All I thought I’d do was reply to this email, and the next thing I knew I just got all into it. I guess I’ve had some angst built up around the issue of shopping at Home Depot – you be the judge. Afterward I figured as long as I typed that much, it might as well be a blog post.
The author of the original email is Pete, a member of the Fantasy Football league I’ve been in for the last six years. The email conversations between the ten of us in the league aren’t just your average profane trash-talk. I doubt, in fact, that one could easily find such creative, unpredictable, even erudite trash-talk anywhere in the world of fantasy sports. Pete, for his part, regularly cracks my shit up with a style of obscenity unlike that of anyone else I can think of. As you’ll see, he doesn’t always limit himself to fantasy football-related subject matter:
SUBJECT: Re: complaint
Seriously, Home Depot and Loew’s suck moose knuckle.
I’m just trying to find a nice simple roll of Teflon pipe thread tape, and neither of those cockmeister companies carry it. Lowe’s even has an online “project center” where several plumbing-related projects call for the use of Teflon tape, but you can’t buy it from them. Fucking assbags.
P.
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“I just beat the asses of three thousand men. The hell you leave me alone” – Rodney Leonard Stubbs, Great Outdoor Fight Champion, 1973
My reply:
They have it at the Home Depot on Balboa and Roscoe in Van Nuys*… at least they did a couple of weeks ago when I needed to put on my new shower head. It was kind of on one of those little afterthought-like consoles that they put onto the end of the aisle – the end by the aisle halfway back in the store, so it’s not like you can just walk in, go 15 feet over to the end by the cash registers, grab your teflon tape and turn around. Because that would just make our life too goddamned easy.
Of course, then you have to try to guess which fucking line might move fast enough to get your 1 item rung up in less than half an hour. And don’t think it’s the slick new self-checkout registers, either – at least two, if not three of the four always have an “OUT OF ORDER” sign taped to the screen, and the one remaining LCD panel has some clueless geriatric standing in front of it, brow furrowed, index finger held semi-motionless in midair eight inches from the screen, as though it’s some kind of fucking transactional Ouija board whose unseen force will any moment now magically guide their finger to select the right form of payment. This withered stooge still hasn’t figured out how to use the DVD player he got two years ago, and yet he’s rolled his cart straight into the self-checkout line, because darn it if he won’t get a kick out of making that barcode scanner thing do that “BEEP” noise. Dear God, deliver us from Depot. You can forget about the self-checkout-register-monitor kid in the orange apron untangling this situation anytime soon – she might as well get out her Sharpie and and start making her “out of order” sign. I swear, the lines at Costco might be longer but at least they fucking MOVE.
Hope you have a super rest of the day anyway, Pete. Is there a True Value nearby?
Best of luck!
Derek
* Pete lives in Florida; I live in Los Angeles
Tags: (in)humanity, consumerism, friends, profanity
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My neighborhood hardware store in Harlem has teflon tape. It’s normally around $2.00 for the little blue and white plastic roll outside of Manhattan, but I paid $3.00 when I installed a new shower head. I pay more for things where I live, and I’m of the opinion that it’s because I’m some Tony Blair looking motherf%$&!er and not from the Dominican Republic. The first day I moved into the neighborhood, I went to the Independent Grocery on the corner to buy a six pack of Presidente. It was $9.50. About a week later, I bought one for $8.50. The next time it was $10.00 even. Finally, after two months it was $7.50. I now keep the receipt for this transaction in my pocket, so they can’t chisel me for the extra $2.50 anymore. Nah, who am I kidding? I don’t even bother to walk into that place if I can help it. It smells like catbox and rotting raw meat. Clearly, I’m simply not welcome there.
It’s the gentrification going on in Harlem. Columbia University is buying as many buildings as possible from 116th up to 135th Street. They are making life tough on stubborn tenants who have lived in the neighborhood for decades. Other landlords (like mine) are following suit by making living conditions in the buildings they own intolerable to rid their properties of these rent stabilized tenants. Trash in the hallways, leaky ceilings in the hallways and lobby left unrepaired, turning off the heat and hot water once or twice a week in the weekday morning, turning off the water entirely some days, etc. People are angry and so am I. I’m moving!!! To a better neighborhood where I can buy teflon tape at a f$#&!ing Home Depot that’s the same price for everyone!!!!
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Dude, I feel ya. Leaky ceilings? No excuse for that shit. There’s teflon tape right down the block!
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