feet. One, two, three, four, five, six.” I tried to tell him he should have put the end on 0, which was a mistake. Finally I asked for a manager, who came over with a tape measure. Sure enough, when they measured it with the tape, 5 feet. They couldn’t figure out why. I even showed them that the end of the tape is 0, but they never did understand. The manager finally just said, “Give him another foot.”

-- My broker promised me he would treat my money as if it were his own. Trouble is, he did.

JJ,

I’m sure you knew just where you’d like to put that “other foot” . . .

3 years ago I took on a project as the GC for my own home. First we ripped off the second floor (while living there). Once the second floor was complete I moved our kitchen into the basement and ripped out the entire first floor. Most major supplies were bought from a wholesale house but there was always something I needed at HD. My major frustration was that I would be there 4 – 5 times a week to pick up the odds and ends we needed. There were times I would be spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars there and I would need to wait on line for 30, 40 or even 90 minutes to pay for my stuff. The manager would only have 1 cashier working along with 4 self serve registers (BTW there was usually only 1 or 2 of the 4 registers were working)

You would think the manager would have better control on the store and the flow of customers. It was better to go to a small lumberyard and pay a higher price and not to wait.

To this day I try to not go back if I don’t have to.

-- Whether You Think You Can or You Think You Can't, YOU ARE RIGHT!!!