In article .com, Shaun
Eli wrote:
On Jul 27, 10:33 pm, "Edwin Pawlowski" wrote:
"Shaun Eli" wrote in message
Anyway, I stopped believing in trusting advice given in mom & pop
hardware stores. The first time the clerk told me, when I was buying
lamp cord, which color was for positive and which for negative... it
took me ten minutes to explain alternating current to him.

Actually the issue is hot and neutral, and usually the coding is a few
fine ridges running along the hot side of the cord.

In my experience, mom and pop hardware stores on average do a little
better in that area and comparable areas than big box home centers do, and
*a lot better* than big-box-stores other than home centers.

Uh, take a good look at some of your cords; note the subtle difference.
Take a look at the plugs for polarity. If you don't see the differences,
go to a good hardware store and ask the guy about it.

I know the difference between hot, neutral and ground, and about
polarized plugs.

I also know that positive and negative don't apply to alternating
current (or apply to it differently around 120 times each second). So
when he said that one was positive and the other was negative, and
that "This cord will give you a good current" I knew to shop
elsewhere.

You must have run into someone at a mom-and-pop hardware store who
needed more training, possible "The Wrong" mom-and-pop hardware store.
I suspect that person called "hot" "positive" and "neutral" "negative".

Sure, the guy in the plumbing department of Home Depot may not know
about plumbing (although my last trip to the plumbing aisle of HD
revealed an employee who's a plumber working at HD on one of his days
off), but at least they're trying to specialize. I can't expect even
the most experienced hardware store guy to be an expert in plumbing,
painting, electrical, roofing...

I expect that the local hardware store has some or most of their staff
knowing some stuff about plumbing and some electrical stuff.

I also expect a big box home center to ideally desire a retired
electrician to serve people looking for answers in the electrical aisle
and a retired plumber to serve people looking for answers in the plumbing
aisle, etc.
Sounds good so far - but here is where I see things falling apart: The
big box stores are owned by publicly traded corporations, whose shares are
mostly owned by mutual funds, pension funds, and whatever else cares about
bottom line more than anything else. The corporation's management at all
levels from top to lowest level supervisor has Priority 1 being maximizing
"The Bottom Line".
As a result, I expect at many to most "big box home centers" some
hotshot manager figures he can hire *some* electrical expert and *some*
plumbing expert at wages only a inor to minorish-moderate improvement over
burger-flipper. It appears to me that such a manager expects that he can
find someone to take such jobs at such wages - plenty-often true as I see.
It appears to me that such a manager hopes to get, for example, an
electrician who retired from electrician work to retire from bending his
back in a painful way but still needs employment.
Now the rub: People with good work attitude, good time management
skills and good "people skills" and with "can do work ethic" can make
not-too-bad a living as delivery drivers for package shipping companies
and for some pizza (and other delivery food) outfits that are willing to
pay for good delivery drivers.
Heck, what do "Big Box" stores pay retired licensed electricians to help
people in the electrical aisle? Can a retired good electrician do better
than that as a good pizza delivery driver or as a staffer in an electrical
or lighting supply shop?

I really suspect that all-too-many "big box home centers" want to hire
"plumbing experts", "electrical experts", whatever, at wages that can only
buy the labor of someone unable to do well as a truck driver, pizza
delivery driver, etc. I also suspect that the big-box managers will get
what they pay for, and that this pushes for shifting some responsibility
of knowledge from the too-busy or not-the-best staffers to the customers.

As I see it, family-owned businesses and for that matter all businesses
owned by so much as tyrants have an advantage over publicly owned
corporations: Some tyrants have such things as consciences and hearts.
I see consciences and hearts being all-too-often expendable if they have
any negative impact on the bottom line of a publicly owned corporation,
since a "publicly owned corporation" is typically owned mostly by those
who care about bottom line or growth thereof more than anything else.

- Don Klipstein )