Boomer: "I need a locksmith."
Employee: googles locksmith "yeah here's the phone numbers of every one in town."
Boomer: "thanks there's now conceivable way I could have done this myself."
This is like half the calls we get.
Certain men, of a certain age, tend to place hard value on the opinion/word of hardware store employees when it comes to things out of said person’s purview.
Combine that with the fact that their mind is usually half way turned to tapioca due to a lifetime of leaded fuel exposure, Fox News, and advanced age. It’s a wonder that some of them can even get into their walk in tubs every evening, their minds are so boomer-rotted.
It's true and hilariously stupid.
They also sometimes combine it with your typical boomer misogyny and you get some real gems.
When I was 21 or so, still in college, and working at a big box hardware store, I had some old, white guy (you already knew) come up to me one day so that he could ask me if I could help him in the paint section. I was very much working in customer service, and I could see that paint had it's typical staff member, which was a woman with something like two decades of experience.
I let the guy know she would be able to help him just fine. He still asked something like 'Are you sure?'
One of my favorite work chores was going to the big box hardware store in full work kit (hi viz vest, industrial radio, random pens and knives and shit, etc) and telling white people I don’t work there.
Yes, for some reason the minorities were either already working there or didn’t ask where their nail was while literally staring at a wall of nails.
Anyway it was incredible how some people, even the young ones, just cannot change their mind that I did not work there. The young ones were cool and laughed it off (while still assuming I worked there) and the old ones just went into this weird mental feedback loop.
and telling white people I don’t work there.
I once went into the True Value I used to work at to get something and some lady started asking me questions and I informed her I didn't work there (anymore). She demanded to talk to my manager and I was like "what manager". Some other employer came over and told her I indeed was no longer and employee but she kept demanding to speak to a manager anyway. I just started walking away and she began yelling at me.
What makes people like this? Like, genuinely? It would never even occur to me to behave like she was behaving.
One thing I figured out about my boomer family members is that they are used to specialists or life long laborers working at specialized places like tech, hardware, mechanics, clothing, etc. They do not understand that these are no longer staffed by specialists. Like they have no concept of how labor works now because they've only be consumers for decades now
:this: :this: :this:
Boomers come into a massive chain store and are surprised to learn that the retail employees of [massive billion dollar company] are not specialized tradesmen with years of experience but rather minimum wage workers who could not give less of a shit if the table the customer is buying is "good quality".
I'm pretty sure Lowe's or home Depot used to hire a lot of retired tradespeople to work there.
google is enshitified to the point that it's probably for the best that boomers don't use it to find locksmiths since they are less capable of sifting through the scam listings.
Of all the things to Google, locksmith might be one of the most scam-prone
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/business/fake-online-locksmiths-may-be-out-to-pick-your-pocket-too.html
