Find Me a Two-By-Four

Today I would like to exhibit for your edification a series of in-depth graphic drawings depicting proper utilization of a Home Depot Aisle.

.....Unfortunately, that graphic depiction does not exist.

Know why? Because nobody in the world is dumb enough to seriously be unable to properly handle a Home Depot aisle. I mean, right? It’s an aisle. You walk down it, staying out of everyone’s way, moving with the flow of traffic, until you pause - just long enough to swoop into the bins and collect your kill.

Right?

No. Scratch that – it’s true.

I spent the better part of Saturday afternoon inside Home Depot tearing the store apart inside my head while waiting on a collection of mental-ward-escapees to incompetently scrape about directly in my path. It was absolutely painful and Home Depot, God bless them, does their dead-level best to make sure there is no way to segregate the idiots.

What you really need is an idiot-area where the incompetent can congregate, but that’s not going to happen. Instead, Home Depot is happy to provide each and every one of you with a big damn orange cart gigantic enough to see from the air - complete with casters that don’t turn, broken wheel bearings, and no rub-rail; then send you careening down any one of 30 narrow, concrete, steel-walled aisles directly at me.

I had to wait 2 minutes (2 FULL MINUTES) for a big fat idiot to get off his 1990’s- vintage-Powertel with some other idiot who was absolutely no help in picking between two $3 boxes of nails; all the while Home Depot employees fairly streaming past him un-questioned. Buddy, whoever you are - I’ll give you the $3 for the extra box of nails plus an extra $48 just to get the hell out of my way.

And for you folks out there who don’t know who you are, but perhaps vaguely identify with the individuals in this narrative - let me help you identify yourselves; if you pulled up in a 1999 model Camry expecting to get a 4’x8’ sheet of plywood in it and you don’t own a quality hammer – go immediately to customer service. Please do not call in a lifeline from mid-aisle in the fasteners section; you are not the kind of person who has friends that can help. Instead, go to Wal-Mart and call whoever you want from the “gaming” aisle and forget about building a doghouse – it’s not in the cards.

If you’re the woman in the gigantic wide-open plywood aisle wearing flip flops and a Bluetooth device; and your phone rings: DON’T ANSWER IT – NOBODY IMPORTANT IS CALLING YOU, I PROMISE.

No matter who you are – please; by all means - do continue to consult everyone except the Home Depot employees – that makes the most sense given your options.

I can find nearly anything in Home Depot in the dark and completely by feel. Do you know why?

Because I can read....And BECAUSE I can read – I know where the flashlight aisle is.

There is no excuse for you to stand under the Home Depot aisle marker sign clearly stating “LUMBER” in BLAZE ORANGE and ask yourself, me, your wife, or anybody else where the 2x4s are. It’s just not reasonable. The sign is 15 feet wide and ORANGE for crying out loud. Look up occasionally, and watch out for falling pianos.

In spite of my rant against all things shopper-related I am occasionally impressed by a fellow shopper or store employee. This time it’s White Porsche Guy.

White Porsche Guy: God Bless You for going to the furthest spot in the parking lot to park in order to save the finish on your sparkly white, very gay, Porsche. And God Bless You for parking so close to me – literally the only other car in that row - that I couldn’t open my passenger door. White Porsche Guy: May the road rise to meet you.

….And may that road be a road fraught with potholes that ultimately terminates in an ocean.