Even At Christmas

You can't escape it even on December 23.

The Port Huron (Fort Gratiot Township, actually) Home Depot has an old man working the floor. I've seen him there, but never had to deal with him until the Sunday before Christmas. 

I was looking at tools when he appeared, asking me if I needed any help. 

I said no, but remembered that the mayor of Marysville, when he isn't attending to the awesome responsibility of running the town, does work part-time at this Home Depot. (Blogger's Note: if you aren't a subscriber to St. Clair County's newspaper of record, you'll have to open this link in a private or incognito window). 

He wasn't wearing a name badge. So I asked him, "are you the mayor of Marysville?" 

His response: "Pardon? Say again? Say again?"

Turns out the old coot is as deaf as a fence post. But that doesn't prevent him from starting conversations with people - that is, bothering them while they're trying to think about what items they should buy.

This disability that prevents him from doing his job didn't stop Home Depot from giving him a job. This actually might be a new concept in customer service. Hire people who are so deaf that they couldn't hear an atom bomb go off in the next room, and give them jobs that require them to talk to people. Or some twisted way of being charitable, giving back to the communities they serve, etc etc . . . 

Gosh-ding-dangit. I really hoped I'd meet His Honor someday while looking for project materials. I wanted to tell him that Jean Cramer was right, and that Marysville should do everything it can to stay as White as it can and avoid the sort of cultural vibrancy that the jewelry store in the mall across 24th Avenue from the HD recently experienced. 

(Blogger's Note: here I'll add a picture of the four young neighborhood enrichers who gave Fort Gratiot Township a practical lesson in diversity, next time I go to town and find a hotspot where the Internet actually works.) 

But I'd probably have to speak up, talk louder, raise my voice to the point where some young snowflake would threaten to ban me from the store unless I stopped creating a disturbance. After Kroger Girl, and all the others, I wouldn't be surprised. That's why, unless I have a project that needs finishing that day and need materials to complete it, I buy stuff on-line.

It's also why, if I must go to an actual store to buy something,  I avoid dealing with useless customer service folk of the sort I've already described, and the ones I haven't met yet, by going to either Sandusky or Chester Field Township. Out of town, somewhere other that St. Clair County where useless appears to be a birthright. 


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