Thursday, March 30, 2006

Little things entertain me

Recently while we shopped at "Eko Depot", the Haiti version of Home Depot/Menard's/Lowe's, we enjoyed noticing the difference between this hardware story and your typical United States Super Hardware store.

The entire Eko Depot is about 1/10 the size of a Home Depot store in the States. There are no fancy display's. No one offers you a credit card with 0% interest for 6 months as you enter the store.

Much of the time, the item you are looking for does not exist or is out of stock. They cannot tell you when they will next carry that item. If you want to buy paint, you get to choose from one of one brand that they carry. They have a color card with 15 choices of colors, there is no mixing of other colors at Eko. If you don't like turquoise, you're out of luck.

If you want to buy electrical parts, you get to dig through unmarked boxes without any rhyme or reason to their location within the store.

When you check out, you have two or three lanes to choose from. The person at that lane rings it up, another person comes and takes it over to a different desk to bag it. After you have paid you go show your receipt to the person who took your stuff over to the other counter and bagged it. It makes no sense, it is an added step. (plus, why are they checking your receipt, they are the ones who took it after it was "scanned" and they SAW that the items were purchased.) If you bought your Menard's stuff in lane 10 but then a lady took it to the service counter, piece by piece to bag it up ... Wouldn't you find that to be an odd waste of time?

There I am again, stuck in my American way of thinking about things. Why the hurry? Time does not matter. I need to learn that.

If you were shopping for a oscillating fan, you could pick one up for a cool $60 U.S. If you wanted a cheesy plastic shoe rack that holds six pairs of shoes, that would cost you $45 U.S. Real bargains.

While I was walking around keeping Noah happy, I saw a massaging shower head thing. I don't need one, I don't want one. But, I found the box to be very entertaining.

It read:

"A torrential downpour of cascading showering pleasure!"

That sounds good. I wonder if cold water will produce the same results as warm water? It was hard to leave it on the shelf with that kind of product description.

At Caribbean market, the grocery store shown yesterday, here are a few examples of the way groceries are priced ... random ones I wrote down (but did not buy)- It is easy to look at the conversion on the stuff you are NOT going to buy ... I hate converting the things I did buy. Ouch.

Package of 5 sausage links - Johnsonville brand - 1.25 lbs total weight - $8.98
Large 480z. jar of Mott's applesauce - $4.81
Box of 10 Fruit Roll-Up's - $4.67
One normal size bag/package of Chips Ahoy cookies - $6.00

Needless to day, we are not eating many Johnsonville products these days.