AN INSIDE PERSPECTIVE
By Jim Harris, CGCS, Cottonwoods Golf Course, Cordova, TN
“We have actually convinced ourselves that slogans will save us. ‘Shoot up if you must, but use a clean needle.’ Or, ‘Enjoy sex whenever and with whomever you wish, but protect yourself.’ No! The answer is no! Not because it isn’t cool or smart or because you might wind up in jail or in an AIDS ward, but because it’s wrong. What Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai were not the ten suggestions, but the Ten Commandments!” Ted Koppel – ABC’s Nightline
once went shopping at one of those big “warehouse” hardware stores. I only wanted four things, so I wandered through the vast canyons of hardware in a search that equaled that of looking for the pair of ants in Noah’s Ark. Even though the things I sought were “everyday” household items, they were hidden away amongst the thousands of even more common and “everyday” things. There were pull-strings to turn on naked light bulbs, washers to prevent the garden hose from leaking all over your shoes and a most impressive display of fly swatters, but the things I needed were nowhere to be seen. Remembering my wife’s admonition to stop and ask directions, I spotted a store employee who was on his way somewhere in a hurry. His apron with the company logo was a dead giveaway as to his occupation and place of employment, so I was surprised when he seemed surprised that I stopped him. Instead of being eager to help me, he looked like he thought I was going to hit him. “Pardon me, but can you help me?” I ventured. Realizing I wasn’t going to hit him, he said, “Well, this is not really my department,” and hurried off. At that point, I almost wished I had hit him — at least I would have attracted another store employee or better yet, a manager. Failing to flag down two other employees, who were moving as hastily as the first, I continued the search myself. This added to my belief, as well as to my male ego, that there really wasn’t a need to ask directions and that surely the things I sought would miraculously appear if I just kept moving.
I
30
TENNESSEE TURFGRASS
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2006
Forty-five minutes later, I had two of the items I was looking for, and I rationalized that the store did not have the other two among the millions of items displayed. I decided to go and pay for my items and claim a victory because I had 50 percent of the things I came for, but then I had trouble negotiating a maze of abandoned shopping carts that were between the checkout counter and me. They all seemed to have various items in them, but no one was near them. Where were all the customers who had spent obviously endless hours accumulating these items? Weren’t they taking a great risk that someone less industrious might take the items out of their unguarded carts instead of mounting their own safari into the hardware jungle? Arriving at the front of the store, I was reminded of a bank, in that there were twelve checkout lanes but only one was open. This is obviously some management strategy that is well guarded by the banking (and now the hardware) industry. The one person at the checkout counter seemed to have two speeds — slow and slower — and had just downshifted. The fifteen people in line were obviously impatient at the progress the line was making, which was about nil. After what seemed like an eternity, a man halfway down the line finally interrupted the boredom with a loud, “To hell with this!” and walked out as he pushed his shopping cart to the side. It rolled with its cargo of unpurchased merchandise and hit the tangle of abandoned carts, revealing the mystery as to how they got there. Several other people soon followed suit and abandoned their semi-full carts as they left. I set my two
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