Being a twelve-year-old paperboy was more of a distribution and media thing.  Working the late shift at the Craig dormitory snack bar/convenience store my freshman year at the University of North Carolina was my first encounter with retail.  But my real first encounter with retail was at Tower’s Hardware in Jacksonville, Florida my first summer home from college.  The most asked for product that summer by far was the infamous “Thingamajigget.”  Seems like every customer I encountered that summer needed one of those.  Then one day, some old and crusty guy came in and asked for a “left-handed monkey wrench.”  I looked all over that damned store for one that is made just for lefties.  I even asked the horribly mean-spirited woman who managed that store where I could find one.  I think that was the only time I saw Mrs. Dorsey laugh.  I had been set up by an old hardware sales guy who was a customer that day.

But retail must be in my blood.  My granddad, Papa Moon, was a retailer.  So were my dad and his brother.  So was my brother for a while.  And so is my son.  I don’t know much about Papa Moon.  I know that my brother was more of a “nuts and bolts” kind of guy – brilliant with money matters, but not much on the selling part.  I think my uncle was pretty much the same way.  My son is pretty good at what he does.  So was my dad.  My dad loved the interaction with his customers.  But when it came to dealing with some of them, well his temper wasn’t always quite at bay.  Customers were just as apt to hear from my dad, “Get the hell out of my store” as they were to get a good deal from him.

I remember hearing a story about some guy from Tampa who came into Moon Furniture Company one day.  Every time he saw a piece of furniture that peaked his interest, he would say, “I can get this same piece in Tampa fa 30-pussent-less!”  

He saw a recliner he liked.  “A hundad-dollas-off-this-tag in Tampa I can get.”

Then it was, “Really?  You spect me ta pay dis?  Why in Tampa....”  

My dad interrupted.  Go figure.  “Why the hell don’t you get your ass to Tampa and buy the damned thing there?”  Or something to that effect.

Well now, I am into retail a bit these days.  They call what I do “merchandising,” but dealing with customers is all part of the routine.  And like my dad and my son, I do enjoy the face-to-face encounters and banter and laughter and smiles.  But unlike my dad, my temper is under wraps.  And it’s a good thing for my employers, the stores where I work, the customers and me.  Because, I have had plenty of opportunities to pull a “go-the-hell-to-Tampa.”  I cannot share them all with you now.  Those moments happen dozens of times a day.  But I can tell you that every time I am seen by a customer while I’m carrying 50 pounds of stuff through a store or while on my knees scraping out the last trays of product from a huge wholesaler cart or even while pulling hundreds of pounds of new product on the old and squeaky wheels of one of those 8-foot carts, that customer will yell at me, “Where can I find tomato stakes?”  

One of my merchandising jobs takes me into grocery stores to do a couple hundred simple tasks in each store.  Each task takes about 15-seconds to perform.  One day, one such task involved the laundry detergent section.  I think it was my final task there.  And it was very late in the day.  I truly believe that there was but one customer in the store at the time.  Where do you suppose she was?  That’s right.  On the laundry detergent aisle.  In fact, she was in front of the very section of that aisle where I needed to perform my fifteen-seconds.  The woman was on her knees, right there in front of the Tide, the Gain, All, and all else.  She was opening every single jug of liquid detergent, smelling each one.  And it wasn’t just taking a sniff here or there.  It was like she was at a freakin’ wine-tasting party.  You know, holding each jug at half-arms length, then gently waving her fingers and wafting the aroma of each one.  For the love of God, this was a Food Lion.  Not a vineyard!  And she must have been in her thirties.  I mean, you’ve got to believe this woman had been doing her own laundry, what, for at least 12 years. Right?  She doesn’t know what Wisk smells like?  Has she really never washed a sock?

Look, I happen to be tall.  I’m no Manut Bol, but I am taller than most folks in a grocery store.  And I am much taller than the older ladies who live near one store I visit.  One afternoon, as I was doing the best I could to do my work and leave that store in my allotted time, I saw an elderly woman who couldn’t have been taller and four-and-a-half feet, trying to finagle a rather heavy carton of kitty litter off the top shelf of the pet needs aisle.  When I saw what was happening, I had to just stop rushing.  I rolled my eyes toward heaven and said, “God, I tried to get it done.”  I put down my work and helped the woman with her kitty litter.  Kind of feeling good about myself for doing that, I took a deep sigh and thought to myself, “Now I can finish my work.”  A split second after that  thought came to me, I heard the woman say, “Now, if you can just help me with one other thing....”  Oh well.  Time is relative, I suppose.  So, it seems, is retail.

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