One sunny afternoon last fall, I was jogging through Colorado National Monument when a mountain lion crossed my path. He (or maybe she) loped casually about 75 yards uphill on my favorite trail. I froze. So this is how it ends, I thought. My obit would read, “He died doing what he loved — and then got eaten by a lion.”
Surprise. The lion walked on without so much as a sideways glance and disappeared. I felt lucky to have seen such a magnificent beast, and even luckier that this man-eater ignored me.
Usually, being ignored is not something that most of us appreciate. For instance, if a grocery clerk suddenly disappears when I’m jogging up the canned goods aisle in search of toilet paper, I mutter, “What am I? Chopped liver?”
Nowhere does this happen more often — to me, at least — than in a big box store. Before you write me off, I’m not anti-Wal-Mart. But big box store clerks, sporting colorful vests and calluses on their calluses, can be harder to find than the chainsaw oil or water softener salt that I’m hunting for. So I’m trying harder to avoid such places where most products come from China, and the customer seems little more to the store manager than a walking bar code.
I know what you’re thinking. Get real, pal. We live in a global economy. Even your corner mom-and-pop store, if they’re still in business, sells Chinese imports. Granted. But at least your corner mom and pop knows their only way to compete with national big boxes is customer service.
Case in point: I busted a snowshoe while jogging at the monument a few months ago. A rivet had popped that held binding to snowshoe. The result was a clumsy jog. Imagine a walrus with a broken flipper. Next day I went shopping for help.
A couple of friendly clerks in some Grand Junction sporting goods stores said my snowshoe was fixable, but would have to be shipped to Denver or Maine for repairs. I’d lose time and money on shipping. So I visited a local hardware store.
A clerk, wearing a nametag that said “Larry,” stopped me on the way toward the fasteners’ aisle. He examined the broken shoe with the empathy of an ER doc. “Let’s see what we got here,” Larry said. After rummaging through several boxes, he found a screw-type fastener that was the same size as my popped rivet. “C’mon.” We walked over to the store’s workshop, where another employee, wearing a nametag that said “Darrell,” grabbed his tools and went to work.
It wasn’t as simple as you might expect. The rivet holes in the fabric pieces had to line up before the steel fastener could be inserted and tightened. It took Darrell and Larry at least 20 minutes. They exerted pressure on the fabric and fastener while I held my snowshoe steady.
When they got done, it was good as new. “How much?” I asked. “How about a dollar,” Larry said. “Cost of the hardware.” I thanked them, noting that their big box competitors probably would not have fixed it.
“Right,” they said. “So come back.”
Now, a confession. I shop at Wal-Mart, Lowe’s and other big boxes because they are conveniently located, have low prices and stay open late. Some of my friendly neighbors probably stock shelves or run cash registers there, and manage to disappear when I’m driving a shopping cart up the paint aisle in search of a new whatchamacallit.
Sure, it bugs me to spend dollars in a store whose company is headquartered in Arkansas or Seattle, knowing my money could be spent just as easily on a locally owned store. It’s no secret that is why non-Starbucks coffee shops, non-Borders bookstores, and most hardware stores are relics of the past.
But the next time I need a hammer or chainsaw oil or water softener salt or anything else in the way of hardware, I’ll consult Larry or Darrell first. I’m tired of feeling like chopped liver.
Eric Sandstrom (esandstr@mesastate.edu) teaches at Mesa State College in the mass communication program.
