Retail is full of talent that couldn’t find a job in their field of work though.
And hardware stores specifically, especially the local mom and pop ones, seem to attract the older semi-retired crowd that is looking for something to do where they can share their knowledge.
At least this is how it is where I live.
I dunno, it’s kinda rolling the dice. You can get really lucky sometimes. Even if the person doesn’t necessarily care about the stuff, they pick up what other people say, and would know what gets bought the most. That’s better than nothing at times.
And then you can get really lucky and find someone that knows their shit.
So it never hurts to ask, though you may get an actual eye roll lol
I don’t run a directly customer facing department anymore, but when I ran electronics I got to be both the employee that didn’t know much, and the one that tells you more than you asked for.
I went to college for network admin, but never actually landed a career in it because COVID hit right after I graduated. I’ve done a bit of everything with computers and can speak to a lot of things.
But I haven’t used every electronic device we sold or have even basic knowledge of some of them, so I had to fall back on “Well, a lot of people buy this one, so there’s probably something nice happening there.”
I work at a hardware store. Amusingly, the most detailed questions I’ve gotten have been asked by people calling on the phone. I love it when people have a specific item number and I can just look it up on the computer right away. We have detailed descriptions and specifications of most things in our inventory, and I’m more than happy to spend time helping people who know what they’re talking about.
When people call and give a vague description of an item that may or may not even exist, then I get exasperated. If I’m too busy to play twenty questions, I’ll just say that we don’t carry it. I have no problem helping that same person when they’re in the store, but when they call, they’re inevitably doing other things and aren’t listening to me anyway. If they won’t take their own problem seriously, I’m not going to, either.
Of course. The delusion that some billionaire knows fucking anything better than anyone else.
