Blue over threadlocker

Yesterday I needed a tube of threadlocker blue, a liquid which is used on small bolts to help 'lock' them in place as it dries. It's sort of a specialty glue really. I also needed a couple electrical switches. And as I was close to Big Box Mart in my travels, I stopped for them.

The switches were easy to find: right in the aisle with hundreds of electrical components, exactly as you'd expect. Finding what I needed there, I thought it made sense for the threadlocker to be in the aisle with nuts and bolts. So I go to the front of the building and study the signs at the ends of the aisles to find the one with nuts and bolts, found it, and marched down it.

No threadlocker. I combed the aisle for a few minutes, searching intently and not finding the stuff. I then violated the guy code, broke down, and asked an employee where threadlocker might be. He takes me straight to the place where it supposedly had been for years. But it wasn't there last night. The guy complains that Big Box Mart likes to change how its stores are arranged from time to time, often without letting everyone know the new stocking order, but gets out his walkie talkie and asks someone where the threadlocker was moved to. "Aisle Four, just about halfway up," I hear a voice say. So it's off to aisle four.

There was still no threadlocker to be found, not around the middle, either end, or parts in between. I finally gave up and went to the paint counter at the end of the aisle. The man there said to try the next aisle over, aisle three, about halfway down.

I looped around onto aisle three, and immediately saw it was the aisle with the electrical switches. And on the opposite side of the aisle, barely ten feet from where I had picked up the switches I wanted, was the threadlocker. I had wasted 20 minutes for an item virtually next to where I had started.

Sheesh. I simply don't understand that shelving scheme at all.