Stories from Aisle 9

Yinzers,

Seeing that every Deep Thought Thursday has been a story from the old-time hardware store at which I am employed, we're changing the name to "Stories from Aisle 9."

Today's story involves the six P's: Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Production. A customer came into the store - well, sent his wife into the store...mistake #1 - and was presented a query that simply baffled me. "Where is your hardware section?" Awestruck at the question, I simply held out my arms as Ricardo Montalban would have and said "Here." So I knew it would be a rocky road to get what they needed. After a quick game of 20 questions, I deduced that the holy grail of this trip was smaller than a breadbox and for a screen door.

It turns out that the master fabricator who sent his wife needed simple screen door window clips. The small piece of information he failed to tell his wife was what kind of window clip. There are approximately 9 different kinds based upon the style door and material being put into the window. "He said he only wanted one," says the frustrated patroness. "Well, there are four corners in a window, so they come in packs of four," was my rebuttal. The poor woman ended up coming back to the store 5 times, exchanging for 5 different sets of clips.

There are two morals to this story. #1: If you are building it, you go get the parts. #2: Plan your work so that you can go to get supplies a minimal number of times.

B Brog