Small Towns, Who Needs 'Em?

This week has been insane! Which, for the most part, is a good thing. Insanity in my life brings money to the bank book, eventually. Sometimes these big corporate moguls are a little slow to pay. They have an image to uphold, you see. God forbid they pay in a timely manner and make their profits look bad to their stockholders. I will stop myself there before I begin.

Anyhow, for one of my jobs this week I had to travel to Maryville, MO. Funny story about that. The day before the job, I called to confirm with the construction manager. I told him I was confirming for the new store in Marysville, KS. He said, I was mistaken, it's Maryville, MO. And it's for reasons like that I always call and confirm. Not because I am that incredibly smart, but because in the past I have been that incredibly dumb and ended up at the wrong place, or they had no clue I was coming that day, or something along those lines. Yep, that's right, I will only eat a poop sandwich once. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, or as George W. Bush once said, "There's an old...saying in Tennessee...I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee that says Fool me once...(3 second pause)... Shame on...(4 second pause)...Shame on you....(6 second pause)...Fool me...Can't get fooled again." Oh, "W", only you can put things so succinctly. Anyhow, back to Maryville, MO. Walgreens is on this new kick, I assume they are taking a page from the Walmart school of business. They have started putting fairly small stores in fairly small communities. In some cases, this has worked fairly well for them. I imagine in the case of Maryville, it will work better than most. If you have never been to Maryville, MO, let me save you the trouble. What a dump. Plus it has all those small town things going for it that just get on a person's nerves. For instance, we roll into town about 6:30 PM. We go and unload our equipment, make sure everything is good to go at the store, and then the plan is to go get some grub. By this time it is a little after 7 PM. Due to the fact that most places have already closed, our choices for food are McDonalds (puke), Burger King (puke), Sonic (double-puke) and Subway. There were also two restaurants that seemed a little too nice for two dirty Janitors to wander into. Plus I told my right hand man Juan that one of them seemed like the type of place that if he walked into it, the music would stop, you would hear a glass hitting the floor and breaking and an old lady screaming at the site of Juan. Then some husky redneck would say, "You boys lost?" So, we opted for Subway. Poor Juan ordered his food in his thick Spanish accent and everytime he said something the small town girl just looked at me for the Spanglish to English translation.

After eating, we headed back to the store. As we start getting everything set up, the worst thing that can happen when you are 130 miles from your shop, happened. We forgot something! In this case a dustmop. This is a construction cleanup, mind you. It's pretty hard to fake it if you don't have a dustmop. Way too much construction dust and hunks of debris of every kind. So, I told Juan to go ahead and finish up getting everything set up and I would run to Walmart (of course this hell-hole had a Walmart) and get a dustmop. Surely the only game in town would have a dustmop, even if it was small, it would be better than nothing. Let me reiterate, I hate Walmart. They have small classifications of everything you could possibly need but never exactly what you need. You know, Hardware department, with two packs of screws, a hammer, and both kinds of screwdrivers. Plus the place is so dog-gone big it's hard to find anything. So, I am wandering around, and I know I am close to where I need to be, but, much like Bono of U2, still haven't found what I'm looking for. Ironically, at that moment, a Walmart employee, DUSTMOPPING, sees my deer in the headlights look on my face and asks me if I need help finding something. I said, "You're not going to believe this. I need a dustmop." We shared a brief chuckle, and he set his dustmop aside and walked me a few aisles down to the Cleaning section and pointed me in the direction of their available dustmop. True to form, the "Cleaning Section" was two different types of brooms, a dustpan various "all purpose" cleaners and a dust mop. The picture above is what they had. That's right, all 8.7 inches of it for the not so low price of $16.97. It was that, or a push broom, which when you are sweeping 9,000 square feet, neither will work.

Suddenly, I had an idea, maybe if I told the guy what my plight was, he would let me borrow a dustmop and I could return it after I was done with it. Unfortunately, he didn't have the authority to make such a high command decision. Bummed out by this, I started looking around for some Cokes or something to take back to the barren Walgreens to keep Juan and myself refreshed. Then when I came back towards where the nice Walmart sweeper guy was working, there it was. Apparently this guy is a customer service guru, because he had left his dustmop leaning against a shelf and yet again went off to help some other person looking for something they, no doubt, don't sell. It was at this moment, little devil janitor Brandon popped up on my shoulder and said, "There's your answer! Take it!".

Then, little angel janitor Brandon popped up on the other shoulder and said, "Don't even think about it! Besides, you already told him where you were working. This small town would have all three of their police, plus county sheriffs come raid the Walgreens in search of the stolen dustmop."

Little devil janitor Brandon then says, "You aren't stealing it, you are going to use it and bring it right back! Come on, you chicken!"

Little angel janitor Brandon fires back, "Come on, your parents taught you better than that." And with that, I bowed my head in shame for even hatching such a plan and walked out of the Walmart empty handed. Then on the way back to the Walgreens, I notice a Sutherlands, and a True Value Hardware. I thought to myself, surely they will have something at one of those places. I roll into the strip mall where the two stores are bookends for the mall, and the parking lot is packed with cars. I thought, "Surely one of these places is open, it's not even 8 PM yet." But, as with most small towns, they roll up the sidewalks at 6 PM, and this strip mall was no exception. So, I wonder, where are all these cars from? Let's just say that a mom and pop video rental store in a small town must be a pretty good investment idea. Here it was a Wednesday night, and this 5,000 square foot video rental place was hoppin'. Then the redneck bar next door was also crawling with patrons. And that accounted for all the cars. So, it's clear to me that the favorite pastimes in Maryville, MO are movie watching, and drinking. Plus, as blatantly flirty as all the girls are there, I will give you one guess as to the other pastime. Geez! All I wanted was a stinkin' dustmop!!! Over an hour later, Juan had the store swept with that stupid push broom.

In short, I have learned that there are places that are even worse, than Stinkin' Lincoln! Believe it or not.