The sweet smell of failure

I remember when I was a little kid walking past Central Hardware.  It had automatic doors that opened when you walked by, and you could always smell the sawdust.  I remember going in there, and everything was very well laid out.  The screws were in the isle marked screws, the bolts in the isle marked bolts.  If you wanted a hammer guess where you would go? Yeah thats right, the isle marked hammers.

A number of years ago a store called HQ put Central Hardware out of business.  I never once went inside HQ before it was run out of business by Lowes.  I hate Lowes.  It’s not a hardware store, its a “home store.”  For a long time I didn’t know the difference, except home stores are gi-fucking-giantic.  But the truth is that there is one big difference; it’s how the goods are organized.  At a hardware store, the goods are organized by type.  Tools, hardware, etc.  At a home store, goods are organized by project.  So if you want wheels, you might have to look in 4 different places because lawnmower wheels are in the isle with the lawnmowers, and caster wheels are over by mail boxes; pulley wheels on the other hand are over by door hinges.  I don’t understand why they place some things in some areas.  If you want a particular size screw, you still have to hunt through 3 isles of screws because they aren’t organized simply by size, they are organized by what you will use them for.  Wouldn’t it be easier if all the 3/16 inch screws were in one place?

And have you ever tried to use the websites of the homes stores?  Right now, go over to www.lowes.com, and do a search for wheel.  Do you see any wheels on that page?  How about the 4 other pages of results? Nope.  I know they have wheels there, you just can’t find them under wheels.  Ok, how about this.  Search the word “dirt.”  Whoa! No results for dirt?  I buy dirt there all the time.  WTF?