T.J. Flynn

It feels like I’ve been moving for years. Moving from one floor to another. One house to another. One state to another. I just moved again.

Through all of these moves, Goodwill has been my re-purpose facility of choice. If a particular item was a duplicate, or had the stigma (smell) of a former wife, or for some other reason did not make the cut of items packed-I found the nearest Goodwill to shelter it.

I believe the TV ads that say donating to Goodwill provides good things for people. I hope that a lot of my trash has been another man’s (or woman’s) treasure. To complete the cycle, when I’m not donating stuff to Goodwill, I’m scouring every one that I pass looking for antiques and bargains. It’s the ‘circle of junk’, similar to the circle of life except inanimate things don’t die, rot and provide nourishment for other inanimate things. It just seems as if they do when you go to Goodwill all the time.

Other than someone working for Goodwill, there may not be a person alive that has been in more of them than me. Let’s further qualify ‘being in’ them as dropping off or picking up stuff there. The 2nd Ex has probably been in as many as me, but in terms of sheer mass, has not moved the pounds that I have in and out of them. Dammit, there’s another useless distinction to add to my list.

Yea Goodwill. I know what to expect when I go there.

Okay, so I went to a Salvation Army store to drop off some stuff a few weeks ago and their business model is completely different. Instead of friendly people helping you to unload your crap and giving you a receipt, there is a gestapo-like sergeant (armed with Wyatt Earp’s 12″ barrel colt revolver I think) standing at the door. Once you proudly motion towards, scan and verbally list your valued possessions that need new homes, he yells out, “We’ll take the silver bars and the perfect furniture, get the rest of this useless crap off of my lot. You have 8 seconds. One…”

If you’re like me, you will still be in a mouth open, glazed eye state of shock when you think that you hear the unmistakeable snap of the leather strap holding the hog-leg in it’s holster being loosed and the reverberating staccato of the hammer being pulled back. I would not be far afield to say that my son-in-law soiled himself during this interaction, to which he was only peripherally involved.

Friends, frogs and knuckleheads, I won’t go back to a Salvation Army…ever…for any reason.

The person that your customers interact with is the face of your business.

It is not good blog protocol (I suspect) to write stories about the same thing so close together. However, I have another automobile experience to share.

Those few readers who know me really well know that I’m…uh, frugal when it comes to cars and trucks. Having wasted untold dollars trading cars every couple of years, I now tend to run the wheels off of everything that I purchase. Many years ago, my friend John Weeks, shared a story about the principal at his high school saying that a Caddy is really a poor man’s car because they were so well built that the cost of ownership-over time was extremely low. I’ve proved this concept to be true with several Ford trucks and vans as well.

Please don’t tell Carl Edwards or any other of my Fanatic Ford Friends, but my current work van is a Chevy. She’s 23 and has almost 230,000 miles on her. But, bless her heart,still gets up every day and goes where ever I go. She has a little rust and her paint is fading. But, she still goes with me. She needs touching in difficult places to reach sometimes. Most recently inside her gas tank. But, she still goes with me. She loves gas stations and craves oil and water sometimes. But she still goes with me. Her middle seats are in another state. She is burdened with tools of my trade and beach essentials. I often forget to unload things that she should not be carrying. I used to let her sit in my parking lot in Kentucky, covered in snow and ice, for weeks at a time. Then jump in to drive a thousand miles to work. She happily went.

Over time, her power windows stopped working and stayed that way until it became too inconvenient (translated HOT) for me to bear. As things happen, I was lamenting the heat and wishing that the windows worked when I passed one of those orange cars on US 1 that advertise window repairs. I called. Agreed to $175 each window for new motors and the labor to install. He came the same day and did the work.

Fast forward to less than a week later and the passenger window rolls down and not back up. I was busy that week. It rained much that week. My old girl was very embarassed honkin’ down the road with a plastic trash bag on one of her wings like she belonged to Jethro Bodeen or the Joad family. It rained the next week and the next.

The repairman had warned me of some rusty pieces that could cause the window to stop working. Thinking that this was the issue and he had done what he promised, I operated on my girl and, to my surprise found a well-worn and old window motor still in her wing. It was at this point that I knew that I had wasted some or all of the $360 I’d spent and that I’d been taken advantage of.

Angry and frustrated, I fixed her window in the up position and put her back together. During this process, I lost the clip that holds the door handle on. So, each time the door is shut, the handle falls off. I also broke the electric thingie that operates the window. So, the hole where it was is covered with tape. Dammit!

