We drove the fifteen miles to the Lowe's this afternoon. Could have bought local, but in this instance I wanted the brand-name. We have had an Insinkerator disposal fourteen years with no stoppages, leakages, or other difficulties. Until now. It leaks. I mean, it has withstood the pressures of our garbage for a very long time, so no big surprise. We all get a little corroded after exposure to the detritus of our lives, so why should the disposal not suffer similarly? Clearly, I wanted to replace it with an Insinkerator.
One stop, one purchase, and on the way home again.
However. I fell into conversation with the salesperson of whom I had asked directions to the desired item. (I hate big-box stores. But I digress. And repeat myself.) When he discovered we lived in Perfect, he grilled me as to my "native/alien" bonafides. I told him I had lived in Perfect for 44 years, so I felt I was qualified to be designated a Perfectonian. "Not so," he said. "If you weren't born there, didn't go to school there, you are still an alien." He further asserted that as he had been born and educated in Perfect that he, though he has not lived there in over forty years, was still a Perfectonian. He then asked how I was "accepted" and we had a lively and interesting discussion, which revealed among other things, common acquaintances. One of his classmates had been my closest associate in my professional endeavors; another had been a member of the staff I supervised. Further conversation revealed that he had earned an MBA in the pursuit of his goals. I said it was not every day I encountered an MBA on the sales floor at Lowes.
"Oh," he assured me, "you would be surprised. I have a good friend who has a PhD and is similarly employed. The retail world is rife with over-educated sales personnel."
It was an interesting afternoon. I found entertainment in a place I would least expect to find it.
5 comments:
Last year I briefly dated a woman who lives in Perfect. Her parents moved there when she was a girl; she is my age. She told me that she is still treated like an outsider there.
Those big box stores can sometimes provide the most interesting entertainment.
A PhD working in retail? Wow. Makes me thankful, although there is nothing wrong at all with an honest day's work.
Yes, we've lived here for 44 years, but still aren't locals. You should live in Ann Arbor. It's common for your taxi driver to have a PhD. The highly educated can't get jobs. As me. No PhD, but a masters in Engineering, and I'm stuffing newspapers.
For 19 years we lived in Connecticut and a couple of Anglo folk explained that we were, and always would be, outsiders. Never thought much about it. Through Sylvia's work as a bi-lingual special education teacher, we became very involved in the Hispanic community. The adopted us as their own.
In the words of the song, "This world is not my home. I'm just a passing through . . ."
Jim, I don't find your friend's tale to be at all outside the realm of reality.
Shelly, I might find more entertainment in the big-box stores were I not so (agoraphobic? paranoid? whatever-it-is-that-impels-me-to-focus-on-getting-out?)
All honest work is honorable, but some are probably employed in ways other than they intended.
Sharkey, be born here or be forever on the outside? Weird, eh?
Chuck, "a tent, or a cottage, why should I care?" Anyway, it is a wonderful thing that you sojourn in New England turned out so well.
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