Ahh, the hardware store, filled with solutions for things that are broken. Home Depot is not a hardware store, it’s a big box discount mart where you might be able to save some money but never find the right ‘parts’. The worthiness of fixing has returned. People value well made objects and understanding how things work is growing the ‘do-it-yourself’ movement. Parts are the points that wear down and to fix it you’ll need a trip to the hardware store.
Ace Hardware in Sandy is a classic hardware store. I’ve spent hours walking it’s aisles and discovering all manner of ‘parts. These are usually small pieces, not sealed individually in envelopes of semi rigid plastic but rather stored in bins which have been arranged by type and size. To collect your parts you pull the number of pieces you need from a bin, place in a bag and write on this bag the unit price.
Just the other day I was picking up a handful of eye bolts to terminate a run of twine from plant base to post which will serve as climbing support, when I witnessed the classic Hardware Newb blunder. This guy and his wife in the parts aisle caught my attention. Don’t get me wrong a second pair of hands is occasionally helpful, it’s just very infrequent that a couple picks parts together. Efficiency typically dictates that if your hardware store stop requires two people they are on different assignments meeting up at the counter later. Pulling parts is not a team sport and it is not very helpful to have someone asking you questions about how a particular bolt is going to fit when you are trying to decide if a carrage bolt might work better than a machine bolt. In this instance the guy had found the proper size and was counting them into his hand. The wife asked if she could write down the unit price for him, actually she did this a couple of times, in a very helpful tone. The guy brushed the questions aside. A few minutes later as I stood behind the guy and his spouse at the counter there was a question about a unit cost of one type of bolt from the pile he had dumped onto the counter. He didn’t know, he offered a guess “thirteen no maybe fifteen cents … ” to which the clerk shot him a look and rung up the higher amount. To her credit the wife did not, in the store at least, remind him of her offer to help. Trust me even a couple of different part unit prices are hard to hold in your head, that bag makes it much easier at check out and the weathered old coot, the one who’s name is know by all the staff , writes down the unit prices on a parts bag. Ace is the place when parts are needed … js