Not one to walk away from a fight, I called the repairman. His response was to call me “bone lip” and hang up. I must admit that I’ve been called many things worse than “bone lip”, and that “bone lip” was funny until I thought it must be a reference to being gay-which I ain’t.

Giving the devil his due, the repairman did call back, apologize and ask to make a repair. Unfortunately, at that point I was in a prudent business be damned, this guy has taken advantage of me and disparaged me (I think) with the bone lip thing, hung up the phone on me, and I don’t want him anywhere near my sweetie mode and told him to go you-know-what himself.

Over time, I’ll fix the handle and get a new switch cover. I can live with just one window rolling up and down. Meanwhile, my unnamed sweetie will still get up and go with me where ever I go.

Over time, the repairman will still take advantage of people, call them bad names, and live with the bad karma he’s putting out into the world.

I sorta wish that my make up was such that would have allowed me to let the guy fix his mistake. But, then again, that person would be someone else…not me!

The lesson in service? Don’t trust a guy that comes to your house to work on your vehicle and asks you to drive up on the sidewalk under the shade of a tree. I guess.

I went through a period in my youth where I considered going to law school. In those days, Sociology was an acceptable undergraduate degree to have as a prerequisite. So, I ‘double-majored’ in business and sociology. It’s is no surprise, then, when I have random thoughts about why as a society we gravitate toward certain things. Things like becoming Publix Snobs.

At the end of March, I was fortunate enough to be in a group of 17 friends from the Indialantic/Indian Harbour Beach area to vacation in the Florida Keys. We rented 3 houses in the same neighborhood and inhabited them by family group, with each family being responsible to provide the dinner repast for the entire herd, at least once. It was during a grocery shopping trip for one of these feasts that I accused friend Derrian of being a Publix Snob. To which she freely admitted-to no one’s surprise!

Friends, frequent readers, freaks and fossils, we all have become grocery shopping snobs of some sort. We’ve had to for various reasons. There is a Winn-Dixie, Publix, Aldi, Wal-Mart, Target, or other regional/national grocery store in every 4-mile radius. Our peers shop at these stores. Smaller stores are ethnic, have the mom-and-pop syndrome, aren’t as modern, are not as convenient, or? In short smaller stores, markets, have no snob appeal to the majority of the populace.

As I look back on my shopping habit history, there are distinct periods of evolution and regression. Let me explain. When I was a carefree boy at home, most of my shopping was candy and soda at Pop Malloy’s or the Davis Grocery. Both of these wood buildings sold kerosene and gasoline in addition to groceries and were owned by local families. These were the precursors to 7-11 stores. At that time, Mama shopped at the corner produce market and Winn-Dixie downtown. Then, a Publix was built close to home and Mama and Daddy shopped there for convenience. When my wife started shopping for our family, I was building Winn-Dixies for a living and the choice for buying groceries was simple. Spend your money where you make it. With slight deviations, concentrating on Piggly-Wiggly, Wal-Mart, Kroger, Save-a-Lot, or Publix, that remained my habit until recently.

Fast forward to the beginning of May when Angela and I changed our diet to exclude all processed foods, all grains, etc. to concentrate on lean meats, fresh fruits and fresh vegetables. We are back at local markets for the freshness and cost savings.

So far, we have found 2 fantastic markets where food is fresher, prices are considerably lower than snobby stores and ethnicity is evident but not oppressive in any way. One of these markets offers two free glasses of beer while you shop! By comparison, we should get a 6-pack at the bigger, more expensive stores. I’m not talking about roadside markets, rather well established stores with carts, parking lots, and lots staple items.

Please stop here and re-read the paragraph above. Need I say more than “food is fresher, prices are considerably lower”? Okay, here’s the numbers for those who need me to say more. We spent less than $60 last week and less than $50 this week for all of the fresh vegetables and fruit we can eat. I’ve even bought extra fruit and vegetables to dehydrate for snacks in these numbers.

Do we drive a little further? Yes.
Do we need to keep an eye behind us for the mad shoppers and choo-choos in the smaller aisles who know what they want and will run over anyone in their way? Yes.
Are the stores a little less modern? Yes
Is it worth the freshness and savings? Hell Yes.

My common sense and my sense of adventure says that shopping at markets is smart and fun. Now if I can just find a meat market that’s affordable. I’ll be able to pass all of those big box stores and my peers in them who are paying more and getting less.