The Lady in Line

I found myself in line yesterday at a Dollar General behind a woman with a full shopping cart, and there was only one cash register open. I knew this would delay me, but so it goes. She got there first and that's that. 

That didn't annoy me so much, really. What annoyed me was when she began placing her items before the cashier for scanning. "I want to stop at $30," the shopper told the young woman.

Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. You filled your shopping cart as you browsed about the store, obviously speeding past the amount you could afford. You couldn't have kept a basic running count as you put things into the basket? You couldn't decide before you were at the checkout what items you wanted? 

It was rude and inconsiderate. The thing is, though, I ended up feeling kind of sorry for the woman. Judging by her speech and actions, I'm not sure how responsible for herself she really was. I was left with the impression that she honestly didn't understand the totality of what she was doing. 

It left me unsure what to think. I believe we make a mistake to completely absolve folks of such behavior lest personal responsibility be thrown overboard. Yet I don't know hiw accountable such people can be. Demanding too much when they perhaps can't help themselves may be too strident. Yet expecting nothing at all of them seems to me an affront to their dignity on another level. It amounts to pandering, to treating them as beyond hope of becoming better people. 

I'm just thinking out loud here. But they're thoughts I do think we do need to think.

Pure Copper

Whenever me Grandpa Joe would scrap out a fried arc welder he would toss the stripped copper into a 55 gallon drum. When the drum was filled, it was me Pops' job from early on to take it to the scrap yard.

The scrap yard they frequented was owned by an old gentleman. When Dad would go to put the drum on the scale the old man would ask him, "Young man, is that copper from the top all the way to the bottom?" He would motion with an upward pointer at the beginning, turning it down until he was pointing at the floor when he finished his question.

"Yes, sir," me Pops would always answer. He would add, "I can dump it onto the floor to show you."

Holding the palm of his right hand up as though to stop Dad in his tracks the man would reply, "Your word is enough."

This happened every time, me Pops often related, that he took copper out to scrap. "Young man, is that copper from the top all the way to the bottom?" "Your word is enough."

Dad wondered if perhaps it was some form of ritual, simple habit, or the owner's way of letting you know that he trusted you while being sure of what he was getting. Or maybe he simply believed in believing in people.

Well, a man's word should be his bond, right?

Let's Do

I visited my doctor yesterday for a routine checkup. All right, visited may not be quite the right word. It's isn't like we threw steaks on the grill and hoisted a few, you know.

"You haven't had a tetanus shot in awhile. Let's get a tetanus shot," the Doc told me.

He talks like that when he thinks I need something, but he never joins me. 'Let's see a cardiologist' or 'Let's go get four quarts of blood drawn' or 'Let's get bonked on the head with a mallet' he'll say. Yet it's always only me.

I didn't mind so much until the mallet thing. But I can't completely remember what it was for.

Nah, Nobody'll Notice

Several years ago me brother Phil had the opportunity to repair a drain snake cable. I don't recall where me or me Pops were that day, but so it goes.

The man brings in a large cage type snake to have an end installed on a cable he had broken. It's important to know that the unit was cage style, because that means you could see approximately how much cable was in it. The particular machine Phil dealt with had a capacity of 100 feet of 3/4 inch cable. This too is important to understand.

There was around 20 feet of cable in the machine, me brother guessed. "I can put an end on that, but it's really not enough to work with on main sewer lines," Phil advised the guy.

"But you can do it?" he said. Being told it can certainly be done, he instructed Phil to do it. So Phil did, and the man paid him.

Me brother went outside to help him load the machine onto his pickup truck. Then the man let the truth come out. "I rented this from a place and lost over 80 feet of cable in a sewer, so that's why I wanted you to put an end on it. Do you think they'll notice?"

Phil had to stifle a laugh. "I imagine they will," he opined, in as kindly a manner as he possible

What do you think? I bet you'd notice it was missing. Things like that are pretty obvious.

Marty's Retirement

We've had odd ways of being paid at the Shop. One invoice was settled in all ten dollar bills. Another involved $1890 in singles. One fella paid me Pops in two dollar bills all the time, every time. But we were never paid in quarters until yesterday.

This particular client, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, has been a royal pest, a total nuisance, for as long as I can remember. He became so bad we threw him out about thirty years ago with a vow to never do business with him again. We eventually relented. No good deed...

Anyhow, he owed me a hundred fifty bucks for a cable installation. "I only got quarters, Marty. Can I pay you in quarters?" Sure, fine, anything to get Cloyce out of my hair, at least for the moment.

He came in an hour later with the change in a bag. Unrolled. "There's only a hundred, Marty, I'm sorry, but I need my machine. Can I bring you back fifty?" Yes, all right, fine. Just get out of here.

When I got home last night I decided to go ahead and roll the quarters. There was $89.80. Not only was Cloyce short, one of his 'quarters' was a nickel.

So you know what? I'm retiring, effective immediately. For Cloyce only. I even edited my phone so that his number will come up Cloyce I'm retired. He better enjoy that machine, because from where I sit this morning I will never work on his stuff again.

Doesn't he owe you $60.20, Marty? Indeed he does. But I'm certain he'll forget about it and will argue he paid in full when he tries to come back again, and to be rid of him for sixty bucks in this day and age is a bargain, a price I'll pay without thinking twice. I shouldn't have ever allowed him back in the door in the first place.

The First, and Last, Place I Looked

Please tell me this has happened to you. Please tell me I'm not the only one.

I needed a distributor tube to finish a snake repair. Don't worry about what it is, just trust me it's essential and that I had to have it. When I began fixing the drain machine it came from I had set the thing aside for when I could reassemble said snake.

Saturday I was all ready to finish that repair. I could not find that tube anywhere. Ninety minutes of searching came up with zilch, zero, nada. Finally surrendering to the omnipotent forces of drain snake repair I decided to leave it to Monday. Well, after I tripped over some junk which should not have been there to trip over and skinned up my left knee pretty bad. But that story is for another day. You've done that too I'm sure.

I opened the old barn at 6:30 this morning to put out an APB on that distributor tube. May as well start early, I figured, because if I don't find it by 8 I'll just have to go to the parts house and get a replacement on my dime. Right is right, eh?

The first place I looked was the top drawer on my work bench. But it's not there. It cannot possibly be there. That's the first place I looked on Saturday.

It was there. 

How in the name of all that is good and holy could I have overlooked it? It wasn't hidden, wasn't buried under the flotsam and jetsam which hides so much in the Shop. It. Was. Right. There.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who's done that. Please.

Spam Spam Spam Spam Unlovely Spam

I get a ton of email. Of course, I have four active accounts. That undoubtedly uh, accounts for much of it. But if I were to guess, I'd say between them all there's around 100 or so new emails each day.

They're nearly all junk. I get messages from websites that I likely had a vague interest in yet they pester me as though their business depends on mine. Many of them are book promotion entrepreneurs, all of whom assure me I'll have the next Amazon best seller with a blockbuster movie deal if I simply give them mucho dinero. A lot are for senior products, unsurprising given my age. Many are from companies I dealt with once yet can't let go of the hope I'll buy from them again one day. The sales firm where I bought one heater for the old barn in 2017 comes to mind.

About the only email box which rarely explodes of a morning is my business one, which I guard closely exactly because of that. I don't want to neglect a client or prospect merely because they get buried in numbers.

But there is a point to which I'm happy it's all emails. I'd be swimming in paper if it were all traditional snail mail. The vast majority of email solicitations I can simply delete. I could build a funeral pyre if it were all print copies of nonsense. All that would make is a great send off one day.