Hardware Stores: My Most and Least Favorite Experience

There’s just something special about hardware stores to a man.

Maybe it’s the manly smell of wood. Maybe it’s all the tools I don’t understand. Maybe it’s the promise of a project that has captured my imagination and is just waiting to be completed.

Whatever it is, I love going to hardware stores.

But, I’ve discovered that when I go and visit these places I will have one of two experiences: completely wonderful or completely terrible.

Completely Wonderful: I’ll walk in and be greeted by a kind, grandfatherly-type that will immediately ask me if he can help me find anything. After (almost superhumanly) telling me the exact location of what I need, the old gentleman will warmly smile. As I begin to look for my second item, another worker will ask me if I need any help finding anything and will walk me to where I need to go.

Completely Terrible: I will not be greeted. Ever. I will search for what I need for half an hour and when I track down an employee to ask for help, I’m blown off or treated like I’m completely incompetent. I eventually leave in frustration.

So, which experience have you had more often?