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John Coloccia
01-19-2011, 7:53 PM
So I went looking for some bearings tonight, and was actually treated rather rudely by my local hardware store over the phone. I asked them if they carried bearings.

them: "What's that?"
me: "A bearing"
them: "Huh?"
me: "You know a bearing. A ball bearing"
them: "Ohhhhhh! Let me check"

a few minutes later someone else comes on the line

them: "Sir, you're looking for a bearing, or a ball bearing"
me: "I'm looking for a bearing"
them [in an very edgy and annoyed tone]: "Well, you had us looking for ball bearings...just little ball bearings, not actual bearings"

At this point, I explained to the gentleman that it's not my fault his associate doesn't know what a bearing is, and that I had to say "ball" bearing to get my point across, but that the term "ball bearing" is also widely accepted so as to differentiate it from, say, a "roller bearing".

So I'm talking with my wife about this and having a good chuckle when we started thinking about all the fun we can have asking for things that sound like they should exist, but don't exist.

"Do you carry a screw coupler?"

"Where do you keep your button hangers?"

"I need a nailing plate"

"Do you have any pipe washers in stock?"

Oh, think of the endless hours of fun in my small, little, snowy New England town.

mickey cassiba
01-19-2011, 8:30 PM
John, it's not nice to tease the critters. They're there 'cause they don't fit anywhere else.

Curt Stivison
01-19-2011, 8:53 PM
Don't forget the sky hook. Everyone should have one.

John M Wilson
01-19-2011, 9:28 PM
Or the metric channelocks...

Dave Lehnert
01-19-2011, 9:43 PM
When I worked in retail we would call the new guy and ask for "Horizontal Downspouts" or "Pre-dug post holes"

Eric DeSilva
01-20-2011, 8:57 AM
"Pre-dug post holes"

I'd pay for those...

Lee Schierer
01-20-2011, 11:03 AM
It must be a long winter in Connecticut.......

Don't forget: elbow grease, 50' of shore line, left handed monkey wrenches, board stretchers, smoke shifters.....

or ask for obscure real items like: plaster washers, corrogated fasteners, feather boards, ice picks, tire irons .....

Matt Meiser
01-20-2011, 11:16 AM
In college I worked a few summers on the tech support line for a company that sells shock absorbers (I won't say which one but they are in Monroe Michigan ;).) We'd get all kinds of weird calls--like someone looking for shocks for a red van. Or for the Iron Dragon roller coaster at Cedar Point. Or the Batmobile. Seriously--actual requests.

Dan Hintz
01-20-2011, 11:21 AM
Best "request" I ever saw was on American Hotrods (the Boyd show). The shop manager was always a real jerk, few redeeming personal qualities other than he could play a good practical joke (even when it was only for his benefit). A new guy was starting in the shop, and instead of mentoring the kid, he just wanted him out of his hair (how is he supposed to learn?).

So after sending him on a wild goose chase for a left-handed door handle (poor guy), he sent him outside to paint something with a rattle can. He told the kid to shake the can to make sure it was mixed well, and it would stop rattling when it was completely mixed. No idea how long that poor kid was out there due to TV editing, but I got the feeling it was a while.

Brian Kent
01-20-2011, 11:30 AM
Do you give free installation with your hammer filters, or just in-store assembly?
What's the price difference in your 4-hour and 8-hour plywood rental?
I need a full set of oven-casters.

Jerome Hanby
01-20-2011, 11:33 AM
We would send the new co-ops around to the other engineering labs after wire stretchers.

Wayne Hendrix
01-21-2011, 1:43 PM
An army buddy once sent a newbie to get a box of grid squares (a feature on a map) and he essentially went AWOL for three days. When he returned he apologized for being gone so long and explained that the only place he could find them was at his dad's house and presented them a box full of maps cut up into the grid squares. They thought it was so funny they didnt even punish him for taking a three day vacation.

Rick Fisher
01-21-2011, 9:25 PM
I have been in that industry for 25 years.. Sigh.. lol.

More commercial.. but I hired a French Canadian Forklift operator who had pulled drywall in Quebec City.. He was a god send.. Hired him on a chance, off a resume.. He arrived from Quebec a week later with his brother, who had moved south a few years later.. Turned out he could not speak a word of english.. lol. His brother introduced him in Engl. ish and stayed 2-3 hours to translate.

I was desperate.. Showed him his machine and handed him an order.. he was magic.. perfect work.. Flawless.. I could tell in 2 mintues, he was a pro.. So I kept him..
4-5 days later.. he comes in to tell me we are running low on *!*** *!** .. Very dirty word.. but with a very proffesional and mature look on his face.. Serious..

A couple of the delivery packers had decided to teach him the english names of all the product we sold... Sigh

He took a bunch of teasing.. 3 months later.. 7:10 in the morning .. one of the mouthy packers got his bell rung.. took him over a minute to get up off the gravel lot.. lol. Teasing the french guy ended on that day..


Edit..

Funny.. That was 20 years ago.. Wholesale drywall and insulation supplies.. A forklift driver knocking driver on his butt was just conflict resolution. I remember a shoplifter needing stitches when he finally got to leave.. None of that is acceptable today.. but it seemed to work back then...

Jim Rimmer
01-21-2011, 9:44 PM
How many guys on a flight line have been sent after a bucket of prop wash? And then there's the new sailor that gets sent to bow on the ship to keep an eye out for the mail buoy.

Rod Torgeson
01-22-2011, 10:53 AM
I went into a Best Buy store one time and ask if they had turntables to record LP vinyl records. The reply was, Huh? whats a vinyl LP?

Rod<---in Appleton, WA

Mark Bolton
01-22-2011, 11:16 AM
So I went looking for some bearings tonight, and was actually treated rather rudely by my local hardware store over the phone. I asked them if they carried bearings.

them: "What's that?"
me: "A bearing"
them: "Huh?"
me: "You know a bearing. A ball bearing"
them: "Ohhhhhh! Let me check"



I could actually see the confusion at some level. I have been in and around the industrial mechanical supply business a bit and actually worked with a friend for a few years getting a fluid power business off the ground and dealt a lot with this sort of stuff even on an industrial level.

If you walked into to a counter and simply asked for for the bearing and then clarified with "you know a ball bearing" I could easily see them walking you to a hillman type rack/drawer with various sized individual ball bearings rather than a shelf with various I.D., O.D., and thickness, spherical bearing sets, sealed, open, caged, roller, tapered roller, and so on.

Oddly my wife and I were driving around yesterday picking up some 1" and 1 1/4" bore two bolt and four bolt flange bearings. We were at places like Motion Industries, Bearings Inc., and so on rather than hardware but we had a similar conversation in that what I miss in a great supply house or hardware store is when you walk in to the place and ask for something and the guy says "well, tell me what your trying to do...." Thats when you get yourself, consider myself a very savvy mechanic/designer/fabricator/problem solver, AND the guy behind the counter who is seeing items every day, knows his inventory, knows his availability, and you are both working together to find a great solution to a situation.

I simply dont come across that anymore other than on very rare occasion. Our location doesnt help but when I was on the delivering end of the problem solving in these type businesses we took pride in getting involved in what our customer was doing and the sale wasnt what drove us, what drove us was trying to blow their mind with a solution that was far better, cleaner, slicker, than what they had originally been thinking of.

I often find myself now explaining what I am trying to do while a blank faced clerk stands over me looking through the drawers/shelves as if to monitor for theft or something.

Mark

John alder
01-26-2011, 5:53 PM
In a real hardware store rat wire is refered to as hardware cloth